The Morality of Woman, and Other Essays

by Ellen Key

The women who adopted the new ideal—which a Norwegian poet strikingly defined as "Self-assertion in self-surrender." "Affirmation of self in giving of self"—encounter now on the part of the modern woman's-rights advocates the same kind of conventional objection as in the fifties and sixties was directed against the then new ideal of the earlier woman movement.

The older emancipation movement advanced along the first line in the effort to establish the right of woman as a human being; that is, to give to woman the same rights as to man. The present movement purposes to assert the right of woman as an individuality; the absolute right to believe, to feel, to think and to act in her own way, if it does not interfere with the rights of others. Since the first end was a general one, the movement could in great part be made effective by collective work in attaining that end; the exposition of the independence of the individuality of woman, on the contrary, must be the personal concern of each single individual. This those women do not understand who still are working ever for the first end—the rights of woman as a human being. They do not understand that every woman must receive, not merely her universal rights, as a member of the body politic, but also her entire individual rights as the possessor of a definite personality. The right to establish an ego independent of, and perhaps entirely at variance with, theories and ideals is at heart the point of struggle between the one or the other individual woman and the women representatives of the earlier era of the woman question.

The discovery that each personality is a new world—which in Shakespeare found its Columbus, a Columbus after whom new mariners immediately undertook new conquests—this discovery of literature has as yet only partially penetrated the universal consciousness, as a truth of experience. But the fact that it has made a beginning, that the conventional, inflexible conception of the nature of man and of the problems resulting therefrom is giving place to a relative and individual conception—this is above all to be ascribed to the thinkers and poets, in whom the conventional has its deadliest foe; the recreative poets whose characteristic is deep appreciation of all primal forces of existence, of all essential elements of life. For although conventionalism in the form of the echo springs up also around genius, yet the creative genius itself is always a protest against conventionality in which any selfjustified life or art—conception has perished.

The poet who here in the North shattered with a blow the archaic conventional ideal of woman who sacrificed herself in all circumstances, was Ibsen when he sent Nora out away from her husband and children in order to fulfill the duties toward herself; when by means of "Ghosts" he etched into the moral consciousness the idea that a woman's fidelity to her own personality is more significant for the welfare of others as well as of herself than her fidelity to conventional conceptions of morality.

And Ibsen has always been the annunciator of the freedom under one's own responsibility which is the key to individualism. Long has man listened, only in part has he understood. And no consciousness is in this respect more hermetically sealed than that of certain woman's rights advocates! That all women should have the same rights as men, this is all that they mean in their talk about the freeing of the woman's personality. They forget that the right to be what she wishes entails often for the woman, as for the man, the obligation to suppress that which she really is by nature and feeling. They forget that the personality has deeper claims than the right to work. They overlook the infinite variety of shades of feeling, thought and character which caused the demand of solidarity in opinions and actions, among the women active in the woman question, to degenerate into suppression of woman's individuality. Certainly it is true that united action is still necessary in order that woman may obtain the rights which she still lacks. But all compulsory mobilized action is here more dangerous than elsewhere; because for the advance of the woman question in the deepest sense it is essential precisely that the different feminine individualities show their useful faculties as freely as possible in the different fields of activity.

The conventionality which is a menace in the woman question betrays itself, not only in exaggerated demands for solidarity, but also in the mode of treating the objections of the opposition. It reveals itself in the lack of comprehension of the fact that the woman question, particularly in what concerns the labor field, now intersects on all sides the path of the social question. It especially evinces itself in the inability to understand how the woman question, as it advances in its evolution, becomes more complex, and how thereby, ever greater difficulties arise in taking an absolute position in the questions connected with it.

It is necessary that woman's opportunities for culture be multiplied. But do all these measures of culture develop also the personality? Have we not met the finest, most original, most charming natures among unlettered dames of seventy and eighty years, or among such women as never had a systematic education? It is right that the wages of women should be increased; but will the labor value of women increase in proportion? Can we even desire that the majority of these women bent over their desks shall devote a live interest to their work, when their sole essential being would first find expression only when bent over a cradle? It is well also for girls of wealth to wish to have a vocation. But is it also good if they, because they can be satisfied with a smaller wage, take away the work from poor girls and men, often more competent, who have to live entirely by the fruits of their work, and must therefore demand larger wages?

So long as these and many other questions remain unanswered, there is today quite as much that is conventional in rejoicing unreservedly over the many girls who become students or leave the home, where they are very much needed, for outside work, as there was in our grandmother's time in wishing to limit the province of woman to the kitchen, the nursery and the drawing room.

It is not yet known whether woman, through the competition for bread, will develop physiologically and psychologically to greater health and harmony. Woman is a new subject for research, and only centuries of full freedom in choice of labor and in personal development can furnish material for well grounded conclusions. Many signs, however, point to this:—that an ineffaceable, deep-rooted psychological difference due to physical peculiarities will always exist between man and woman, which probably will always keep her by preference active in the sphere of the family, while he probably will remain active in other spheres of culture. But with a perfect equality with man and a full personal development, woman can have a significance for culture in its entirety and for the direction of society which we can still scarcely divine.

The conventional points of view, just mentioned in considering the woman question, retard the development of woman's individuality above all because they overlook the diversity of nature and the complexity of the problem. The conventional conception of self-renunciation as the highest expression of womanhood is still continually the greatest obstacle to the achievement of woman's personality. To be able to perish for a loved being with joy is one of the beautiful inalienable priviliges of woman nature. But by considering this under all circumstances as ideal, woman has thus retarded not only her own development but also that of man. If we compare marriages of older generations with those of the younger, the men of the latter show great advance in regard to considerate tenderness and sympathetic understanding toward their wives—wives who have on the other hand a personal life more complete and with other demands than formerly. Both have thus gained since women have begun to practice the self-renunciation of self-assertion! Because for every self-sacrificing woman nature it is infinitely harder to take her due than to sacrifice it.