This sings for me in the verse of a poet and a seer, whose name now shines with the radiance of the morning star, although during his lifetime it was sullied with defamation as that of an atheist and destroyer of society—because the luminous path of his thoughts appeared to the prejudices of his contemporaries as a blinding flash of lightning. His poet's vision revealed to him a new time in which women would be
"... frank, beautiful and kind
As the free heaven, which rains fresh light and dew
On the wide earth
From custom's evil taint exempt and pure;
Speaking the wisdom once they could not think,
Looking emotions once they feared to feel,
And changed to all which once they dared not be
Yet being now, made earth like heaven."
This beautiful profile of the woman of the future, which Shelley has traced, floats before me when I attempt here to draw her portrait in more precise outlines.
The storm and stress period of woman and the new social and psychological formations thereby entailed must, indeed, extend far into the twentieth century. This period of conflict will cease only when woman within and out of marriage shall have received legal equality with man. It will cease when such a transformation of society shall have come to pass that the present rivalry between the sexes shall be ended in a manner advantageous to both and when finally the work of earning a livelihood as well as care of the household shall have received such form that it will weigh less heavily than now upon the woman.
Toward the end of the twentieth century only could the type of the nineteenth century woman have reached its culmination and a new type of woman begin to appear.
My ideal picture of the woman of the future, and when one paints an ideal one does not need to limit one's imagination, is that she will be a being of profound contrasts which have attained harmony. She will appear as a great multiplicity and a complete unity; a rich plenitude and a perfect simplicity; a thoroughly educated creature of culture and an original spontaneous nature; a strongly marked human individuality and a complete manifestation of most profound womanliness. This woman will understand the spirit of a scientific work, of an exact search after truth, of free, independent thought, of artistic creation. She will comprehend the necessity of the laws of nature and of the progress of evolution; she will possess the feeling of solidarity and regard for the interests of society. Because she will know more and think more clearly than the woman of the present, she will be more just; because she will be stronger, she will be better; because she will be wiser, she will be also more gentle. She will be able to see things in the ensemble and in their connection with each other; she will lose thereby certain prejudices which are still called virtues. Nevertheless she will remain the one who forms customs. But she will not seek her support in social convention; she will find it in the laws of her own being. She will have the courage to think her own thoughts and to investigate the new thoughts of her time. She will dare to experience and to acknowledge feelings which she now suppresses or conceals. Her full liberty of action and the complete development of her personality will render possible intrepid efforts for life, an energetic striving after an existence which shall conform to her own ego. And such an existence she will be able also to find with surer instinct than now. She will understand how to work with more intensity, to rest with more intensity and with more intensity to delight in all immediate, simple sources of joy than the woman of the present is able to do. Thus in the new woman the feeling of life will be enhanced, her experience will be more profound; her soul life, her demands for beauty, her senses will be more developed and refined. She will be more sensitive, more delicately vibratory; she will therefore be able to be more profoundly happy and also to suffer more keenly than the woman of our time.
Thus the woman of the twentieth century will give new value to the life of society and to art, to science and to literature. But her greatest cultural significance remains, however, by means of the enigmatic, the instinctive, the intuitive and the impulsive in her own being to protect mankind from the dangers of excessive culture. In face of knowledge she will maintain the rights of the unknowable; in face of logic, feeling; in face of reality, possibilities; and in face of analysis, intuition. Woman will above all further the growth of the soul, man that of the intelligence; she will extend the sphere of intuition, he that of reason; she will realize tenderness, he justice; she will triumph by audacity, he by courage.
The woman of the future will not only have learned much, she will also have forgotten much—especially the feminine as well as anti-feminine follies of the present time.
With her whole being she will desire the happiness of love. She will be chaste, not because she is cold, but because she is passionate. She will be reserved, not because she is bloodless but because she is full blooded. She will be soulful and therefore she will be sensuous; she will be proud and therefore she will be true. She will demand a great love, because she herself can give a still greater. The erotic problem, because of her refined idealism, will be extremely complicated and often almost insoluble. Therefore the happiness which she will give and experience will be richer, more profound and enduring than anything which up to the present time has been called happiness. Many traits which belong to the wife and mother of today will probably be lacking in the woman of the future. She will remain always the beloved, the sweetheart, and only so will she become a mother. She will devote her finest and strongest forces to the difficult and beautiful art of being at the same time the beloved and the mother; her religious cult will be to create the supreme happiness of life. Because she will know and value the psychical and physical conditions of health and beauty she will choose the father of her children with clearer vision and deeper feeling of responsibility than at present; she will bear and rear sound and beautiful beings and she herself will possess greater attraction and longer youth than the woman of the present. She will charm all her life, because she will always beautify existence. But she will please only because, at every age, she will be wholly herself; and her imperishable youth, her most perfect beauty, she will reveal solely to him whom she loves. She will know that the charm of the soul is the most profound; and out of the plenitude of her being she will create the eternal renewal of this charm, always unexpected and in infinitely nuanced expressions of her personal grace. By her mere presence she will remove the constraint of form and custom and will create varying expressions, elevated by her own nobility, for the family life, the public life and for society. She will probably speak less than the woman of the present time, but her silence and her smile will be more eloquent. She will give herself always directly and always with moderation, different and always constant, spontaneous and always exquisite. Her being will pour forth, brimming free and fresh, like the surge of the mountain torrent, but like this, dominated by a certain inner rhythm. However far she allows herself to go—in ecstasy of joy, in passion of tenderness, in delirium of happiness or in the frenzy of grief—yet she will never lose herself. She will be a multiplicity of women and yet always one, whether she plays and smiles or suffers and smiles; whether she beams with health or bleeds with mortal wounds; whether she be imbued with and radiate repose or nervous intensity, joy or tears, sun or night, coolness or ardor.