But exquisite women are even to-day exceptional. The Martha type rather than the Mary type predominates. This is due on one hand to decreasing piety, on the other hand to the kind of working and society life. Fifty years ago single women were often spiritually petrified, now more often they cannot succeed in settling into any form. Their existence, turned outwardly, widens their sphere of interest but makes their soul-life shallow. Restlessness is most unfavourable to the “development of the personality,” which was however the goal of the emancipation of woman. This development is delayed most of all perhaps by the lack of personal contact with other personalities, of immediate, intimate human connections. This can, from no point of view, be supplied by the society or club life in which single women are to-day absorbed.
CHAPTER IV
THE INFLUENCE OF THE WOMAN MOVEMENT UPON THE DAUGHTERS
As late as sixty or seventy years ago, the daughters of good families had still few points of contact with life outside the four walls of the home. From the hands of nurse-maids they went into those of the governess, and after confirmation, studies were at an end. If it was a cultured home then reading aloud or music was often practised, whereby it is true no “specific education” qualifying them for examinations was attained, but frequently a fine universal human culture. There was always employment in the house for the zeal for work. The great presses were filled with linen which was not infrequently spun and woven by the daughters; in the autumn they assembled for sausage-making and candle dipping; later, for Christmas baking and roasting; in summer endless rows of glasses of preserves were set in the store-room. Before Christmas, night after night, Christmas presents were made; after Christmas, night after night, they danced. At these balls those in outer respects uncomely, received a foretaste of that waiting which must fill their life for many long years: would the invitation to the dance—or the wooing respectively—come or not? Every man whose shadow merely fell upon the scene, was immediately considered from the point of view of a suitor. As the years went by the girl, who before twenty-five years of age was considered an “old maid,” saw how the glance of the father and the brothers became gloomy, yes, she could even hear how “unfortunate” she was. If such a daughter lived in a home poor in books—and most of them were—then she could not even procure a book she wished. For the daughters worked year in year out without wages, in case they did not receive meagrely doled out pin-money which only through great ingenuity sufficed for their toilette. All year long there were christenings and birthday celebrations; in summer games were played, where it was possible riding parties arranged, in winter sleighing parties were organised. Other physical exercise was considered superfluous. The young girls were averse to going to a neighbouring estate if it lay a mile away; and during the week to take a long walk for pleasure or sit down with a book, which had been borrowed, would be considered simply as idling away one’s time. In summer a cold bath was permissible—a warm bath was used only in cases of sickness—but swimming was considered so unwomanly, that whoever had learned it must keep it secret. Rowing, tobogganing and skating were, even if permitted in the country, yet half in discredit as “masculine.”
When grandfather related an heroic deed of some ancestress whose proud countenance shone out among the family portraits, then the daughter of such a family must have asked herself why this deed was lauded while everything “manly” was forbidden her.
The days and years went by at the embroidery frame or netting needles, amid continuous chatter about the family and neighbours, amid eternal friction and in disputing back and forth over mere trifles. The confined nervous force sought an outlet, and in an existence where each one—according to the first paragraph of family rights—interfered in the greatest as in the smallest concerns of all the others, there was always plenty of material about which to become irritated and excited.
In the country, life was, however, fuller and fresher than in the city where the young girl had less to do and never dared go out alone; yes, where a walk was considered so superfluous, that the mother of the great Swedish feminist Fredrika Bremer advised her daughters to jump up and down behind a chair when they insisted that they needed exercise!
The relation to the parents, even if the principle of unswerving and mute obedience was not wholly carried out, was ordinarily a reverential alienation. Neither side knew the inner life of the other. The temperament of the mother determined the everyday domestic comforts, the will of the father the external occurrences of life, from the trip to the ball to marriage. The daughter whose inclination corresponded with the will of the father considered herself fortunate. The one married against her will wept, but obeyed. As an almost fabulous occurrence it was related of one or another girl that she dared to say “No” before the marriage altar; cases were not unusual in which daughters received a box on the ear and were confined to their room until they accepted the bridegroom whom the father had chosen. Even if a mother, moved by the recollections of her own youth, attempted to support a daughter it rarely succeeded. For the power of the father rested quite as heavily upon the wife. But the worst however was to water myrtle year after year, without ever being able to cut it for a bridal wreath. Even she, who in her heart loved another, found it therefore often wisest to give her consent to an acceptable suitor. Only the one whose dowry was valued at a “ton of gold”—or who also was a celebrated beauty—could run the risk of declining a courtship; yes, she could permit herself to occasion it only to decline it. The more suitors she could recount, the prouder she was; such a beauty even embroidered around her bridal gown the monograms of all her earlier wooers.
The unmarried remained behind in an environment where the idea prevailed that “woman’s politics are her toilettes, her republic is her household and literature belongs to her trinkets.” The talented daughter sewed the fine starched shirts in which her stupid brother went to the academy and sighed therewith: “Ah, if one only were a man.”
When the income of the house was small, she increased it perhaps by embroidery, sold in deepest secrecy; for it was a disgrace for a girl of good family to work for money. For her rebellious thoughts she had perhaps a girl friend to whom she could pour out her heart—or a sister. But it often fared with sisters growing old together, just as it must fare with North-pole explorers wintering together, that those holding together of necessity finally loathe one another from the bottom of their hearts. And yet the sisters were most fortunate who could grow old and die in their childhood home and were not compelled to become old household fixtures in the home of relatives.