Not infrequently this last fate was their portion because a father, a brother or a guardian out of personal, economical self-interest prevented their marriage, or a brother through debt or studies had defrauded them of their inheritance.
It was not the woman movement but the religious movement, beginning among the Northern peoples almost simultaneously with it, called in Sweden “Läseri” (“Reading”) that was the first spiritual emancipation for the old or young unmarried girls—likewise for wives who longed for a deeper content. Because they took seriously the Bible doctrine that one should disregard the commands of the family in order to follow Christ, the home gradually became accustomed to one of the feminine members’ going her own way. Often amid great struggles. For the “Reader” was more or less considered as insane; the father was ashamed of her, the mother mourned over her, the brothers laughed at her. But nothing could hinder those strong in their faith from following the inner voice. And so these women, without knowing it themselves, were a bridge to that emancipation of women to which they themselves later—Bible in hand—were often an obstacle.
The movement could not however be prevented. And now—how is it now in the family? Already the ten-year-old talks about what she is sometime going to be. Now, the sisters go with the brothers to school or to the academy and share their intellectual interests as well as their life of sport. Now, the fathers and mothers sit at home often alone, for the daughters belong to that host of self-supporting girls who can gratify the parents by short visits only. Alas, these visits are not always an unclouded joy. There are collisions between the old and the young often over seeming bagatelles. But a feather shows which way the wind blows and the parents observe that, in the spiritual being of the daughter, the wind blows from an entirely different direction from theirs. The daughter, on the other hand, thinks that perfect calm prevails in the being of her parents; she wishes to raise the dust. The mother pleads her cause in dry and offended manner, the daughter in superior and impetuous words. Accustomed to her freedom, she encounters again at home control over her commissions and omissions, attempts upon her privacy from which she had been freed by leaving home. And they separate again each with a sigh that they “have had so little of one another.” In other cases—when the parents have followed the times and the daughters understand that not only children but also parents must be educated with tenderness—then the visits to the parents’ home become on both sides elevating episodes in their lives. The daughters repose in the parental tenderness, which they have only now learned to value when they compare it with their customary loneliness. The parents confide to the daughter their cares which she sometimes can effectively lighten, and they revive with her spiritual interests which they themselves had to lay aside. Through her own working life the daughter has gained an entirely new respect for her parents. Through her independence of parental authority she has now gained a frankness, which makes a real interchange of ideas possible. They discover that they can have something reciprocal for one another. The father, who perhaps at first sighed when the young faces vanished out of the home, now admits that it would have been foolish if the whole troop of girls had continued here at home and so had stood there at his demise, empty-handed, without professional training. The mother, who had helped them persuade the father, smiles, when he insists that he “would not exchange his capable girls for boys.” And he is not at all afraid that the daughters could not marry if they would; he remembered indeed how his contemporaries declared that they “would never look at a girl student, a Blue stocking,” and yet so many of these were now happily married to—girl students.
Beside these results of the independence of the daughters which elevate life for all sides, there are opposite cases; when, for example, a single daughter without outer economic compulsion or inner personal necessity, impelled only by the current of the time, leaves a home where her contribution of work could be significant, in order to follow a vocation outside. The results are often of doubtful value, not only from a social point of view but also from that of the family and herself, when the daughter remains at home but carries on a work outside. This comes partly because they are contented with less pay and thus lower the wages of those who support themselves entirely; partly because they over-exert themselves. In those cases where several daughters can share with one another the domestic duties, no over-exertion results perhaps. But when a single daughter combines an exacting professional work with quite as exacting household duties, then she is exhausted by her double task; then she feels the burden, not the joy, of work. For all professional working girls who remain at home, have moreover in addition, even under the most favorable circumstances, the spiritual strain of turning from work back again to the gregarious demands of the home, as well as to the many different attractions and repulsions, antipathies and sympathies which determine the deviations in temperature of the home; the strain of respecting the sensibilities which must be spared or of paying attention to the domestic demands which must be refused, if the work is not to suffer from lack of rest and time for preparation. All this can be so nerve racking that the young girl is seized with an irresistible longing for a little home of her own, where she would be mistress of her leisure time, and could see her own friends—not alone those of her family,—where she could join those who held the same views, where she, in a word, would live her life according to the dictates of her personal demands. If she can, she often does this. For to-day young girls live to apply the principle of the woman movement—individualism. The older women’s rights advocates desired, it is true, that woman should be allowed to “develop her gifts,” but she should “administer” them for the benefit of others; they desired that she should receive new rights from law and custom, but that she should seek always in law and custom support and security for her action. The young women’s rights advocates, on the other hand, believe that their own growth, just as that of animals and trees, is intended above all for self-development, that in their own character the direction for their growth is specified, and that they have not the right to confine themselves by circumstances or subject themselves to influences by which they know they hinder the development of their powers, according to their individual natures. The more refined the feeling of personality becomes, the more exactly these young people understand how to choose what is essential for them and to repudiate what is a hindrance. But before they attain this certainty they evince often an unnecessary lack of consideration, and the family is often right when it speaks of the egoism of youth. They find no opportunity for helping father or mother nor for participation in the elders’ interests. The whole family is rarely assembled even at meal-time; the daughters as well as the sons rush off to lectures, work, sport, clubs. The mother who sees how occupied the daughters are has not the heart to add to their work or to thwart them in their pleasures; thus she allows the selfishness of the young creatures to increase to the point where she herself in indignation begins—seasonably and unseasonably—to react against it. The young girl answers her mother’s reproof then with the complaint that, “Mamma does not understand” her and that she is “behind her time.” Especially the young examination-champions distinguish themselves by their arrogance in the family as in the club, where they look down upon the older ladies who have not passed examinations just as they do upon their own mother.
It fares best in the families, and they are even now numerous, where the mother herself has studied or worked outside the home and therefore knows what domestic services she may or may not require; where she herself personally understands the intellectual occupation of the young people and has preserved her own youthfulness, so that she becomes not infrequently the real friend of her daughters and sons. If the mother, on the contrary, was one of the many who, at the beginning of the woman movement, sacrificed her own talent to the wishes of her family or the demands of the home, in spite of the possibilities for its development made accessible to her at that time, then she has often absolutely no comprehension of the egoism of her daughter. She herself had acted so entirely differently! Or she understands fully that in her daughters as well as in her sons she views the attainment of a new conception of life, with all its Storm and Stress, which the spring-times in the life of mankind bring with them—an attainment in which, to her sorrow, she could not take part in her youth.
At such spring-times youth is not, as the parents hoped, sunlight and the twittering of birds in the home; but March storms and April clouds. The parents feel themselves at first swept out, superfluous, disillusioned. They are angered but rejuvenated, thanks to all the new points of view that youth makes valid. Yes, father and mother sometimes could live through a second youth if their own contemporaries did not depress their buoyancy by their disapproving astonishment and the children by their cool rejection of the comradeship of their parents. But in spite of this twofold opposition, there are now fathers and mothers who are able to enjoy the riches of life quite as youthfully as and more deeply than their children; while the parents of earlier times, especially the mother, forever stagnated as early as forty. More and more frequently we find mothers who, like their daughters, lead a spiritually rich and emotional life, who have so preserved their physical youthfulness and who possess moreover through experience and self-culture so refined a soul-life, that, in regard to the impression they make, they are not infrequently the rivals of their daughters. They are already revelations of that type of woman which, in token of emancipation, has found the equilibrium between the old devoted ideal and the new self-assertive ideal. They view life from a height which gives them a survey also over the essential, in questions concerning their own children. Even if these become something other than the mothers wish, these mothers are so penetrated with the idea of individualism that they let the children follow their own course.
Modern fathers rarely find so happy a home as it once could be with a bevy of daughters always at hand. But they find the home richer in content, often also freer from petty dissensions. For in the measure in which each member of the family desires his right and his freedom, do all gradually learn to respect those of others. If the parents consider with dignity their right and their freedom, then a reciprocal consideration results after the boldness which youth evinces under the first influence of the intoxication of freedom. Youth, at first so proud and strong in their assurance of bringing new ideal values to life, begin themselves to experience how the world treats these; and what they once called their parents’ prejudice appears to them now often in a new light. Their self-assertion becomes a product of culture, out of a raw material. The manifestations of their individualism become continually more discreet, more controlled, but at the same time more essential and more effective. When then the young people have found their way and the parents endeavour to turn them aside to the main road—which they call the way of wisdom or of duty—then certainly and with right the young people put themselves on the defensive.
Even a devoted daughter cannot bring to the home to-day as undivided a heart as formerly. But this gift was earlier a matter of course, so to speak, a natural result of the conditions. But if to-day a girl sacrifices a talent to filial duty, then it is an infinitely greater personal sacrifice; a real choice. And if she does not make the sacrifice, it is not in the least always on the ground of egoism. It happens often in conviction that the unconditional demand of Christianity that the strong must have consideration for the weak, makes these latter often egoists and tyrants; that the strong, who are more significant for the whole, are thus rendered inefficient.
If a troop of athletic boys continually conformed to the level of the weakest, then all would remain upon a lower plane, and the weak find no incentive to seek their triumphs in another sphere.