The Woman Movement

by Ellen Key

INTRODUCTION

The first “woman movement” was Eve’s gesture when she reached for the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge—a movement symbolic of the entire subsequent woman’s movement of the world. For the will to pass beyond established bounds has constantly been the motive of her conscious as well as of her subconscious quest. Every generation has called this transgression, this passing beyond the bounds, a “fall of man,” the “original sin,” a crime against God’s express command, a crime against the nature of woman as prescribed for her for all time.

And yet from the beginning women have appeared who have passed far beyond the established boundaries set for their sex by their era and upheld by their own people. They have demonstrated that limitations thus prescribed do not always coincide with what is considered by the majority to be the “nature” of woman. At one time a woman has manifested the “masculine” characteristics of a ruler or has performed a “masculine” deed; at another time she has distinguished herself in “masculine” learning or art, or again has dared to love without the permission of law and custom. In a word the individual woman, when her head or her heart was strong enough, has always shown the possibilities of the development of personal power. But she has had in that effort only her own strength and her own will upon which to rely; she has neither been urged on by the spirit of her time (Zeitgeist) nor been emulated by the masses. Exceptional women have sometimes been glorified by their contemporaries and by posterity as “wonders of nature”; sometimes been cited as “warning examples.” Seen in connection with the world’s woman movement all these instances, where a bond was broken by woman’s power of mind or creative gift, by a heart or a conscience, are parts of what can be called the “prehistoric” woman movement. This movement for personal freedom formed no step in that phase of the development which possesses a conscious purpose, but was merely sporadic. Even so the participation was long nameless which women took in the great struggles for freedom where, without consideration for the “nature” of woman, they dared bleed upon the arena and scaffold, ascend the pyre, and be raised upon the gibbet. Very rarely did these women martyrs alter immediately men’s—or even women’s—conception of woman’s “being.” But just as many perfumes are dissipated only after centuries, so there are also deeds whose indirect results persist through centuries.

Most significant, however, upon the whole in the “prehistoric” woman movement, are innumerable women whose souls found expression only in the strong, quiet acts of every day life but yet remained living and growing. As a reason for the “enslavement” of woman by man, the primitive division of labour is still occasionally cited. This division of labour made war and the chase man’s task and so developed in him courage, energy, and daring, while the woman remained the “beast of burden.” But we forget that, in this labour arrangement, the handicraft and husbandry which woman practised at that time made her, to perhaps a higher degree than man, the conservator of civilisation and probably developed her psychic power in more comprehensive manner than his.

Even after this division of labour ceased there remained—and remain still in innumerable country households—in and through many of the important and difficult tasks of the mother of the house, numerous possibilities for spiritual development. And exactly in this respect industrial work robs the woman of much.

By the side of these innumerable nameless women who, century after century, in and through the material work of culture which they performed, increased their psychic power, we must remember all the unnamed women who with flower-like quiet mien turned their souls to the light.

Antique sepulchres and Tanagra figures tell us more about the harmonious, refined corporeality of the Hellenic woman than the famous statues of Aphrodite or Athena. In like manner it is not the illustrious but the nameless women who most clearly reveal the will of the woman soul, in antiquity, for light and life.

Numbers of Greek women were disciples of the philosophers, some even were their inspiration. Generally courtesans, these women represented the “emancipation” of that time from the servile condition of the legitimate married women and also showed that women already longed to share in the interests of men and to acquire their culture. History has preserved also words and deeds of wives and mothers of the past which show that these also at times attained “masculine” greatness of soul and civic virtue. Pythias and Sibyls, Vestals and Valas, are other witnesses that the power of woman’s soul was active and recognised long before Christianity. Even among the purely primitive races there were found—and are found—cases in which woman in power and rights was placed, not only on an equality with man, but even above him. And if, on the one hand, the rigid exactions which men from the earliest time have fixed upon the wife’s fidelity—while they themselves had full freedom for promiscuity—show that the wife was considered as the property of the husband, so, on the other hand, this very conception was a means of elevating and refining the soul life of woman. For the self-control which she had to impose upon herself deepened her feeling for a devotion which embraced only one, the man to whom she belonged. Nothing would be more superficial than to estimate the real position of woman, among any special people, only by what we know of their laws. It is as if one, in a few centuries from now, should judge the actual position of the modern European wife by referring it to the wretched marriage laws which now obtain. They forget the deep gulf between law and custom who declare that marriage devotion, veneration for the sanctity of the home, esteem for the spiritual being of the wife first arose as a result of Christianity.

It is significant enough for the freeing of woman that Jesus raised the personal worth of all mankind through His teaching that—whoever or whatever the person in outer respects may be—every soul possesses an eternal value comprised, as it were, in God’s love; significant enough that Jesus Himself, because of this point of view, treated every woman, even the sinner, with kindness and respect. Because of the increasing uncertainty concerning the real ideals of Jesus, one is compelled to assume that—just as Veronica’s handkerchief preserved the imprint of Jesus’ outer image—the manner of life of the oldest Christian communities has preserved the imprint of His teaching. It is significant of their doctrines that in these communities women and men stood side by side in the same faith, in the same hope, in the same exercise of love, and in the same martyrdom. Here was “neither man nor woman,” but all were one in the hope of the speedy second coming of Jesus to establish God’s Kingdom.

But the more this hope faded, the more the Pagan-Jewish conception of woman again made itself felt. It is true the Church sought to place man and woman on an equality in regard to certain marriage duties and rights; to uphold on both sides the sanctity of marriage; to protect women and children against despotism. It is true the Church strove to counteract crude sensuality, utilising, among other things, an emphasis of celibacy as the expression of the highest spirituality.