The love of Romanticism, which has been caricatured to the extent that it signified only moonshine, ecstasy, sonnets, and wife barter, had its real essence in the desire for completeness of soul in love. This was, in a new form, the ideal of the courts of love. But since completeness of soul means that all the powers of the soul can freely and fully penetrate and elevate one another, so the first requisite for that soulful love was that woman’s thinking as well as her feeling, her imagination as well as her will, her desire for power, as well as her conscience, be freed from the shackles imposed upon them from without, in order to be strengthened and purified. The second stipulation was that man’s inner, spiritual life be freed from the deteriorating results of the prerogatives and prejudices accorded to and maintained by his sex.
A new ideal in the relationship between husband and wife, between mother and child; the demand of the feminine individuality for the right to free cultivation of her powers and to self-direction; the need of new fields for this exercise of her power after industrialism began to usurp one branch of domestic work after another—these are the fundamental reasons for what is called the middle-class woman movement. The middle-class woman—because of the increasing surplus of women, because of the continually greater variety of economic conditions and the decrease in marriage for this and other reasons—was to an ever greater extent constrained to self-maintenance. Thus the economic reason for the woman movement, not only in the labouring class but also in the middle class, became the most effective influence operating in the widest circles, although the reasons mentioned previously were the first and deepest causes.
And herewith we stand at the beginning of the woman movement, become conscious of its purpose.
But this movement would be a stream without sources if the “anonymous” movements indicated here with the greatest brevity had not preceded, if in the grey morning of time the endless procession had not begun in which women now nameless for us walked at the head, each with an amphoræ upon her shoulder—amphoræ which they filled at any fountain of life. Before these nameless women vanished on the horizon, each, like a water nymph of antiquity, lowered the brim of her urn to the earth, which thus was traversed by innumerable interlacing rills. And all these—even if by the most circuitous route—have augmented by some drops the mighty stream now called the woman movement.
CHAPTER I
THE EXTERNAL RESULTS OF THE WOMAN MOVEMENT
The history of the woman movement, conscious of its purpose, does not fall within the compass of this book. But as foundation for later judgments, it is necessary to take a short retrospective glance over the essential results which the woman movement has attained in the struggle for woman’s equality with man in the right to general culture, professional education, and work, as well as in the sphere of family and of civil status. These several demands for equality were voiced, as early as 1848, in a powerful and man-indicting plea by the American women in their “Declaration of Sentiments.” But in 1905 the program for Germany’s “Allgemein Frauenverein,” as well as many both conservative and radical resolutions for women congresses in different countries, show how far removed Europe and, in many respects, America also, still are from the desires expressed in the year 1848.
If the humble utterance of women, “We can with justice demand nothing of life except a work and a duty,” be conclusive, then life has already conceded to the demands of woman in rich measure. The woman movement and the self-interest of the employers have made accessible to her a number of new fields of labour, without mentioning those which fifty years ago were the only ones “proper” for women of the middle class—those of teacher, lady companion, and “lady’s help.” The woman movement and man’s increasing recognition of woman’s need of general education and professional qualification have created a large number of educational institutions. But in regard to the right of work, the acquisitions are but insignificant if this right be defined as the opportunity for that work which one prefers and for which one is best fitted. Women have now, for example, in many countries the right to pass the same examinations as men, but in many cases not the right to the offices which these examinations open to men. The profession to which women have found a comparatively easy entrance, that of physician, is widely extended among women in Europe as well as in America. That a dwelling was denied to the first woman physician because her profession was considered “improper” for a woman, sounds now like a fable. Everywhere now are women nurses, teachers of gymnastics, dentists, apothecaries, and midwives. In America there are even many women ministers and it sounds likewise wholly fabulous to say that the first of these was literally stoned. Women judges also have been appointed in America. In Europe there are none to my knowledge and no women preachers. And yet the woman pastor would often be, especially for women and children, a better minister than the clergyman; for them also the woman judge might often surpass the man in penetration and understanding. The profession of law, open to women in many countries, is as yet little practised by them in Europe. And yet as advocate, police officer, and prison attendant, the female official would be of special service for her own sex as well as for children and young people of both sexes. But in every field where the living reality of flesh and blood has to be compressed into legal paragraphs, mankind must be more or less mistreated. And since even masculine jurists of feeling suffer under this conviction, the reason for the fact that this career, in which woman could be of infinitely great service to humanity, has thus far attracted her little, may be sought in feminine sensitiveness.
All the more numerous are the women who have devoted themselves to the task most akin to motherhood, the profession of teacher. Unfortunately not always the inner call but the prestige of the position has determined the choice. Millions of women are now employed as teachers in all possible types of schools, from kindergartens to training schools, from infant schools to boys’ colleges. Even in universities, although in Europe very rarely it is true, women occupy chairs of learning. In the field of popular education, women are zealously active as lecturers, librarians, leaders of evening classes, and in similar work.
With every decade, woman’s powers have attained their right more fully and in fields where it now seems incredible that men could, and still partly do, insist upon getting along without them. I refer to the associations and institutions connected with prison supervision and reformatories; with schools and children’s homes; care of the poor and the sick; health and factory inspection. Slowly but surely the woman movement has prepared a place here for the mother of society beside the father of society who in these domains is often very awkward or quite helpless. Alone, or together with men, women have organised milk distribution and crèches, housekeeping schools, school food-kitchens, people’s food-kitchens, people’s polyclinics, sanitariums and rest-homes, vacation colonies, homes for sick and neglected children, etc. Many kinds of homes for working women, old people’s homes, rescue homes, institutions for the protection of mothers and children, employment bureaus, legal redress, and other forms of social relief are connected, indirectly if not directly, with the woman movement. Great women agitators on their part set thousands of women into action, as for example, Harriet Beecher Stowe, agitating against negro slavery, Josephine Butler against prostitution, Frances Willard against intemperance, and Bertha von Suttner against war.
And yet in spite of the fabulous amount of time, strength, and money which the associations and organisations thus created have cost in donations of time and money, this social relief work is only the oil and wine of the Samaritan for the wounds of society. As long as brigand hands drag mothers and children into factories; as long as armies cost much more than schools; as long as dwelling conditions in the cities are for many people worse than those for domestic animals in the country; as long as alcohol and syphilis brand the new generation—so long woman’s devotion remains powerless.