In marriage, the position of the one bound against his or her will was undignified, often desperate, but worst in the case of a woman. As a mother she could be wounded in her most vulnerable spot, and what was most outrageous of all, she could be made a mother against her will. One single unhappy marriage had shown me, like a sudden revelation, what marriage in countless cases is, and how far from free the position of woman still was.
But that woman should be oppressed in modern society, that the one-half of the human race could be legally deprived of their rights, revealed that justice in society, as it at present stood, was in a sorry state. In the relations between the strong and the weak, the rich and the poor, the same legalised disproportion would necessarily prevail as between man and woman.
My thought pierced down into the state of society that obtained and was praised so highly, and with ever less surprise and ever greater disquiet, found hollowness everywhere. And this called my will to battle, armed it for the fight.
VII.
From this time forth I began to ponder quite as much over Life as over Art, and to submit to criticism the conditions of existence in the same way as I had formerly done with Faith and Law.
In matters concerning Life, as in things concerning Art, I was not a predetermined Radical. There was a great deal of piety in my nature and I was of a collecting, retentive disposition. Only gradually, and step by step, was I led by my impressions, the incidents I encountered, and my development, to break with many a tradition to which I had clung to the last extremity.
It was in the spirit of the Aesthetics of the time, that, after having been engaged upon the Tragic Idea, I plunged into researches on the Comic, and by degrees, as the material ordered itself for me, I tried to write a doctor's thesis upon it, Abstract researches were regarded as much more valuable than historic investigation. In comic literature Aristophanes in particular delighted me, and I was thinking of letting my general definitions merge into a description of the greatness of the Greek comedian; but as the thread broke for me, I did not get farther than the theory of the Comic in general. It was not, like my previous treatise on the Tragic, treated under three headings, according to the Hegelian model, but written straight ahead, without any subdivision into sections.
Whilst working at this paper I was, of course, obliged constantly to consult the national comedies and lighter plays, till I knew them from cover to cover. Consequently, when Gotfred Rode, the poet, who was connected with a well-known educational establishment for girls, asked me whether I would care to give a course of public lectures for ladies, I chose as my subject The Danish Comedy. The lectures were attended in force. The subject was supremely innocent, and it was treated in quite a conservative manner. At that time I cherished a sincere admiration, with only slight reservations, for Heiberg, Hertz, Hostrup and many others as comic playwriters, and was not far short of attributing to their works an importance equal to those of Holberg. And yet I was unable to avoid giving offence. I had, it appears, about Heiberg's Klister and Malle, an inseparable betrothed couple, used what was, for that matter, an undoubtedly Kierkegaardian expression, viz., to beslobber a relation. This expression was repeated indignantly to the Headmistress, and the thoughtless lecturer was requested to call upon the Principal of the college. When, after a long wait, and little suspecting what was going to be said to me, I was received in audience, it appeared that I had been summoned to receive a polite but decided admonition against wounding the susceptibilities of my listeners by expressions which were not "good form," and when I, unconscious of wrongdoing, asked which expression she alluded to, the unfortunate word "beslobber" was alleged; my young hearers were not "'Arriets" for whom such expressions might be fitting.
I was not asked again to give lectures for young ladies.