SIX MODERN WOMEN

SIX
MODERN WOMEN

Psychological Sketches

BY
LAURA MARHOLM HANSSON

Translated from the German
BY
HERMIONE RAMSDEN

BOSTON
ROBERTS BROTHERS
1896

PREFACE

It is not my purpose to contribute to the study of woman’s intellectual life, or to discuss her capacity for artistic production, although these six women are in a manner representative of woman’s intellect and woman’s creative faculty. I have little to do with Marie Bashkirtseff’s pictures in the Luxembourg, Sonia Kovalevsky’s doctor’s degree and Prix Bordin, Anne Charlotte Edgren-Leffler’s stories and social dramas, Eleonora Duse’s success as a tragedian in both worlds, and with all that has made their names famous and is publicly known about them. There is only one point which I should like to emphasize in these six types of modern womanhood, and that is the manifestation of their womanly feelings. I want to show how it asserts itself in spite of everything,—in spite of the theories on which they built up their lives, in spite of the opinions of which they were the teachers, and in spite of the success which crowned their efforts, and bound them by stronger chains than might have been the case had their lives been passed in obscurity. They were out of harmony with themselves, suffering from a conflict which made its first appearance in the world when the “woman question” came to the fore, causing an unnatural breach between the needs of the intellect and the requirements of their womanly nature. Most of them succumbed in the struggle.