What was the reason? Why did she get none of that love which is rained down upon the most insignificant women in so lavish a manner by impetuous mankind?
“She was not in the least pretty, that is it,” reply her several women admirers.
But we women know well that it is not the prettiest women who are the most loved, and that, on the contrary, the most ardent love always falls to the share of those in whom men have something to excuse. Barbey d’Aurevilly, the greatest women’s poet, has told us so in his immortal lines.
“She was too old,—that is to say, she aged too early,”—say her women admirers, still anxious to find an explanation.
But that is ridiculous. Sonia Kovalevsky died at the age of forty, and that is the age when a Parisian grande mondaine is at the height of her popularity; and as for aging early—! A woman of genius does not grow old as quickly as a teacher in a girl’s school, and the fading tuberose which thrusts forth fresh blossoms has a far sweeter and more penetrating fragrance than her white knob-headed sisters.
“She asked too much,” asserts Fru Anne Charlotte Edgren-Leffler, Duchess of Cajanello, who was of the same age as Sonia, and married at the time when she died; and her entire book on Sonia is founded on the one argument, that she asked too much of love.
But how is it possible? Does not experience teach us that it is just the women who ask most who receive most? Always make fresh claims,—that is the motto of the majority of ladies in society, and with this solid principle to start from they have none of them failed.
“She had everything that a human being can desire,” said that worthy writer, Jonas Lie, in an after-dinner speech. “She had genius, fame, position, liberty, and she took the lead in the education of humanity. But when she had all this it seemed to her as nothing; she stretched out her hand like a little girl, and said, ‘Oh, do but give me also this orange.’”
It was kindly said, and also very true. Father Lie was the only person who understood Sonia, and saw that she remained a little girl all her life,—a woman who never reached her maturity. But, tell me, dear Father Lie, do you consider love to be worth no more than an orange?
No, these explanations will never satisfy us; they are far too shallow and simple. The true reason lies deeper; it is more a symptom of the time in which she lived than those who knew her will allow. Even so friendly and intelligent an exponent as Ellen Key, her second biographer, does not seem to be aware of the fact that, although Sonia is a typical woman of her time,—typical of the more earnest upholders of women’s rights, and the representative of the highest intellectual accomplishments to which women have attained,—she is also typical of that which the woman of this century loses in the struggle, and of that in which the woman of the future will be the gainer.