We Women and Our Authors

	PAGE
We Women and our Authors	[1]
Gottfried Keller and Women	[23]
Paul Heyse and the Incommensurable	[61]
The Author in a Cul-de-sac (Ibsen)	[80]
The High Priest of Purity (Björnson)	[100]
The Women-haters, Tolstoy and Strindberg
I. Tolstoy	[132]
II. Strindberg	[146]
Maupassant and the “Fin de Siècle” Woman	[179]
Barbey D’Aurevilly on the Mystery of Woman	[197]
How do we Stand?	[212]

We German women are accustomed to look upon ourselves as an appendage to or a part of man. Up till now it has been the chief object and the pride of our existence to subordinate ourselves to him, and to look after his comforts. It is so no longer, or at any rate it is not as common as it used to be. Women have begun to ask: Who am I? and not: Whose am I? which proves that they are conscious of their individuality and wish to live their own lives. At present they are only helpless beginners filled with desires, needs and claims, which they themselves do not understand and which they would rather not admit. Their first longing is for outward independence, and in that they are not even original, as the economic conditions of the middle classes have long since forced women to exert themselves to the utmost in order that they may be self-supporting in part, if not entirely. And they are proud and happy when they have succeeded thus far, they fight for it in public and in private life, in the family, in Associations for Women’s Rights, in newspapers, and in books where the movement has advanced the furthest. They fight for the first and rudest basis of their independence, for the right to maintain themselves, which, while it is the lowest step on the way to freedom, is the one that gives them the first title to the possession and disposal of their own selves. It is by no means an aimless struggle, but it is a sad one, in which the woman only too often forfeits her most precious possession—her womanliness.

But there is something in the background, besides what a woman ventures for the sake of attaining her wishes and advancing her claims. Many women have not yet learned to express it, many consider it their duty to dispute it even to themselves, while some give way to the indistinct longing with fear and hesitation, and only a very few know what it is and welcome it with gladness and with the consciousness that through it their lives are being strengthened, and their souls and bodies beautified. Women have passed through a fresh development and have entered upon a new stage of their inner consciousness.

CONTENTS

We Women and our Authors