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 24conceded 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 25women 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.

26with 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 27of 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.

and this conviction has urged women to transform their social work from an often injudicious “christian” compassion into an organised charity in order to anticipate and prevent need and to facilitate self-help. but also in this new phase of their philanthropic work many women of the middle class are arriving at an understanding of the necessity of a social reform in accordance with socialistic demands. a larger number of women join the suffragist movement, less owing to individual demands for rights than out of despair over the hopeless social work to which their feeling of solidarity still impels them. for without suffrage (this they experience every day) their work of relief is like seed sown in a morass.

a by-product of the social relief work is that many single women have found, in voluntary social work, an occupation and often also, in remunerative social work, a livelihood; in both cases through service in which certain feminine qualities can be of value.

yes, exactly in the above mentioned fields of 28work, which so often bring the modern woman in contact with the finest and most delicate as well as with the coarsest and hardest sides of life; which place her before conflicts of the most exceptional as well as of the most universally human kind—there woman has nothing new to give except her motherliness. that means protecting tenderness, gentle patience, glad readiness to help, the interest embracing each one in particular, the fine and quick vibration in contact with the feelings of others which we, in a word, call “tact.” if, however, a woman has not been endowed with motherliness, or has none remaining, then she reverts to impersonal devotion to duty, hard formalism, dry routine; then all the talk about the social significance of woman’s entrance into the field of medicine or jurisprudence or the ministry or social work remains only empty phrases. in all these spheres a good man is much more valuable than a hard woman. and that woman’s hands can be rough, woman’s eyes cold, woman’s soul base or cruel—this many suffering and crushed, sorrowing and sinful, small and defenceless have already experienced. if woman is to keep her superiority as the alleviator of the suffering of others, the protector of others, solicitous for the welfare of others, then she must not only acquire certain universal human qualities in which man is often superior to her; she must also carefully guard and cultivate the best capacities which her sex gained in and through the hundred thousand years’ activity as 29that half of mankind which created the home and reared the children.

although the woman movement has multiplied and extended the social relief work of woman in innumerable directions, still it has not yet opened to her the field in which formerly deaconesses, and much earlier still nuns, were engaged. but what is new as result of the woman movement is that more and more single cultured women now devote themselves to the occupations of governess, nurse, midwife, and kindred callings; as well as that more special training is demanded for these vocations to which women turned earlier with downright criminal carelessness.

simultaneously with the need of the middle-class woman for new fields of work, came the extraordinarily rapid development of commerce and business, which occasioned the need of new working forces. feminine honesty, orderliness, and devotion to duty—alas, also her modest demands of compensation—made the state as well as private employers favourably disposed to employ women in increasingly greater numbers in the different branches of commerce: in the post-office, railroads, telegraph, telephone, as also in banks, counting houses, agencies or stores, as secretaries, stenographers, and clerks. in cases where the wife or daughter was the husband’s or father’s assistant such work then received a personal interest, and what woman’s labour in this form can 30signify for national wealth can be seen in france especially. but as a rule no real joy in work could illuminate the days and years of the generation of women who in all these vocations have grown gray and at best have been pensioned. nevertheless, in these offices one always sees fresh faces bending over the desk to fade away in their turn.

lack of courage or means often deters the european woman from more independent business activity, and this in spite of increasing freedom to choose her occupation, in spite of brilliant examples of successful undertakings of women, in photography, hotel or boarding-house management, dress-making, etc. in america, on the contrary, there is no masculine occupation, from that of butcher and executioner to real estate speculator and stock-exchange gambler that women have not practised.

but while the women of the older generation were thankful if only they succeeded in obtaining “a work and a duty,” however monotonous and wearing it might be, the will of the younger generation for a pleasurable labour has fortunately increased. partly alone, partly co-operatively, women began to venture into the applied arts, handwork, farming, or kindred work. and since corresponding special training schools quickly arise to meet the awakening of the desire for a vocation, we can hope for good results for these, as yet rare, enterprising spirits. for special education is, in our time, the essential condition of 31success, especially in agriculture, where the women often succeeded without other help than their personal efficiency and the “farmer’s customary practice.”

since i know america only at second hand i have no claim to a final judgment regarding the influence of business life and modern methods of production upon the soul life of woman. in the women who have succeeded in securing affluence through commercial life one finds probably the same antichristian effects of this life as among men. recently in america a number of men and women endeavoured to live for fourteen days, as christ would have lived. the decision of most of those who were engaged in business life was that either they must cease to follow in the footsteps of christ—or must resign their positions. and since, with due consideration for the number of woman employers in america, many of these experiences must surely have been made under feminine supervision, the experiment does not lack a certain significance for the forming of a judgment in the direction referred to.

the zeal of women’s rights advocates to open to women all of man’s fields of labour, and not only this but to prove that these fields are as well adapted to woman as man—this zeal has unfortunately had as result that the woman movement has turned the aptitude of many women in a wrong direction and has fettered a great amount of woman’s misused working power to thankless or 32galling tasks. but, on the other hand, how the woman movement has elevated woman’s work, since it has raised the standard of qualification in many fields and increased the feeling of responsibility in all! how it has increased the honour of work and the capacity for organisation, developed the judgment, stimulated the will power, strengthened the courage! it has awakened innumerable slumbering talents, given freedom of action to innumerable shackled powers. and thus it has transformed hosts of women of the upper class, formerly the most useless burden of earth, into productive members of society, instead of mere consumers; made them self-supporting instead of dependent, joyful instead of weary of life.

the woman movement of the lower classes is socialistic. it has increased in extent and significance in the same measure in which the working woman has given up farming, housework, and domestic service for industry.

this woman movement also worked in two directions. the older program reads: “full equality of woman with man.” in the “state of the future” both sexes shall have the same duty of work and the same protection of work, while the children are reared in state institutions.

the movement in the other direction purposes to win back the wife to the husband, the mother to the children, and, thereby, the home to all. 33the old or right wing of the middle-class woman movement, as well as the older direction of socialism just mentioned, still uphold, with arguments of the old liberalism, the “individual freedom” of the working woman against all protecting “exceptional laws.” increasing numbers of the more radical—that means in this connection more social—feminists of the upper class, however, stand side by side with the less dogmatic trend of socialism in its supreme struggle for the protection of the mother.

in the socialistic woman movement, both efforts for freedom were interwoven—that of the working men and that of women—checked during the french revolution but soon after revived as the two great forces of the new century. in this intertwining of the woman question with the labour question is found the explanation of the fact that socialists characterise the woman question as an economic question solely; while in reality the woman question, historically, manifestly began as an advocacy of the human right and worth of woman; and that too before any great industry appeared on the horizon. as long as the man was the one who, outside the home, was producer and provider, and the woman the one who, within the home, managed and perfected the raw material, no economic woman question could arise, but on the other hand exactly a question of woman’s rights. for, as some writers demonstrated, as early as the 18th century it was absurd, if woman’s 34work in the home was so valuable and so faithfully performed, that it should not secure in consequence corresponding rights. and exactly because the middle-class woman movement tried to uphold and defend the right and the freedom of women in the compass of the old society, this movement became, and must still often be, a struggle of women against men. the socialistic woman movement is on the other hand merely a factor in a joint struggle of men and women against the old society and for a new condition. the struggle here cannot be sex against sex, but class against class. each of these woman movements has been partly right, each has partly misunderstood the other. only in recent times has a convergence between the middle class and the socialistic woman movements been accomplished for the attainment of a number of common ends; for example, the protection of the mother, mentioned above, and especially the franchise. this convergence has dissolved the prejudice on both sides. in both quarters they begin to understand the power and aim of the other movement.

socialism and the woman movement are two mighty streams which drag along with them great parts of the firm formations which they touch. but if one wishes to be just toward both, one must not forget that in this way new lands are created.

the socialistic women on their part, as speakers, agitators, journalists, members of special associations, 35have stood in rank and file beside the men as true comrades, and the middle-class women have much to learn from the feeling of solidarity of the women socialists. the masculine comrades have not always in practice substantiated the principle of equality, for even the socialist is first man and then comrade; but in theory he has generally supported it.

through socialism, feminism has penetrated to the masses. what the middle-class woman movement would have needed another century to effect, socialism has accomplished in a few decades. nothing shows better than its fear of socialists how blindly prejudiced was the right wing of middle-class feminism. and nothing so clearly elucidates in what stage of feminism the upper-class movement was than its obstinate adherence to “the principle of personal freedom” in face of the atrocious actual conditions which resulted from the “freedom of work” of the women factory hands.

i will here recall only in brief the progress of the economic woman movement in the class of factory workers. when machines transformed the whole method of production and a host of women no longer found sufficient occupation in the home, while at the same time the possibilities of marriage decreased because of the surplus of women and also for other reasons, the middle-class women looked about them for new fields of labour. the great industries in return looked about them for more “hands.” and since, with the machine, 36female hands were quite as serviceable as male—with a new machine it was possible to replace thirty men with one woman—and since in addition they were cheaper, then began that exodus of women from the home into the factory, the results of which we are now experiencing.

when the mother is absent from the home, then there is lacking the cohering, supervising, warming force, and the home deteriorates and falls to pieces; the children are neglected, the husband suffers; the street takes possession of the children, the alehouse of the men. moreover, the women work often for starvation wages, whereby less comes into the home than is lost by the absence and incapacity of the mother. in the middle classes daughters and wives, entirely or partly supported in the home, could be satisfied with smaller wages and have thus become the competitors of men and women wholly self-supporting. for the same reason wives working in these industries have often become the competitors of men, children again the competitors of women, and married women the competitors of unmarried.

in woman, so long secluded in the sphere of the family, the social feeling of solidarity has been very slowly awakened. therefore, organisation which could prevent the competition just mentioned has only in the last decade made great progress everywhere among working women. in the middle-class vocations this is almost entirely lacking. among the working women slowness of 37organisation is natural, for the more wretched their position was, the more difficult was it for them to organise. but among middle-class women the reason was partly their individualism, partly their anti-socialism, partly the lack of feeling of solidarity just referred to.

home work for profit and pleasure in one’s own family or in service of the applied arts has become a means for the “sweat system,” the facts of which belong to the darkest side of modern working life. these facts alone would be sufficient to prove that working women have little to gain from the luxury of the rich, an assertion with which luxury often vindicates itself. there is still for the women working at home as well as for the women working in the factory, beside their professional work, also the duty of caring for the children and managing the home. however insufficient this may be yet it still claims a great part of their already meagre leisure; and the more tender and conscientious the mothers are, the more they wear themselves out, and the sooner must society, after night-watching, lack of light and hunger have ruined them, maintain them as infirm or paupers. the life of these women passed in the factory often from childhood has made them moreover, generation after generation, more unfitted for household work. what does it profit to attempt to remedy the evil by housekeeping schools and instruction in the care of children? for where time and strength are lacking the home has lost its right.

38what can be expected of women who three or four days after confinement must again stand at the machine, who are compelled to leave their children behind them, shut in at home, exposed to all conceivable accidents? what can be expected of mothers, who have become mothers against their will,—mothers of children, who because of the conditions of their parents’ work have become scrofulous, rickety, idiotic—children who contract degeneration of the liver because the harassed, ignorant mother quieted them with brandy, ill-treated them,—herself a physical and psychic ruin who spreads destruction about her!

the feminists are accustomed to rage over the custom which formerly condemned the indian widows to be burned upon the funeral pyre—a custom which is only an innocent sport in comparison with the woman slavery which europe has even brought to a system and which the woman movement long ignored.

to these general facts, which apply also to women employed in hard agricultural labour, there is also added an entirely new series of evils associated with occupations dangerous to health—for example those in which lead, quicksilver, phosphorus or tobacco poison the workers,[2] or those branches of work where inhaling dust at the weaving loom or in spinning, breathing gas and coal smoke, exposed to heat, smoke and damp, they 39contract tuberculosis and other diseases; to say nothing of the physical and moral misery in which miners and stevedores live. but the worst begins only when the women are to become mothers. either the embryo is killed by an abortion, intentional or caused by the occupation; or it comes into the world dead or sick or crippled; or it dies in the first weeks or wastes away under artificial nourishment—in england for example only one out of eight children is nursed. the mothers either cannot or will not. next to the labour conditions, alcohol plays the greatest part in this indirect massacre of infants.

if one turns from the women engaged in industrial work to the servant class, then female drudgery reaches perhaps its height among the girls employed in bars, cafés, and similar establishments. what physical and psychic results this work entails can be divined from the fact that, in england, half of all women suicides are such waitresses under 30 years of age. that family servant girls are allowed to sleep in closets and to work far beyond the present customary factory time; that in the class of saleswomen, especially in cigar shops, the longest working hours together with the most paltry starvation wages are found—all this, as every one knows, is the fundamental reason why the path is so short from all these occupations to the lowest—to prostitution. the servant girl corrupted by the master of the house, the half-starved, overworked shop girl, the night-watching 40cigar worker, and many, many others are found here as sacrifices of a shameless exploitation. herewith we stand before that “woman question” in which both elementary instincts have united for that captivity of woman from which the woman movement has found no means of emancipation; against which the means sought in these and other quarters prove fruitless. for only a radical transformation of society and sexual ethics can here provide a remedy.

every one in face of these facts, touched upon thus superficially, must be astounded that women could oppose laws for the protection of women. fortunately these progress-impeding emancipation women had no influence when, in england and other countries, certain night work began to be prohibited to women, their working hours limited, certain employments barred out, and a time of rest assured to the woman recently confined. still very small steps only, but in the right direction. at the same time the organisation of working women advances so that by labour unions and strikes here and there they have succeeded in enforcing better wages, shorter working hours, and better labour conditions. and so long as the woman movement of the upper classes has no solidarity with that of the lower, the female factory inspector can accomplish very little, as a result of the fear of the working women to give facts and 41the adroitness of the employers in veiling these. but if women of the upper class begin to compete with the slave-driving, sweat-system employers through well-organised co-operative enterprises, especially for the revival of artistic handwork, whereby a profitable work is made for mothers at home under good working conditions; and if they boycott all shops where the working hours of the women exceed the due measure, while their wages are below the standard; then the woman movement would be able to hasten certain reforms in the field of industry, just as so many mistresses of girls’ private schools have hastened the reform of public schools: they simply availed themselves of the improvements arising from feminine initiative.

the married woman as family provider beside the man, often also in place of the man, but always however subservient to the man’s dominion—this is the worst form of woman slavery our time has created. the woman movement purposes indeed to make the wife “of age,” in every respect, and free from the husband’s guardianship. but within the woman movement all are not yet entirely agreed that the work of the mother outside the home in and for itself is an evil. attempts are indeed being made to alter the conditions which are most to blame for the deterioration of mothers and children. but a large faction in the woman movement 42wishes still, as was said, to cling to the immediately remunerative work of the mother and remedy the resulting lack of home by social institutions for care of children, housekeeping, etc.

on this side, the following arguments are heard: woman becomes free only when she can wholly support herself and can devote herself to her work unhampered by duties toward husband and children; only through the reciprocal social obligation of work and the complete individual freedom of both sexes can the present conflicts between the labour of man and woman, between individual happiness and the common weal, finally cease.

like every canalisation or drainage of the mighty river system of the life of human feeling, this program is direct and conclusive. one may easily understand that masculine brains, dominated by a passion for logic, could devise it; but if we hear it advocated by multitudes of women, then we recognise how harassed by the fourfold burden of family provider, child bearer, child educator, and housekeeper the poor women must be who can smilingly assent to the foregoing picture of the future.

and yet there is another possible ideal of the future which can be realised as soon as production is determined, no longer by private capitalistic interests, but by social-political interests. women will then be employed in industrial fields of work where their powers are as productive as possible with the least possible loss in time and strength; 43above all in those fields where the work requires no long preparation and the dexterity does not suffer by interruptions. before the years in which the occupation is motherhood, and after these years, woman can still be always remunerated by an economic wage; during the years on the contrary in which motherhood is the vocation, she can be remunerated by the state. it is only necessary that women and men will a new order whereby in the future we attain the following conditions:

a society, in which the welfare of the new generation is the centre to which all social-political plans, at heart, are aiming.

children born of parents whose souls and bodies are qualified and prepared for a worthy parenthood and who can thus create for their children sound and beautiful conditions of life.

mothers won back to the husbands, the children, the homes, but under such circumstances that as free human personalities they perform the most important work of society: the bearing and rearing of children.

fathers with time and leisure to share with the mothers the task of education and to share with them and the children the joys of the home life, as well as of the remainder of existence.

this ideal of the future state takes in my imagination the form of a varied italian garden with a wide outlook upon the great sea. the other ideal of the future, on the contrary, is to me like a coal mine wherein all spiritual and social 44vegetation is petrified so that it now serves only as motive-power for machines.

nothing more effectively proves how rife with reactions—and for that reason how hidden—is the power of development, than to realise that the unorganized, inorganic socialistic ideal of the future, just mentioned, is the logical sequence of the woman movement if one draws the extreme conclusion from its fundamental idea—the right of woman to individual, free development of her powers. it is consistent historically that in america, where the movement for the right and freedom of woman has been most widely successful, many middle-class women have resolutely drawn these extreme conclusions of emancipation. quite as psychologically logical is it, that at a time when the uncomplicated soul life and life demands of the masses still form the most important factors in the shaping of the ideal of the future, the socialistic women, from their different point of view, have arrived at like ideals. but fortunately there are in women, as in the masses, still great tracts of “new ground” where new soul conditions will germinate, and in due time, new ideals will flower. groups of men can at times forget mankind in dwelling upon themselves. but mankind in its entirety has never yet lost the instinct for the conditions of self-preservation and the higher development of the race. i will come back later to the 45psychological phase of the question. i touch upon it here only as the social program of the future.

a new field which the woman movement has opened up to woman is the scientific field. for the fact that as early as the renaissance some italian women occupied chairs of academic instruction, that in the 17th and 18th centuries some women devoted themselves seriously to classic studies or the exact sciences—all that was only exceptional. and the women who since the beginning of the woman movement have distinguished themselves by great services in science are still exceptional. but in many places, sometimes as assistants of their husbands or of other men, women now perform good scientific work in different lines. many women are also active in the sphere of invention, without a single woman’s name having been thus far connected with an epoch-making invention.

especially where constructive ability is necessary, women have as yet not been eminent; they have created neither a philosophical system nor a new religion, neither a great musical work nor a monumental building, neither a classic drama nor an epic. on the other hand, the exact sciences, which would be considered a priori as little adapted to women, for example mathematics, astronomy, and physics, are exactly those in which thus far they have most distinguished 46themselves. this contains a warning against too precipitate conclusions about the intellectual life of woman. not until several generations of women—with the same privileges of education as man, with the same encouragement from home and society—have exercised their faculty for discovery and their inventive and creative faculties can we really know whether the present inferiority of woman in this respect is a provision of nature or not; whether her genius was only hampered in its expression or whether, as i believe, it is ordinarily of a different kind from that of man.

in art there are several fields which the woman movement did not need to open for the first time to woman: dramatic art, music, and the dance. indirectly, however, the woman movement has transformed the position of women occupied in these lines by increasing the respect for all good work of woman and raising the requirements for woman’s education in general. the woman movement has also exercised an immediate influence upon certain artists of the present time. thus eleanora duse said to me that her most cherished desire has been to represent and interpret the new types of women, although the dramatists of to-day have rarely given her the material she desired wherewith to create characters by which she could reveal the soul of the new woman and elevate man’s, as well as woman’s own, ideal of woman.

in the dance, women have been, especially in 47america, creative in connection with its forms and have been thereby also revelations of the new spiritual life of woman which has found expression in these forms. great women singers, through wagner’s operas and ballad-singing, have given voice to the primeval yearning of the woman soul, as that yearning now assumes form in the new woman. and in interpretations at the hands of great pianists or violinists, not one classic musical work failed to furnish similar revelations.

the very finest effects of the woman movement—mere shades of feeling which cannot be enumerated nor discussed—have reached our present time through lines, movement, rhythm, cadence, through the timbre of a voice, the gesture of a hand, the glance of an eye, the tone of a violin. and these effects have been secured without any disturbance of the receptivity by strife over the precedence of woman or of man. in other spheres, susceptibility to the effects of art creations by woman is still often dulled by this strife. in the above named fields, long before the beginning of the woman movement, conscious of its purpose, women without arguments have convinced the world of the complete equality of woman with man. and all these women, conquering through beauty in one form or another, have done more for the woman movement than it has done for them. certainly the woman movement both directly and indirectly has had its share in opening to women musical as well as other art 48academies and schools of applied arts, but academies have a doubtful value and the smaller the value, the more gifted the student. the new right has thus become dangerous to the independence of real gifts and, with all possibilities of education thus opened wide, there comes a temptation for fancied talents to pass beyond their bounds. this danger, as far as the plastic arts are concerned, has found more and more its counterpoise in the schools of applied art, by which many women have been directed to the decorative professions, from house and garden architecture to fashion designing and holiday decorations.

but in the field of the applied arts, as well as of the plastic arts and of music, the facility afforded by the modern conditions of training and of public careers has instigated many women, who before had exercised their little talent only for the pleasure of the home or society circles, to exhibit and appear publicly to the detriment both of the home circles and, alas, also of art!

the works of art by women, which humanity could not lose without really becoming poorer, have been created, thus far, neither in the sphere of music nor of plastic art; they all belong to literature. and this sphere the woman movement has not opened to woman; ever since the days of sappho and of corinna, women have attained fame as writers.

in letters and memoirs not originally designed 49for publication, next to that in the field of romance and the novel, occasionally also in the lyric, the feminine character has found thus far its fullest and finest expression. in all these fields women have produced works which have been placed by men, not it is true beside the greatest works of masculine genius in the same domain, yet beside eminent works of men. as intermediary of the works of others, woman has not in our time, as in the period of enlightenment or in the circle of goethe, her greatest significance through conversations and letters but through the printing-press. the modern woman, however, as essayist and biographer, as translator and collector, is a valuable intermediary of culture. she is also unfortunately a menace to culture, not so much because of the inferior works which she produces, for these, like the similar works of men, soon sink into oblivion. the real danger lies in the fact that women in great multitudes increase the number of those journalists who lack intellectual as well as ethical culture, which should be an imperative condition in that field of work. but this profession is now, on the contrary, the one into which the amateur may most easily force an entrance without special training and without professional reputation. the result is that men and women who lack both can pull down, in their journals, the real work and essential character of serious people, without the remotest conception or the faintest comprehension of either. on the other hand these cliques of coffee-house people 50crown one another as kings and queens—for a day! the press-breed carries on in leaflets its flirtation as well as its vengeance. the knife which the child of nature thrusts into a rival’s breast is now transformed into the pen with which the reviewer stabs a competitor’s latest work. in a word women now furnish to the press work, occasionally excellent, frequently mediocre, all too often worthless. their womanly characteristics make it feasible more frequently for them than for men to adopt more completely the rituals of the temple service of the deity of the press—the public. this “womanliness” evinces itself, especially, in the ability “to grip the fleeting moment by its fluttering locks” and also to anticipate when that moment’s locks are false and so the grasp prove profitless.

while hosts of women have turned to journalism, they are seldom found in the fields to which the woman movement should have directed them: in the field of sociological and psychological research. nearly all significant works upon the normal, the abnormal, the criminal psychic life of children, young people and women have been written by men. they have unfortunately treated the feminine spiritual life in “scientific” works also, in which the author dares speak of “woman” even though he knows nothing of her except what his own happy or unhappy experiences in a mother or sister, wife or sweetheart, have taught him.

the slight title of men to their “scientific 51method” when they venture upon the terra incognita which the soul of woman still is for them, explains why they extol, as “scientific,” works of women about women which are quite as superficial as those of men themselves. with a few exceptions, it is not the physiological-psychological books written by women about women which have really taught the present something new about womankind in general and the new woman in particular. no, in the form of romances, of lyrics or in voluntary confessions, woman has contributed the most valuable documents about her sex: on the one hand those which indicate the transformations which the woman movement has occasioned in woman’s nature, on the other hand those which demonstrate the extent to which her fundamental nature has remained unchanged, even though this elementary material exhibits many more facets in the modern woman than in the woman of any previous time; facets resulting from the manifold contacts and frictions with life to which woman now exposes herself or is exposed.

from a literary point of view, these books of confession have seldom a value which could be compared with that of the, in outer sense, objective, classic works which talented women writers of the present have produced. often, however, one of these confessions, in which the writer has candidly given her own history, has been of real literary value. but even when the works contain mendacities and self-extenuations, crass injustice 52toward men or toward other women, as revelations of the modern woman soul they are more valuable for the future than the clarified, artistically perfect works of women, mentioned above. for the truth about woman in the century of the woman is found only in the impassioned books in which the hard struggles for freedom, work, right, or fame are recited; or in those works impassioned in another way, in which the soul or the blood or both cry out their yearning, ever unappeased, in spite of freedom and work, right and fame. what we may to-day rightly protest against in these books is their recklessness which may in the future be regarded as their greatest value.

because, up to the present time, the most exquisite as well as the most horrifying women characters in literature have been created by men, many men think that they understand women better than women do themselves. and to this extent men are right—that women attain their most sublime heights and reach their deepest degradation in and through love. but aside from that, women have a much clearer insight and, for that reason, a much more intelligent idea of one another than man has of woman. when accordingly a woman speaks not only of herself but also of another woman—sometimes also of children—we feel already that “the eternal feminine” (das ewig-weibliche) in literature can create a feminine art, in the best meaning of the word. for the present we hope, and with good reason, that art as well as 53science will not appear as either masculine or feminine but reveal a complete human personality. but this does not mean that this personality has fused the masculine and feminine qualities into a common humanity and thus enervated it. no, it means that, in such a being, masculine and feminine traits exist side by side and assert themselves alternately or harmoniously in all their strength. in the rank of talent, one may find feminine men and masculine women; in that of genius, never. there each one guards fully and completely the character of his own sex in addition to the finest attributes of the other sex. the distinctively masculine or distinctively feminine attributes characterising an earlier culture epoch are on the contrary often lacking in these greatest men and women of their time. in other words they lack exactly those attributes, hyper-masculine or hyper-feminine, by which men and women, not abreast of the times in their development, please each other and the masses, in literature as well as in life.

in the woman-literature, directly evoked by the woman movement, we can read the whole gamut of the feminine nature, from the feminine in the highest sense to the feminine in the worst sense. this literature shows how unthinkingly and defenceless certain women have plunged into the struggle, how rationally and well equipped other women have fought it out. the impartiality of this judgment can be proven by the admission 54that in the first-named class i have not infrequently found adherents; in the latter class, opponents.

the woman movement itself, partly in lectures and in literary activity, partly by means of office-routine and work of organisation, has become a new field of labour for women. even in this field it is found that many are called but few are chosen. but when—except after defeat—was an army ever seen without baggage?

in the field of family right, the woman movement has achieved, directly and indirectly, great improvements in the legal position of the unmarried woman. the nearest proof is my own country. this has, within a period of from seventy to eighty years, granted to the sister the same right of inheritance as to the brother; declared the unmarried woman at her majority at the same age as man, a majority which was also expanded later through the suspension of the right of guardianship on the part of the husband, existing for married women. the marriageable age of woman was postponed to 17 years. gradually woman has been placed on an equality with man to carry on trade and industry; she has acquired the right to hold certain public offices, although many still remain closed to her. the married woman on the contrary is still always a minor; if no marriage settlement is made the husband has the right to dispose of the wife’s property; he has control of 55their common possessions; he can restrict her freedom of work; he has authority over the children. a few small progressive steps may nevertheless be pointed out: certain reinforcements of the effectiveness of the marriage contract; the right to her wages accorded to the wife; certain reforms in regard to the division of property and divorce; some improvements in the position of children born out of wedlock. in other countries also like reforms have been accomplished, directly, through masculine initiative; indirectly, through the influence of the woman movement. but everywhere family right is still founded upon the principles of paternal right, supremacy of the husband over the wife, indissolubility of marriage or solubility under greater or less difficulties.

in regard to citizenship i draw my examples also from the land i know best. in sweden, women have long since participated in the choice of pastor; for about fifty years they have possessed municipal franchise; later in certain cases they have attained also municipal eligibility, for example, to the school board, board of charities, and now finally to the town council. still others could be cited. in other countries women have sometimes more sometimes less civic right; only in a few countries have they won political franchise; in a single one, finland, also political eligibility.

in the sphere of family right, as well as civic right, the woman movement has then much more remaining to conquer than it has thus far won. 56but i am convinced that the little girls i see down below in the garden playing “mother and child” will possess all the rights due the wife, the mother, and the citizen.

the woman movement, in its present form, has accomplished its task if it has procured for every woman the legal right to develop and practise her individual characteristics unhindered because of her sex. but after this emancipation of the woman as a human being and a citizen, there remains her emancipation as a woman. and here no transformation of forms of thought and feeling, of manners and customs, attainable by any legal provisions or paragraphs, avail. the present woman movement has created and still continues to create the social conditions for this last emancipation. but it will not approve such far extending results of its own work. it desires the same rights but also the same duties for all women. if a single woman uses the freedom, which the woman movement has procured for her as a member of society, to fashion her individual life according to the deepest demands of her being, then the old guard trembles before the outcome of the battle for freedom in which it fought so valiantly.

but nothing is more certain than that the feminine personality, whether her innermost desire be spiritual creative instinct, erotic happiness, maternal bliss, or universal human goodness, will acquire ever new forms of expression: forms of expression which the once liberal, now more conservative feminists 57and the modern socialistic feminists partly do not divine and partly—divining—deplore! for the present even the “emancipated” woman follows as a rule the paths which social custom has marked out for her sex, as well as the cultural ideas which have been, thus far, those of man. but if, in the coming thousand years, a feminine culture shall really supplement the masculine, then this will be exactly in the measure in which women have the courage to create and to act as most feminists now do not even dare think. then it will be evident that all social movements of the present time, especially the woman movement and socialism, are only the work of the path finder for the masculine and feminine superman or, if you prefer the older expression, complete man.

like other “old guards,” the veterans of feminism will not surrender but will fall upon the field of battle. the little girls there below will one day celebrate their memory. for through their struggles the way became free for youth, the way which leads out to the wide sea where perhaps shipwreck awaits the one who ventures out into the darkness with her fragile skiff. but many will brave the voyage and bide their fate, strong, proud, and composed as the maiden in schwind’s wasserfahrt—that splendid symbol of the woman of the future.