the following comparisons between the life of women, especially their spiritual life of about fifty years ago and their life as it has shaped itself under the influence of the woman movement, have been arranged in descending scale. they begin with that phase of women’s life in which this influence was most favourable from the point of view of life enhancement, namely with the life of unmarried women.

you will find to-day, among women seventy or eighty years of age, one or another type of that fine culture which the gifted single woman, in comfortable circumstances, could attain in the previous century. her home, especially if it was an estate in the country, became a cultural fireside which radiated light and heat for relatives and friends. the lesser gifted disseminated, each according to her nature, comfort or discomfort, yet could in extremity at least be sure of the homage of their future heirs. toward those dependent upon them, these women were sometimes 72kind, sometimes indifferent, sometimes hard: the feeling of social responsibility was an unknown idea to them. the penniless single women, on the contrary, were found either in one of the “respectable” positions which, however, brought with them a multitude of humiliations: as governess, companion, housekeeper—in germany also as maid of honour at one of the numerous small courts—or in some charitable institution for gentle folks, an asylum for pauvres honteuses; but most frequently in the corner of the home of a relative. this corner was at times the warmest and most confidential in the whole house, that corner which the children sought for stories and sweetmeats; the youth, to find an embrace in which he could pour forth his grief, an ear which listened to his most beautiful dreams. but it happened more frequently that the “aunt” looked upon as a “necessary evil” was in reality that very thing. humiliated and embittered, she became ingenious in making those about her suffer for her afflictions. before they became hopelessly old, the “aunts” were the laughing stock of the young through their efforts, in the eleventh hour, to reach the “peaceful haven of matrimony”; and they themselves looked with envious eyes upon the good fortune of the young. we meet the unmarried woman of that time at her best as trusty servant who shared the cares, the joys, and the sorrows of the family and, in her garret chamber, of which she could be certain to the day of 73her death, she looked back upon a rich life lived vicariously. not infrequently, she rejected a marriage proposal in order to stay with her beloved master and mistress to whom she knew she was indispensable. the superfluous women previously mentioned would have thrown themselves into the arms of beelzebub had he come as suitor. when the years passed, when neither their desire for activity nor the thirst of the heart nor of the senses was quenched, then not infrequently insanity conjured up for these lonely women a life-content for which they had longed in vain. to-day, however, we have for the position which the expression, “a forsaken old maid,” betokens an entirely new type: “the glorified spinster,” as the joyous, active, independent unmarried woman is called by the people among whom she first became a reality. among these women, independent through their work, useful to society, that older type is still occasionally found perhaps, a survival of the time when emancipation was rather generally interpreted as freedom for masculinity. the “man-woman” in masculine attire, with weapons of defence against man in one hand and a cigarette in the other, her soul filled with mad ambition for her own sex and, as representative of her entire sex, with hatred toward the other, was however always rare. now, she has almost entirely vanished, except alas, the cigarette. but she smokes it now often with—masculine friends! she follows in her mode of life, as in her 74dress, the law of good taste—not to offend; she endeavours, if only with a flower or two, to give a glimmer of cosy comfort to her place of work. this comfort, which often comes into the public life with woman is perhaps the reason why many men, who first looked with indignation upon feminine fellow-workmen, would now miss them. the more personal the culture of these women becomes, the more they endeavour, according to their time and means, to express their personality in the lines and colours of their dress and in the arrangement of their room. those best situated often succeed, toward the end of their working days, in winning their own little home which they perhaps share with a friend, or they join a co-operative enterprise and can thus raise their standard of living. the same women who, at twenty-five, scornfully declared that they “would never bury their head in a sauce-pan,” are now, at fifty, consciously aware of the significance of the table for the activity of the brain; indeed they are now quite as proud if they have prepared a good dish as they were in their youth when they passed a fine examination!

it is not to be wondered at that the emancipated women, exactly as all recently emancipated masculine classes and races, at first groped insecurely after a new form. the astonishing thing, on the contrary, is that women adapted themselves so quickly to the new circumstances; that the transition period furnished so few grotesque types; 75that the present shows so many harmonious types, each in her own way. this harmony of single women is no mere form. it has its inner counterpart in the satisfaction with their existence, an existence in accord with their desires. the psychology was not exhaustive which saw in feminism only a “spinster question,” a question of the unmarried woman, springing from the surplus of women and the increasing difficulty or disinclination of men to contract marriage—a question therefore for the ugly, not for the beautiful; for the unmarried, not for the married; for the poor, not for the rich. for a great number of beautiful women prefer to remain unmarried; a great number of rich desire to work; a great number of married women are zealous suffragists. fifty years ago, we saw the most clever women idealise an ape into a god; now, the modern, intelligent working girl, when she looks about her for her ideal, exercises a lively criticism. she often flirts with one who exhibits some phase of the ideal, but she has too clear an understanding and too much to do to imagine a great feeling for one who is unworthy. so it often happens that youth has passed without such a feeling having stirred her. and she enters without deep regret the age when ambition and desire for power become her life stimulants. from these women of predominating mind and will is formed more and more what ferrero calls “the third sex,” maudsley, “the sexless ant”: energetic, clever, happy in their 76work, cool, but sound; in private life, in the zeal of everyday work, often egoistic but willing to make sacrifices in face of social exigencies.

so a great part of the fifty-year-old women form an exception since they with true instinct have remained unmarried. for in the same degree that their metallic being is well adapted to the machinery of society, it is little qualified to make a home for husband and children. they do not depreciate however the value of this task, unless they be fanatic feminists. in that event they reproach the women who wish to marry with “betraying the woman cause”; they demand at times, as imperative loyalty toward this cause, that their friends shall protest against the present marriage laws at least by the form of their marriage alliance if not even by not marrying at all. their theory of equality has at times been carried so far that—as recently happened in france—they advocate women’s performing also masculine military service.

but in spite of their aridity and inflexibility of principle how much more human are even these feminists than the “ill-natured” aunts of earlier times who became ill-natured exactly because their temperament was of the kind mentioned above, but who could find no sphere of operation for their passionate longing for activity. one or another was perhaps burning with ambition. for there are women as well as men who can live only as pagan gods, in the blaze and perfume of sacrificial 77fires. in their youth these ambitious natures could be satisfied by triumphs in social life. but later the passion became a fire in a powder cask and occasioned incessant explosions. now it is the electric motive power for an activity of general utility. the “aunts” of the earlier time who felt themselves always overlooked and injured are most easily recognised again in the literary and artistic field to which daily bread or ambition now urges many women, who endeavour to compensate by energetic work for the talent which nature denied them. since these women are ordinarily not people of understanding but of feeling, they must in a double sense be dissatisfied with a life which in addition is, in most cases, still filled with economic cares and the humiliations arising therefrom. and yet in spite of all, how much richer is their life to-day than it would have been fifty years ago when they would have been obliged to sit and draw their needles through interminable pieces of handwork, after ugly patterns and for unnecessary uses, or to compose sentimental birthday verses for persons whom they abominated.

yet there are always those women natures who, in the past, had the qualifications for a real “dear aunt,” who gently calmed the conflicts and filled the gaps in the home of which they had become members. the most tender and sensitive of these modern women, who, rain or shine, year in year out, hasten to and from a work indifferent to them at heart, not infrequently breathe a sigh of longing 78for those times when, as “aunts,” they could have received and imparted warmth in a home. but then again there come moments when they know how to value the independence which puts them in a position to give help where otherwise there would be none; when for example they can send a nephew to college, or a friend to a sanatarium, or provide their mother with a nurse, which they themselves can not be.

this kind of single woman fulfills more or less the office of family provider just as she also is always ready with word and deed in circles of friends and comrades. these women are so engrossed that the time of love, sometimes love itself, passes them by without their observing it. their youth flees and they feel with sadness that their woman’s life is unlived. but they persuade themselves that they have had enough in their work, that many little joys can take the place of great happiness. and they believe this as truly as the infant believes he is satisfied when he sucks his own thumb. but some of these women acknowledge perhaps, when they have passed the fifties, that they were often tempted to call out to the first best man, “give me a child.” sometimes it happens that in their last youth they appease their mother longing by adopting a foster child; sometimes they still this longing by a child of their own, from a love relation or a marriage. this late and uncertain happiness is often made possible exactly through their work. and then, 79if not earlier, they bless this work which gives them the economic possibility, and thereby also the courage, for this hazardous adventure.

more frequent than these are the cases however where single women, who have passed their first youth, find in friendship for another woman a valve for their, in great part, unused feelings. in some natures this friendship will be jealous and exacting, in others true and devoted. i wish to emphasise that i speak here of entirely natural spiritual conditions. there is to-day much talk about “sapphic” women; and it is even possible that they exist in that impure form which men imagine. i have never met them, presumably because we rarely meet in life those with whom no fibre of our being has any affinity. but i have often observed that the spiritually refined women of our time, just as formerly the spiritually refined men of hellas, find most easily in their own sex the qualities which set their spiritual life in the finest vibration of admiration, inspiration, sympathy and adoration.

the fundamental types of single women depicted here—the person of intellect and the person of feeling—are found everywhere. the former according to current opinion already predominate in america; in europe, it seems to me, the latter still prevail. that the main classes include innumerable varieties, it is needless to say. there are for example the numerous, quite ordinary, 80family girls who would be happy if they could give up their independence in order to enjoy the protection of their parents’ or their own home. and the same obtains also with the quite as ancient type of woman, undine, who—soulless and cold—enslaves all men. if she is in any civic vocation, she knows how to get the smallest amount of work for herself and, in case she is engaged in the artistic field, the best possible criticism. conscience is an acquaintance which she has never made and she is also of the opinion that everything agreeable is permitted to her; she simply slides past anything disagreeable. although work belongs to these disagreeable things, she continues it until she has found means to place her “qualities” in the most advantageous manner upon the matrimonial market.

the diametrical antithesis of this curvilinear type is the rectilinear. it has, just as the preceding type, existed at all times. it is the woman who really never demanded anything of life but “a work and a duty” and finds both in abundance in all positions of life. she is found year in year out at her desk, in appropriate working garb, free from all ?sthetics; proud “if she never has needed to miss a day”; proud that she never has come late. on the contrary she never goes on time. for she has so grown into the business or the office that she takes everything upon herself that is required without murmuring, as a well-disciplined soldier in the ranks of the grey working 81army; thankful, in addition, if her long working cares yield her a little life annuity or pension for her old age. this type is found principally among women over fifty—fortunately. for this class of women which the pre-feministic circumstances created, have, by their “frugality” carried almost to the verge of criminality, by their humble, conscientious servitude, lowered the wages of their colleagues who are more full of life. these latter have begun work in the hope that it finally will “free” them; that is, will give them something of that for which their innermost being longs, not only their daily bread—a bread which sickness or a turn of affairs moreover can take from them at any time. and perhaps they never succeed even in having their own room where they at least could have repose! underpaid, overworked, tired to death, who can wonder if these women have lost, if they ever possessed them, the essential characteristics of “womanhood”—active kindness, repose even in movement, charming gentleness? the icelandic poet of yore already knew that “few become fair through wounds.” these women must put all their strength into their work and into the effort to conceal their underpayment by “respectable” clothing, or else lose their positions. in everything else they must economise to the utmost and perhaps in addition be laughed at because of their economy. they succeed, often admirably, in maintaining themselves in proud fair struggle, in rejecting “erotic” perquisites to 82add to their income and in fulfilling conscientiously the requirements of their work. yet to do this with lively interest, with preserved spiritual elasticity, with quiet amiability—for this their strength does not suffice, exhausted by insufficient nourishment, insufficient sleep, still more insufficient recreation, and strained daily to the utmost. their nervousness finds vent in either hard or hysterical expression and the public, annoyed by their ill-humour, divines little of the tragedies enacted in offices, business houses, cafés or similar places. if a suicide concludes the tragedy, the public shudders for a moment and—all goes on as before.

thus “emancipation” presents itself in reality for millions of women. to what extent the middle-class woman movement is indirectly to blame for this fact has already been emphasised.

the essential reason is however the prevailing economic condition of society. by the uninterrupted fever of competition and the accumulation of riches, it dries up the soul and robs it of goodness as well as of joy. when the great, beautiful, eternal sources of joy are exhausted, the life stimulus is sought in exclusively physical pleasures, which are always made more exciting in order to be able to arouse still, in the languid nervous system, feelings of desire. moreover, there is the neurosis and weariness of life of the overworked, of those continually quaking about their material safety, of those who could be revived by the noble and simple joys of life, to which those jaded with 83riches are already not susceptible; but for all these millions and millions such joys are not accessible because hunger for profit depresses wages. if in addition to that we take into account the increasing suffering of the best because of the ever developing feeling of solidarity; and if finally we consider that women, who through the protection of the home could preserve something of warmth-irradiating energy, are now in increasing numbers driven out of the home, then we have some of the reasons which—in higher degree than the religious and philosophic reasons which also exist—contribute to the joylessness of our time.

a contribution to the meagre stock of good fortune of the present time is furnished however by the joy of life among young girls working under favourable conditions. among them we meet a new soul condition, which could be designated, as briefly as possible, as covetousness of everything which can promote their personal development and a beautiful liberality with what is thus won. they can gratify their energetic desire for self-development by sport, travel, books, art and other means of culture; their freedom of action between working hours is not restricted by private duties. they can utilise their leisure time and their income as they please: for recreation, pleasure, social intercourse, social work or private, charitable activity. no father nor husband encroaches upon their free agency. and so dear 84does this liberty become to them through the manifold joys which it furnishes, that these young girls, in constantly increasing numbers, refuse to relinquish their individual independence for the sake of a marriage which, even presupposing the happiest love, always means a restriction of the freedom of movement that they enjoyed while single. and since the modern woman knows that, in the sphere of spiritual values, nothing can be attained without sacrifice, she prefers to keep free agency and to sacrifice love. if she chooses in the opposite direction, the task of adaptation will be the more difficult, the longer and the more intensely she has enjoyed freedom. the modern young girl, if she deigns to bestow her hand upon a man, not infrequently has her pretty head so crammed full of principles of equality that she sometimes (frequently in america), by written contract establishes her independence to the smallest detail, which sometimes includes separate apartments and the prohibition that either of the contracting parties shall have the key to the apartment of the other.

there are many varieties of the new type of woman. there is for instance the tom-boy, the “gamin,” who for her life cannot give up the right to mad pranks and mischievous jokes. there is the girl consumed with ambition, who sacrifices all other values in order to attain the goal of her ambition in art or science. there is the fanatically altruistic girl, who considers the work for 85mankind so important that she feels she has not the right to an “egoistic” love happiness. there is the ascetic ethereal girl, who looks upon marriage and child-bearing as animal functions, unworthy of a spiritual being, but above all as unbeautiful. and for many of these modern, ?sthetically refined, nervously sensitive young girls the ?sthetic point of view is decisive. all love the work which permits them to live according to their ideals. still it often happens that ovidian metamorphoses take place: that the young girl sees the cloud or the swan transformed into a god, upon whose altar she sacrifices, with joy, her free agency and everything else which only a few weeks earlier she cherished as her holy of holies. the men who view this process with a smile, think that the anti-erotic ideals were only a new weapon of defence in the eternal war between the sexes. but these men often learn how mistaken they were when they themselves become participators in the war. they meet women so proud, so sensitive regarding their independence, so merciless in their strength, so easily wounded in their instincts, so zealous to devote themselves to their personal task, so determined to preserve their freedom, that erotic harmony seldom can be realised. yes, these women often repudiate love only because it becomes a bond to their freedom, a hindrance to their work, a force for the bending of their will to another’s will.

the women, womanly in their innermost depths, 86who really feel free only when they give themselves wholly, are becoming continually more rare. but where such a wholly devoted woman still exists, she is the highest type of woman which any period has produced. especially if she springs from a family of old culture. she has then, combined in her personality, the best of tradition and the best of the revolution evoked by the woman movement. the fibres of her being absorb their nourishment with instinctive certainty out of the fruitful soil which pride, devotion to duty, family love, requirements of culture and refinement of form, for many generations, have created. but her conscious soul-life flowers in the sun of the present; she thinks new thoughts and has new aims. just as little as she disavows her desire for love, so little does she desire love under other conditions than those of spiritual unity and human equality. if she meets the man who can give her this and if she loves him, then he can be more certain than the man of any other time that he is really loved, that no ulterior motive obscures the devotion of this free woman. he has seen her susceptible to all the riches of life; has seen her assist in social tasks, perform the duty of every day joyful in her work, proud of her independence attained through her work. he knows that just as she is she would have continued to be if he had not entered into her life. how different is this girl from the one of earlier times, who was driven by the emptiness of her life into continual love affairs, which could not lead to a 87marriage nor exist in a marriage that possessed nothing of love!

this most beautiful new type of woman approaches spiritually the aforementioned type of single, aged women, who because of their economic independence found time for a fine personal culture. these followed not infrequently in their youth, from a distance it is true, but with joyous sympathy, the progress of the woman movement. they shook their heads later over its extremes. with new joy they regard the young girls just described, in whom they find a more universal development than in themselves, because these young girls have been developed through active consumption of power which was spared to the older women, although they must have summoned much passive energy in order to maintain their personality against convention. the young girls find often in these older women a fine understanding, which they richly reciprocate. such terms of friendship are the most beautiful which the present has to offer: they resemble the meeting of the morning and evening red in the bright midsummer nights of the north.

no time could have been so rich in exquisite feminine personalities, at all ages and in all stages of life, as ours. we must not draw our conclusions regarding the abundance of such women, in the older culture epochs, from the illustrious names of women which incessantly recur in the pictures of 88the earlier times—like stage soldiers—until they give the illusion of a great host.

but exquisite women are even to-day exceptional. the martha type rather than the mary type predominates. this is due on one hand to decreasing piety, on the other hand to the kind of working and society life. fifty years ago single women were often spiritually petrified, now more often they cannot succeed in settling into any form. their existence, turned outwardly, widens their sphere of interest but makes their soul-life shallow. restlessness is most unfavourable to the “development of the personality,” which was however the goal of the emancipation of woman. this development is delayed most of all perhaps by the lack of personal contact with other personalities, of immediate, intimate human connections. this can, from no point of view, be supplied by the society or club life in which single women are to-day absorbed.