PREFACE
Itis 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 andPrix 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 theteachers, 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.
A woman who seeks freedom by means of the modern method of independence is generally one who desires to escape from a woman’s sufferings. She is anxious to avoid subjection, also motherhood, and the dependence and impersonality of an ordinary woman’s life; but in doing so she unconsciously deprives herself of her womanliness. For them all—for Marie Bashkirtseff as much as Sonia Kovalevsky and A. C. Edgren-Leffler—the day came when they found themselves standing at the door of the heart’s innermost sanctuary, and realized that they were excluded. Some of them burst open the door, entered, and became man’s once more. Others remained outside and died there. They were all individualistic, thesesix women. It was this fact that moulded their destiny; but Eleonora Duse was the only one of them who was individualistic enough. None of them were able to stand alone, as more than one had believed that she could. The women of our day are difficult in the choice of a husband, and the men are slow and mistrustful in their search for a wife.
There are some hidden peculiarities in woman’s soul which I have traced in the lives of these six representative women, and I have written them down for the benefit of those who have not had the opportunity of discovering them for themselves.