Six modern women, psychological sketches

Preface

It is 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 and Prix 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 the vi Preface

teachers, 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, these

Preface vii

six 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.

Contents

PAGE

Introduction xi

I. The Learned Woman : Sonia Kovalevsky . 3

Introduction

The subjects of these six psychological sketches are well known to English readers, with the exception of Amalie Skram, the Norwegian novelist, and Fru Leffler, who is known only as the biographer of Sonia Kovalevsky.

Laura Marholm, the writer of this book, is a German authoress of Norwegian extraction, who is celebrated for her literary criticisms and the beauty of her style. In September, 1889, she married Ola Hansson, the Swedish author of "Sensitiva Amorosa," "Young Scandinavia," and a novel called "Fru Esther Bruce," in which the heroine is said to bear a strong resemblance to Eleonora Duse. He has also published a volume of prose poems, called " Ofeg's Ditties," which has been translated by George Egerton, whose vivid style and powerful descriptions have gained a place for her among the foremost women writers of the day.

Laura Marholm was the first to introduce her husband to the German public by means of two articles in the Neue Freie Presse. The first, called "A Swedish Love Poet," appeared May xii Introduction

24th, 1888, before they had met, and was written in praise of his early work, " Sensitiva Amorosa." The second article was a criticism on "Pariahs," and it is an interesting fact that in it she compares him to Gottfried Keller.

In all her writings, Laura Marholm looks at life through the spectacles of a happy marriage; she believes that matured thought and widened views can — in a woman's case — be only the direct result of marriage; and consequently she considers marriage to be absolutely indispensable to every woman, and that without it she is both mentally and morally undeveloped. She has little sympathy with the Woman's Rights movement, judged either from the social, political, or educational point of view ; with regard to the latter, she has not had a university education herself, and she is not at all impressed by those who have. She considers that a woman's individuality is of greater importance than her actions ; she upholds woman's influence as woman, and has no sympathy with the advanced thinkers, who, with Stuart Mill at their head, would fain have women exert their influence as thinking, reasoning human beings, believing all other influence to be unworthy the, dignity of the modern woman. Laura Marholm has the intuitive faculty, and this enables her to gauge the feelings of those women who spend a long youth in waiting — who are taught to believe, and who do believe, that their youth is nothing

Introduction xiii

more than a transition period between childhood and marriage, — women who grow old in waiting, and awake to reality to find behind them nothing but a wasted youth, and in the future — an empty old age. But these are not modern women, they are the women of the ancien regime, who have missed their vocation, and failed to attain their sole object in life, — viz., marriage. On the one hand we are confronted with the old-fashioned girl, on the other by the new woman. Of the two, we prefer the new woman ; and while recognizing her mistakes, and lamenting her exaggerated views, Laura Marholm acknowledges that she is formed of the best material of the age, and prophesies for her a brighter future. But her views differ greatly from those of Ibsen and Bjornson. According to Ibsen, a woman is first of all a human being, and then a woman; she places the woman first, the human being last. Bjornson believes that an intellectually developed woman with a life-work can get on very well by herself; Laura Marholm maintains that, apart from man, a woman is nothing. According to her, woman is a creature of instinct, and this instinct is her most precious possession, and of far greater value than the intellect Of all the studies in this book, Fru Leffler is probably the one with whom she is least in sympathy. Fru Lefrler was essentially intellectual, possessed of a somewhat cold and critical temperament, and in xiv Introduction

writing the biography of Sonia Kovalevsky she was often unable to appreciate the latter' s very complicated character. Sonia was a rare combination of the mystic and the scientist ; she was not only a mathematician, but also, in every important crisis of her life, a dreamer of prophetic dreams. The biography was intended to be the continuation of Sonia' s own story of her childhood, and the two should be read together. As a child, Sonia suffered from a painful conviction that in her family she was not the favorite, and it is probable that her unaccountable shyness, her want of self-confidence, and her inability to attract love in after life, were due to the fact of her having passed an unhappy and unloved childhood.

Fru LefHer's writings are remarkable for the simplicity and directness of her style, her keen observation, and love of truth. Her talents were by no means confined to her pen; she held a salon, — the resort of the intellectual world of Stockholm, — and attained great popularity by her tactfulness and social gifts. She did not, however, shine in society to the same extent as Sonia Kovalevsky. Her conversation was not as brilliant and witty as the latter' s, but it was always interesting, and it was of the kind that is remembered long afterwards. " When she told a story, analyzed a psychological problem, or recounted the contents of a book, she always succeeded in

Introduction xv

setting forth its real character in a clear and decided manner." Sonia,. on the other hand, was ever ready with an original remark. Ellen Key tells how one day, when the conversation turned upon love, Sonia exclaimed: "These amiable young men are always writing books about love, and they do not even know that some people have a genius for loving, just as others have a genius for music and mechanics, and that for these erotic geniuses love is a matter of life and death, whereas for others it is only an episode. "

Fru Leffler travelled a great deal, and made many friends in the countries that she visited. She took great interest in socialism, anarchism, and all religious and educational movements. In London she attended lectures given by Mrs. Marx- Aveling, Bradlaugh, and Mrs. Besant. Theosophy, positivism, spiritualism, and atheism, — there was nothing which did not interest her. The more she saw the more she doubted the possibility of attaining to absolute truth in matters either social or religious, and the more attracted she became by the doctrine of evolution.

From this authoress, who was the chief exponent of woman's rights in Sweden, we turn to a very different but no less interesting type. Eleonora Duse, the great Italian actress, has visited London during the past few years, acting in such a natural, and at the same time in such a simple and life-like manner, that a knowledge of the xvi Introduction

language was not absolutely indispensable to the enjoyment of the piece. Besides most of the pieces mentioned here, she acted in La Femme de Claude ■, Cleopatra, and Martha; but she attained her greatest triumph in Goldoni's comedy, La Locandiera.

In all these typical women, Fru L. Marholm Hansson traces a likeness which proves that they have something in common. Numerous and conflicting as are the various opinions on the so-called "woman question," the best, and perhaps the only, way of elucidating it is by doing as she has done in giving us these sketches. We have here six modern women belonging to five nationalities, three of whom are authoresses, and the other three — mathematician, actress, and artist, portrayed and criticised by one who is herself a modern woman and an authoress.

H. R.

The Learned IVoman

I

It sometimes happens that a hidden characteristic of the age is disclosed, not through any acuteness on the part of the spectator, nor as the result of critical research, but of itself, as it were, and spontaneously. A worn face rises before us, bearing the marks of death, and never again may we gaze into the eyes which reveal the deep psychological life of the soul. It is the dead who greet us, the dead who survive us, and who will come to life again and again in future generations, long after we have ceased to be ; those dead who will become the living, only to suffer and to die again.

These self-revelations have always existed amongst men, but among women they were unknown until now, when this tired century is drawing to its close. It is one of the strangest signs of the coming age that woman has attained to the intellectual consciousness of herself as woman, and can say what she is, what she wishes, and what she longs for. But she pays for this knowledge with her death.

Marie Bashkirtseff's Journal was just such a self -revelation as this ; the moment it appeared it was carried throughout the whole of Europe, and further than Europe, on far-reaching waves of human sympathy. Wherever it went it threw a firebrand into the women's hearts, which set them burning without most of them knowing what this burning betokened. They read the book with a strange and painful emotion, for as they turned over these pages so full of ardent energy, tears, and yearning, they beheld their own selves, strange, beautiful, and exalted, but still themselves, though few of them could have explained why or wherefore.

It was no bitter struggle with the outer world to which Marie Bashkirtseff succumbed at the age of four-and-twenty ; it was not the struggle of a girl of the middle classes for her daily bread, for which she sacrifices her youth and spirits ; she met with no obstacles beyond the traditional customs which had become to her a second nature, no obstruction greater than the atmosphere of the age in which she lived, which bounded her own horizon, although in her inmost soul she rebelled against it. She had everything that the world can give to assist the unhindered development of the inner life, — mental, spiritual, and physical; everything that hundreds of thousands of women, whose narrow lives need expanding, have not got, ■ — and yet she did not live her life. On every one of the six hundred pages of her journal (written, as it is, in her penetrating Russian-French style) we meet the despairing cry that she had nothing, that she was ever alone in the midst of an everlasting void, hungering at the table of life, spread for every one except herself, standing with hands outstretched as the days passed by and gave her nothing; youth and health were fading fast, the grave was yawning, just a little chink, then wider and wider, and she must go down without having had anything but work, — constant work, — trouble and striving, and the empty fame which gives a stone in the place of bread.

The tired and discontented women of the time recognized themselves on every page, and for many of them Marie Bashkirtseff's Journal became a kind of secret Bible in which they read a few sentences every morning, or at night before going to sleep.

A few years later there appeared another confession by a woman; this time it was not an autobiography, like the last one, but it was written by a friend, who was a European celebrity, with a name as lasting as her own. This book was called " Sonia Kovalevsky : Our Mutual Experiences, and the things she told me about herself. " The writer was Anne Charlotte Edgren-Leffler, Duchess of Cajanello, who had been her daily companion during years of friendship.

There was a curious likeness between Marie Bashkirtseff's Journal and Sonia Kovalevsky' s confessions, something in their innermost, personal experiences which proves an identity of temperament as well as of fortune, something which was not only due to the unconscious manner in which they criticised life, but to life itself, life as they moulded it, and as each was destined to live it. Marie Bashkirtseff and Sonia Kovalevsky were both Russians, 1 both descended from rich and noble families, both women of genius, and from their earliest childhood they were both in a position to obtain all the advantages of a good education. They were both born rulers, true children of nature, full of originality, proud and independent. In all respects they were the favorites of fortune, and yet — and yet neither of these extraordinary women was satisfied, and they died because they could not be satisfied. Is not this a sign of the times ?

II

The story of Sonia Kovalevsky' s life reads like an exciting novel, which is, if anything, too richly furnished with strange events. Such is life. It comes with hands full to its chosen ones, but it also takes away gifts more priceless than it gave.

At the age of eighteen Sonia Kovalevsky was already the mistress of her own fate. She had married the husband of her choice, and he had accompanied her to Heidelberg, where they both

1 Sonia's mother was a German, the daughter of Schubert the astronomer. Marie Bashkirtseff's grandmother was also German, and Fru Leffler was descended from a German family who had settled in Sweden.

matriculated at the university. From thence he took her to Berlin, where she lived with a girl friend, who was a student like herself, and studied mathematics at Weierstrass's for the space of four years, only meeting her husband occasionally in the course of her walks. Her marriage with Valdemar Kovalevsky, afterwards Professor of Paleontology at the university of Moscow, was a mere formality, and this extraordinary circum^ stance brings us face to face with one of the chief characteristics of her nature.

Sonia Kovalevsky did not love her husband; there was, in fact, nothing in her early youth to which she was less disposed than love. She was possessed of an immense undefined thirst, which was something more than a thirst for study, albeit that was the form which it took. Her inexperienced, child-like nature was weighed down beneath the burden of an exceptional talent.

Sonia Krukovsky was the daughter of General Krukovsky of Palibino, a French Grand-seigneur of old family; and when she was no more than sixteen, she had in her the making of a great mathematician and a great authoress. She was fully aware of the first, but of the latter she knew nothing, for a woman's literary talent nearly always dates its origin from her experience of life. She was high-spirited and enterprising, — qualities which are more often found among the Sclavonic women than any other race of Europeans ; she had that peculiar consciousness of the shortness of life, the same which drove Marie Bashkirtseff to accomplish more in the course of a few years than most people would have achieved during the course of their whole existence.

Sonia Kovalevsky's girlhood was spent in Russia, during those years of feverish excitement when the outbreaks of the Nihilists bore witness to the working of a subterranean volcano, and the hearts and intellects of the young glowed with an enthusiasm which led to the self-annihilating deeds of fanaticism. A few winter months spent at St. Petersburg decided the fate of Sonia and her elder sister, Anjuta. The strict, old-fashioned notions of their family allowed them very little liberty, and they longed for independence. In order to escape from parental authority, a formal marriage was at this time a very favorite expedient among young girls in Russia. A silent but widespread antagonism reigned in all circles between the old and young ; the latter treated one another as secret allies, who by a look or pressure of the hand could make themselves understood. It was not at all uncommon for a girl to propose a formal marriage to a young man, generally with the purpose of studying abroad, as this was the only means by which they could obtain the consent of their unsuspecting parents to undertake the journey. When they were abroad, they generally released each other from all claims and separated, in order to study apart. Sonia' s sister was anxious to escape in this way, as she possessed a remarkable literary talent which her father had forbidden her to exercise. She accordingly made the proposal in question to a young student of good family, named Valdemar Kovalevsky; he, however, preferred Sonia, and this gave rise to further complications, as their father refused to allow the younger sister to marry before the elder.

Sonia resorted to a stratagem, and one evening, when her parents were giving a reception, she went secretly to Valdemar, and as soon as her absence was discovered she sent a note to her father, with these words : " I am with Valdemar ; do not oppose our marriage any longer." There remained no alternative for General Krukovsky but to fetch his daughter home as speedily as possible, and to announce her engagement.

They were accompanied on their honeymoon by a girl friend, who was equally imbued with the desire to study, and soon afterwards Anjuta joined them. The first thing that Sonia and Valdemar did was to visit George Eliot in London; after which Valdemar went to Jena and Munich, while Sonia, with her sister and friend, studied at Heidelberg, where they remained during two terms before going to Berlin. The sister went secretly to Paris by herself.

Arrived at Berlin, Sonia buried herself in her work. She saw no one except Professor Weierstrass, who expressed the greatest admiration for her quickness at mathematics, and did all in his power to assist her by means of private lessons.

io Six Modern W 'omen

If we are honest enough to call it by its true name, we must confess. that the life led by these two girls, during eight terms, was the life of a dog. Sonia scarcely ever went out of doors unless Valdemar fetched her for a walk, which was not often, as he lived in another part of the town, and was constantly away. She was tormented with a vague fear of exposing herself. Inexperienced as both these friends were, they lived poorly, and ate little, allowing themselves no pleasure of any sort, added to which they were tyrannized over and cheated by their maid-servant. Sonia sat all day long at her writing-table, hard at work with her mathematical exercises ; and when she took a short rest, it was only to run up and down the room, talking aloud to herself, with her brains as busy as ever. She had never been accustomed to do anything for herself; she had always been waited upon, and it was impossible to persuade her even to buy a dress when necessary, unless Valdemar accompanied her. But Valdemar soon tired of rendering these unrequited services, and he often absented himself in other towns for the completion of his own studies ; and as they both received an abundant supply of money from their respective homes, they were in no way dependent upon each other.

The year 1 870 came and went ; for Sonia it had been a year of study, and nothing more. Her sleep had become shorter and more broken, and she neither knew nor cared what she ate, when

The Learned Woman n

suddenly, in the spring of the following year, she was sent for by her sister in Paris. Anjuta had fallen passionately in love with a young Parisian, who was a member of the Commune ; he had just been arrested, and was in danger of losing his life. Sonia and Valdemar succeeded in penetrating through the line of troops, found Anjuta, and wrote to their father. General Krukovsky came at once, and it was only then that he discovered what his daughters were doing abroad, and learned for the first time that his eldest daughter had been living alone in Paris, for Anjuta had always been careful to send her letters through Sonia, with the Berlin postmark.

Anjuta showed great spirit, and after an interview with Thiers they succeeded in helping this very undesirable son-in-law to escape. Throughout the whole affair their father's behavior is a rare proof of the nobility of the race from which Sonia sprang. This stern man not only forgave — he also admired his daughters for what they had done. The cold manner and grandfatherly authority with which he had hitherto treated them was superseded by a cordial sympathy such as would have been impossible before. He was much impressed by Anjuta' s passion, but Sonia' s platonic marriage distressed him greatly.

In the year 1874 Sonia took the degree of doctor at Gottingen, as the result of three mathematical treatises, of which one especially, her thesis " On the Theory of Partial Differential Equations," is reckoned one of her most prominent works. Immediately after this, the whole family assembled on the old estate of Palibino. Sonia was completely worn out, and it was a long time before she was able to resume any severe brain work. Her holiday was cut short by her father's death a few months later, and the following winter was spent with her family at St. Petersburg. Until now Sonia's brain was the only part of her which was thoroughly awakened. She had been entirely absorbed in her studies, and had worked with the obstinate tenacity of auto-suggestion, more commonly found in women, especially girls, than in men. Marie Bashkirtseff had done the same, year in, year out; she had worked breathlessly, feverishly, with an incomprehensible, unwearied power of production, — while failing health was announcing the approach of death in her frail young body. Suddenly the end came.

Thousands of girls in middle-class families work themselves to death in the same way. Badly paid to begin with, they lower the prices still more by competing with one another. Others, placed in better circumstances, work with the same insistency at useless handicrafts, while a large number of women of the poorer classes work because they are driven to it by dire necessity. The result is the same in all cases; they lose the power of enjoyment, and forget what happiness means.

Sonia's stay in St. Petersburg was the occasion of the first great change which took place in her, to be followed later on by many like changes. Mathematics were thrust aside; she did not want to hear any more about them, she wanted to forget them.

Mind and body were undergoing a healing process, struggling to attain an even balance in her fresh young nature. She felt the need of change, she required companionship, and she threw herself into the midst of all social and intellectual pursuits. It was then that the woman awoke in her.

During the period of nervous excitement and sorrow which followed after the death of her beloved father, she had become the wife of her husband, after having been nominally married for nearly seven years. Since then they had drawn closer to one another ; and now that her fortune, as long as her mother lived, was not sufficient for her support, she and Valdemar invested their money in various speculations. With true Russian enthusiasm they set to work building houses, establishing watering-places, and starting newspapers, besides lending their aid to every imaginable kind of new invention. The first year all went well, and in 1878 a daughter was born. After that came the crash. Kovalevsky was bitten with the rage for speculation, and although he was nominated Professor of Paleontology at Moscow in 1880, and in spite of all that his wife could do to dissuade him, he took shares in a company connected with petroleum springs in the south of

14 Six Modem Women

Russia. The company was a swindle, the undertaking proved a failure, and he shot himself.

Sonia had left him some time before. She knew what was coming, having been warned by bad dreams and presentiments, and as she had lost her influence over him, and was anxious to provide for her own and her child's future, she left him and went to Paris. Just as she was recovering from the nervous fever to which she succumbed on hearing the news of her husband's sudden death, she received the summons to go to Stockholm.

The invitation had been sent by the representatives of a Woman's Rights movement which was then in full swing. It was an exceedingly narrow society of the genuine bourgeois kind, and as it was to them that she owed her appointment, they were anxious to bind her firmly to their cause. Sonia soon won their hearts by the sociability of her Russian nature, but as one term after the other passed by, she grew more and more weary of it, and whenever her course of lectures was over she hurried away as quickly as possible to Russia, Italy, France, England, — no matter where, if only she could escape out of Sweden into a freer atmosphere. She never looked upon her stay there as anything more than an episode in her life, and she longed to be back in Paris ; but the years passed by, and she received no other appointment.

Her lectures at the university began to pall upon her ; it gave her no pleasure to be forever teaching the students the same thing in a dreary routine.

She needed an incentive in the shape of some highly gifted individual whom she could respect, and whose presence would call forth her highest faculties ; but even the esteem in which she held some few people was not of long duration.

Her friendship with Fru Edgren-Leffler dates from this period. It was this lady's renown as an authoress which roused Sonia's talent for writing, for her life had been rich in experiences, and never wanting in variety until now, when, in a period of comparative leisure, she allowed her thoughts to dwell upon the past. She began by persuading Fru Edgren-Leffler to dramatize the sketches which she gave her, and "The Struggle for Happiness " was the first result of this collaboration. But Sonia soon realized that the honest, simple-minded Swede was not in sympathy with this department of literature ; so she wrote a story on her own account, entitled "The Sisters Rajevsky, " which was a sketch of her own youth, followed by an excellent novel called "Vera Barantzova; " after which she began another novel called " Vae Victis," which was never finished.

Ill

Up till now we have followed this remarkable woman's life along a clear, though somewhat agitated course; but from henceforward there is something uncomfortable, something strange and distorted about it. It is very difficult for us to ascertain the cause of her increasing distraction of mind, and early death, and the difficulty is intensified by the fact that the material contributed by Fru Lefner is poor and contradictory, and also because her work is disfigured by the peculiar inferences which she draws.