The Rights of Women and the Sexual Relations/Part 2/4. Women
WOMEN.
(From "Der Pronier" of Feb. 3, 1856.)
Since I have, some time ago, spoken my mind freely concerning the male sex, I seem to have taken upon myself the obligation to criticise the faults of my own sex with the same frankness. It is not from a lack of good intention that I have failed to do so sooner.
Mr. Ruge's last attack has given me a new impetus, and, I must confess, the necessary energy to speak. But he is to blame if, instead of the prosecutor of my sex, I again appear as its defendant.
I was surprised, indeed, to see how a thinking man like Mr. Ruge can judge so superficially and vulgarly of woman. And I cannot understand how he can praise Goethe and even call him the "freest German." In what did Goethe's freedom consist? As regards religion, it is not even established that he was an "atheist," and as regards politics, his position as minister to a prince testifies against him. What then remains? First of all his individual independence from the prejudices of the age, and his aesthetic sense of freedom, which asserted itself in the realm of the ideal. But who constituted his society in this realm? The women! His men, including Faust, command little respect and admiration. Tell me, Mr. Ruge, what would Goethe be without the women? Without those despised and unphilosophical creatures, whom you will not acknowledge as human beings until twenty-five years after the proclamation of the republic, the "freest German," the greatest German poet, would hardly have had any intellectual existence, and would probably have been forgotten long ago. Listen to what he says of us: "Women are the only receptacle which remains to us moderns, to fill with an ideal content. With the men nothing can be done. Homer has anticipated everything in Achilles and Odysseus, the bravest and the wisest." In another place he says: "That he perceived the ideal in a feminine form, or the form of a woman." "What a man was he did not know at all; for it was impossible for him to describe a man otherwise than biographically. There must always be something historical to build on."
What testimony! It is hardly possible that Goethe to-day would be opposed to the emancipation of woman, for he would no more wish to exclude "ideality" from his state than from his writings. Mr. Ruge reproaches naturalists with destroying "ideality;" Goethe, the "freest German," declares that women are the only receptacle of ideality, in the society of to-day, and yet the eulogizer of Goethe, and of ideality, would confine women to the kitchen and the nursery that they may do no harm in a society in which "great men like Hecker, Kinkel," etc., are the most illustrious successors to "Achilles and Odysseus!" Poor men!
Mr. Ruge would not lapse into such inconsistencies if instead of his dry, scholastic, Hegelian standard of judging woman, he were aided by that living, spiritual relationship, through which Goethe first became Goethe, and through which he attained that wonderful appreciation of the feminine nature. I would call this capacity — which is generally quite complimentary to us, termed the "feminine element," although a perfect man cannot be conceived of without it, any more than a perfect woman — the aesthetic soul. Whoever does not possess this aesthetic soul, upon which the direct appreciation of all higher natures depends, or whoever has killed it within himself, by the gymnastics of abstract thought, he will in vain attempt to fill this idealism, about which Mr. Ruge is so anxious, with living contents. And if Mr. Ruge limits it to the masculine world, it becomes more than ever a forced abstraction, or an empty illusion. Strike us women from your account, and then try to construct your idealism! Even without Goethe, I should know, and have the courage to say, that the masculine world of to-day is, with few exceptions, nothing but a world of philistines; and even if I did not say it — very well, Mr. Ruge himself has indirectly told me so. I quote his words:
"Women are essentially attracted by position,[1] rank, superiority. When they fall in love they look much more to superiority in the position of the man than men look to the rank of her parents. If it is not an office or a title, it surely is a superiority of endowment or fame — in short, some kind of aristocratic quality, that determines the love of the girl. Love is aristocratic; it is superiority that is loved. Beauty is an aristocracy; few people in their appearance correspond to the conception of beauty," etc.
What a confession against men and for women these lines contain!
In other words, this confession in favor of the women reads thus: Gifted with quick emotions and a lively imagination, you cannot content yourselves with the merely apathetic consciousness of the existence of these or the other things or persons — no, by means of your more direct and more vital susceptibility to your environment, you quickly place yourself into a personal relationship to it, whether this relationship be one of sympathy or of antipathy. Your nature is especially attuned for sympathy, wherefore your proper element is love. But for alt" this, you generally have the good taste not to love what is most inferior. If you have your choice, you will love the general and not the corporal, the independently rich man, and not the dependent beggar, the handsome and not the ugly suitor, the noble and not the low, the cultured and not the vulgar, the famous and not the obscure, the poet and not the shop-keeper; yes, even the genius and not the philistine! In short, you women always love "superiorities" and not defects, i. e., what is lovable and not what is unlovely! Ina garden you would even pick the roses and not the nettles!
Such are the reproaches which Mr. Ruge heaps upon us women, in contrast to the men! But the praise which he thereby, indirectly, gives to men must, logically, consist of the opposite of these reproaches. I shall, however, limit it to the confession, which is contained in Mr. Ruge's demand, that we women ought also to make ourselves worthy of such praise, that is, that we, too, should love the opposite of "superiorities," that we ought not to be "aristocratic" in our love! We ought, then, to love the ugly men, and not the handsome, the insignificant and not the excellent, the philistines and not the men of genius!
No, Mr. Ruge, forever no! By all that is beautiful and noble upon earth, by all the happiness and all the suffering of the feminine soul, by all the ideals and desires of the heart, by all that is sweet and all that is painful, which finds lodgment in the human breast, by the joy of spring and the sadness of autumn, by the odor of flowers and the murmuring of the cypress, by all the bliss of life and all the bitterness of death, we do not want to love ugliness, insufficiency, vulgarity, philistinism, but, with all the fervor, all the devotion of our being, we want to love beauty, nobility of soul, truth, proud manhood-and, above all, genius! Not that false brilliancy which seeks greatness in senseless arbitrariness, in dissolute transgressions of rational rules, and is therefore incompatible with truth, the foremost requirement of genius; not that sham wisdom, whose essence is weakness instead of strength, but that true genius which, regardless of the motives of a mean world, of the calculators and hucksters, of the authorities and scribes, breaks the fetters with which harrowmindedness and the anxiety of philistine pygmies have bound human nature, and creates for us a paradise of freedom, in which the great and noble thoughts of human happiness and human beauty take on life and form.
We could even love a dead genius, but not a living philistine.
In this wise, Mr. Ruge, are we women aristocrats, and the only misfortune is that not all of us are. Perhaps the men would then try harder to become aristocrats also, and would drop the conceit that we must love them, on every plebeian condition, just because they are the stronger and we their dependents, and because they usually pay for the hearth, upon which we have the honor of cooking for them.
We women are not adapted to become philosophers. Imagination and feeling — in short, all the more living activities of the soul — fortunately do not admit of that strong calm which is capable of evolving systems of thought in the privacy of the study, that astonish the world just so long as it does not comprehend them. Instead of this, every truth, at which philosophers arrive only by the roundabout and troublesome way of constructing a "system," is directly, and without difficulty, accessible to our intelligence. But our stupid and unnatural education generally makes us as diffident as it makes us intellectually dependent, so that we mistrust our own judgment before that of learned men. That is a weakness which men know very well how to utilize in behalf of our continued dispossession and suppression; it is quite natural, therefore, that they rebel when we discard this weakness, when we no longer allow ourselves to be imposed upon by their pretended mysteries, and that the philosophers must be the first to rebel is the most natural of all. We must, however, not allow ourselves to be led astray thereby; we must even dare to compete with the philosophers. I venture, therefore, to turn Mr. Ruge's reproach that we are aristocratic into the greatest praise; I venture to assert — without believing, however, that I have discovered a new truth — that, by our natural "aristocratic" tendency, we unconsciously establish the correct human rule, which men have brought into discredit by their perverse theories, and which demands that all men should become aristocratic. By what sort of philosophy does Mr. Ruge want to prove to me that, instead of elevating humanity to the height of the superiorities, which we women love, all must rather be degraded to the opposite, for the sake of being "democratic?" I vote for a democracy of superiority, in which the majority of mankind, especially the men, are as noble, as beautiful, as cultured, as independent, as gifted, as lovable, as happy as possible. Surely the minority will never have to complain of such a democracy.
I vote! But Mr. Ruge does not want to let me vote, me and some five hundred million other female beings. He even demands that we should first vote on the question whether we want to vote, and does not ask himself whether it might be adduced, as an argument against the enfranchisement of the slaves, that they had not voted on their human rights. He at least distinguishes us from the slaves in that he fixes a term for our liberation. "In the twenty-fifth year of the republic" we may begin to look upon ourselves as human beings, for by that time we shall have been educated into human beings by those of whom we have not yet sufficient evidence that they themselves are already human beings!
I do not discuss my human right, I assert it. It exists and does not cease to exist. Therefore I will not allow any one to fix a term when it is to begin; according to my interpretation, this term would only fix the time when the robbers of my rights would cease to be robbers. In the twenty-fifth year of the republic we shall emancipate the women merely means, in the twenty-fifth year of the republic we shall cease to be despots toward the women. If I had to consider only the male sex I would be modest enough to accept this term as tolerably short for the humanization of men.
That women, before they had attained to an intellectual regeneration, through twenty-five years of training in the republic, would use their right of suffrage against the republic, is an assertion, but no proof; it isa pretext, but no reason. But if we should really vote for the priests, as Mr. Ruge maintains, because we were educated by the priests, whose fault would it be? Only the fault of those who have brought the priests into the world, who tolerate the priests, and who intrust the priests with our education that they may make submissive sufferers of us. But have men, who allow priests to rule, a right to set themselves up as guardians of the female sex, on account of the priests? Can these still priest-ridden men have anything to fear from the female sex? What harm can still come to them? First abolish the priests, since you have made them, then you are safe from the danger of having us vote for them. It is but a proof of your tyrannical disposition, and at the same time of your weakness, that you want to suppress our rights, on account of conditions for which you, as the lords of history, are alone responsible.
"I have indeed admitted that we must concede all the rights of men and citizens to these diplomats and aristocrats, these fair and interesting creatures," etc. (namely to women).
Thus Mr. Ruge admits the correctness of the principle (apparently to his great sorrow), but he flies from its realization. And how illogical the conclusions with which he tries to cover his retreat! That the suffrage, exercised by women, will lead to disaster has, as I have observed once before, not yet been put to the test. On the contrary, women aiways, and in sufficient numbers, considering their education, have taken the part of liberty in every struggle, although it held out no promise to them. But men have undergone the test of suffrage, and have come out of it as discreditably as possible. They have, as Mr. Ruge tells us (by their vote in France) set us back fifty years. To what conclusion ought this to lead him? That the first thing necessary would be to fix a term for the education of men, in order to instruct them in voting. His conclusion, however, is "now we cannot abolish universal suffrage any more." Why? Why, because we are men and not women. Man must demand also the application of the correct principle, but women must bury the principle to avoid the application. For men Mr. Ruge wants to apply the old rule: whoever would learn to swim must not be afraid of the water. But his chivalry wishes to spare us women this discomfort. We learn to swim in the kitchen, or by merely looking on. That is indeed quite complimentary to our intelligence, but not exactly "practical."
That universal suffrage has set us back fifty years, seems to me to be entirely the fault of those who began the revolution with universal suffrage without first providing for the removal of the reactionary candidates, and the enlightenment of the ignorant voters. Nevertheless, after the harm has once been done, it will certainly all come out right in the end. It is no misfortune for a child to stumble, if thereby it learns to walk; neither is walking ever forbidden to a child for that reason.
But we women must not learn to walk until we are grown up, and I can not, for the life of me, see the advantage of this tender regard. To postpone the beginning, when it is a matter of necessity, can never lead to reasonable results. No man can maintain that the emancipation of woman, the placing her on a footing of complete legal equality with man, can be evaded in practice, since it is impregnable in principle. Why, then, this procrastination? The moral of the Sibylline books would hold good here, too. Men have not learned how to exercise their rights in a day; women will learn it no sooner than they did. But they must make a beginning sometime, and it is a sad thing to see how this beginning, which has so many obstacles to overcome, anyway, is attacked, a priori, with the most trivial weapons of scorn and animosity, by those who have nothing to say against the principle. In order to postpone the term for the emancipation of woman so long as possible, this coarse and aggressive state of society certainly does not need the aid of men, who have devoted their lives to the conquest of brutality and aggression!
Strange human beings! Here I stand in the presence of sun, moon and stars, in the presence of the whole universe, as a free being; no star, no "god," obstructs my way; the whole universe silently acknowledges my freedom. Only these beings, which call themselves men, and even free men, have the audacity to deny my freedom, and even to fix a term for my humanization in case I reform. Poor things! You only convince me that I know better what 1s right and what is wrong, what I can do and what I may do, than you. Me you certainly need not liberate; I have for myself all the liberty that I need and desire. But I know that you yourselves have it not, and that you will never have it without free women. Just as the woman without a man, and the man without the woman fulfills only one-half of his and her existence, just as the contentment and the harmony of human existence, can only come from a union of the two beings, so also, in public life, this union is the indispensable condition of a truly humane and harmonious order of things. Is public life anything else than the sum of all individual lives? Must not every individual life be interested in the public life, and must not every individual union be involved in the union of the whole? To postpone such a state of society would only be to prolong the inhumanity and disharmony of our present social life. Family and state must correspond to each other, and those who constitute the family must also constitute the state, otherwise both can come to nothing more than they have come to hitherto. You may call yourselves philosophers or revolutionists, scholars or statesmen, and you may as such even allow your conceit to surpass your blindness by continuing to despise woman, because she has not the power to dictate her consciousness to you as your law — you will thereby not annul the law of nature, which equipped us, as human beings, with human rights, as well as with human powers. You may exhaust your wisdom and your strength, you may use up your ink with writing, or shed your blood, you may undertake reforms or revolutions — all your achievements must remain fragmentary, all your creations must be imperfect, so long as you would make laws and institutions for all mankind, but egotistically exclude one-half of mankind, and truly not the worst half!
- ↑ If this were the case, those men should complain of it least of all who deny women the means. of attaining to a position themselves.