THE MORALITY OF WOMAN.pdf

THE

MORALITY OF

WOMAM

AND OTHER ESSAYS

AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION FROM THE

SWEDISH

ELLEN KEY

MAMAH BOUTON BORTHWICK

THE RALPH FLETCHER SEYMOUR CO.

FINE ARTS BUILDING

CHICAGO

CONTENTS

THE MORALITY OF WOMAN

THE WOMAN OF THE FUTURE

THE CONVENTIONAL WOMAN

THE MORALITY OF WOMAN

"The law condemns to be hung those who counterfeit

banknotes; a measure necessary for the public welfare. But he

who counterfeits love, that is to say: he who, for a thousand

other reasons but not for love, unites himself to one whom he

does not love and creates thus a family circle unworthy of that

name—does not he indeed commit a crime whose extent and

incalculable results in the present and in the future,

disseminate far more terrible unhappiness than the

counterfeiting of millions of banknotes!"

C. J. L. A LMQUIST .

The simplest formula for the new conception of morality,

which is beginning to be opposed to moral dogma still

esteemed by all society, but especially by women, might be

summed up in these words:

Love is moral even without legal marriage, but marriage

is immoral without love.

The customary objection to this tenet is that those who

propose it forget all other ethical duties and legitimate feelings

in order to make the sex relationship the center of existence,

and love the sole decisive point of view in questions

concerning this relationship. But if we except the struggle for

existence—which indeed must be called not a relationship of

life but a condition of life—what then can be more central for

man, than a condition decreed by the laws of earthly life—the

cause of his own origin? Can one imagine a moment which

penetrates more deeply his whole being?

That many men live content without the happiness of

love, that others after they attain it seek a new end for their

activity, proves nothing against the truth of the experience that

for men in general the erotic relation between man and woman

becomes the deepest life determining factor, whether

negatively, because they are deprived of this relation or

because they formed it unhappily; or positively, because they

have found therein the fullness of life.

The depreciation for mankind of the significance of the

sex relation and of the significance of love in the sex relation

brings into it all the immorality still imposed by

conventionalism as morality.

We no longer consider, as in our mother's youth,

ignorance of the side of life which concerns the propagation of

the race the essential condition of womanly purity. But the

conventional idea of purity still maintains that the untouched

condition of the senses belongs to this conception. And it

would be right, if the distinction were made between purity and

chastity. Purity is the new-fallen snow which can be melted or

sullied; chastity is steel tempered in the fire by white heat. For

chastity is only developed together with complete love; this not

only excludes equally all partition among several but also

makes a separation between the demands of the heart and the

senses impossible. The essence of chastity is, according to

George Sand's profound words: " to be able never to betray the

soul with the senses nor the senses with the soul " (" dene

pouvoir jamais tromper ni l'ame avec les sens ni les sens avec

l'ame "). And as absolute consecration is its distinctive mark, so

is it also its demand. This alone is the chastity which must

characterize the family life and form in the future the basis of

foundation for the happiness of the people.

Literature was, therefore, wholly justified when in the

name of nature it attacked the hyperidealistic subtlety which

raised the love of the heart to the highest rank and made that of

the senses the lowest; and when it desired that the woman

should not only know what complete love was but that she

should also when she loved desire that completeness.

Because from time to time powerful voices were raised,

like George Sand's or Almquist's, calling without consideration

not only that marriage immoral which was consummated

without mutual love but also that marriage immoral which was

continued without mutual love—a purer consciousness has

awakened in questions regarding the conditions of the genesis

of the unborn race and elevated the conditions of the personal

dignity of man and woman. So eventually it will come to pass

that no finely sensitive woman will become a mother except

through mutual love; that this motherhood sanctioned legally or

not so sanctioned shall be considered the only true motherhood,

and every other motherhood untrue. Thus will mankind awaken

to such a feeling of the "Sanctity of the generation," and to

such an understanding of the conditions of the health, strength

and beauty of the race, that every marriage which has its source

in worldly or merely sensual motives, or in reasons of prudence

or in a feeling of duty shall be considered as Almquist calls it:

"A criminal counterfeiting of the highest values of life." And

the same criminal counterfeit obtains in every married life

which is continued under the compulsion, the distaste or the

resignation of one of the two. Man will be penetrated with the

consciousness that the whole ethical conception which now in

and with marriage gives to a husband or a wife rights over the

personality of the other, is a crude survival of the lower periods

of culture; that everything which is exchanged between

husband and wife in their life together, can only be the free gift

of love, can never be demanded by one or the other as a right.

Man will understand that when one can no longer continue the

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