I might refer to many other emancipated women at present well known to the public, consideration of whom has provided me with much material for the support of my proposition that the true female element, the abstract “woman,” has nothing to do with emancipation. There is some historical justification for the saying “the longer the hair the smaller the brain,” but the reservations made in chap. ii. must be taken into account.
It is only the male element in emancipated women that craves for emancipation.
There is, then, a stronger reason than has generally been supposed for the familiar assumption of male pseudonyms by women writers. Their choice is a mode of giving expression to the inherent maleness they feel; and this is still more marked in the case of those who, like George Sand, have a preference for male attire and masculine pursuits. The motive for choosing a man’s name springs from the feeling that it corresponds with their own character much more than from any desire for increased notice from the public. As a matter of fact, up to the present, partly owing to interest in the sex question, women’s writings have aroused more interest, _ceteris paribus_, than those of men; and, owing to the issues involved, have always received a fuller consideration and, if there were any justification, a greater meed of praise than has been accorded to a man’s work of equal merit. At the present time especially many women have attained celebrity by work which, if it had been produced by a man, would have passed almost unnoticed. Let us pause and examine this more closely.
If we attempt to apply a standard taken from the names of men who are of acknowledged value in philosophy, science, literature and art, to the long list of women who have achieved some kind of fame, there will at once be a miserable collapse. Judged in this way, it is difficult to grant any real degree of merit to women like Angelica Kaufmann or Madame Lebrun, Fernan Caballero or Hroswitha von Gandersheim, Mary Somerville or George Egerton, Elizabeth Barrett Browning or Sophie Germain, Anna Maria Schurmann or Sybilla Merian. I will not speak of names (such as that of Droste-Hülshoff) formerly so over-rated in the annals of feminism, nor will I refer to the measure of fame claimed for or by living women. It is enough to make the general statement that there is not a single woman in the history of thought, not even the most manlike, who can be truthfully compared with men of fifth or sixth-rate genius, for instance with Rückert as a poet, Van Dyck as a painter, or Scheirmacher as a philosopher. If we eliminate hysterical visionaries,[6] such as the Sybils, the Priestesses of Delphi, Bourignon, Kettenberg, Jeanne de la Mothe Guyon, Joanna Southcote, Beate Sturmin, St. Teresa, there still remain cases like that of Marie Bashkirtseff. So far as I can remember from her portrait, she at least seemed to be quite womanly in face and figure, although her forehead was rather masculine. But to any one who studies her pictures in the Salle des Etrangers in the Luxemburg Gallery in Paris, and compares them with those of her adored master, Bastien Lepage, it is plain that she simply had assimilated the style of the latter, as in Goethe’s “Elective Affinities” Ottilie acquired the handwriting of Eduard.