V. THE RIGHT OF MOTHERHOOD 169 VI. EXEMPTION FROM MOTHERHOOD 200 VII. COLLECTIVE MOTHERLINESS 246 VIII. FREE DIVORCE 287 IX. A NEW MARRIAGE LAW 359 INTRODUCTION Ellen Key, whose most important book is here for the first time presented in English, is no stranger in the English-speaking world. Her _Century of the Child_ has already found many appreciative readers in America as well as in England. Ellen Key is descended from a Scotch Highlander, Colonel M’Key (probably of the famous MacKay clan) who fought under Gustavus Adolphus, and she attaches no little significance to this ancestry. She has always interested herself in English matters, and is well acquainted with the life and literature of Great Britain; but she belongs first and foremost to Scandinavia. She was born in 1849 in the Swedish province of Smaland, on a country estate of her father. He had played a distinguished part in the Swedish parliament as an avowed radical, but his wife was a representative of an old and noble family. Ellen, their eldest child, was marked from an early age by her love of nature and of natural things. This devotion to nature may be considered hereditary, for her great-grandfather was an ardent disciple of Rousseau, and a special admirer of Rousseau’s famous treatise on Education. He gave to his son the name of Émile, which was handed down to Ellen Key’s father. It was perhaps owing to the Rousseau tradition that the young girl was initiated from childhood in swimming, rowing, riding, and other exercises then usually reserved for boys. At the same time, she loved music and devoured books including Scott’s novels and Shakespeare’s plays. An early enthusiasm was for Goethe’s _Hermann and Dorothea_; it may be said, indeed, that the ideal of natural, beautiful, and harmonious living for which that book stands has never left Ellen Key. She was educated for the most part at home by German, French, and Swedish teachers, but it may easily be believed that a girl of so much individuality of character, so impetuous and so independent, proved a difficult child to manage and was often misunderstood. One may divine as much from the sympathetic attitude towards children and the reverence for their healthy instincts, which are revealed in _The Century of the Child_. Fortunately young Ellen had a wise and discerning mother, to whom she owed much; with a fine intuition, this mother overlooked her daughter’s indifference to domestic vocations and left her free to follow her own instincts, at the same time exercising a judicious influence over her development. While still a young girl, the future author, inspired by Björnson and other Scandinavian writers, conceived the idea of devoting herself to the study of the condition of the people and wrote several novels on peasant life.