The new woman is also deeply convinced that only when she feels
happy—and happiness signifies the development of the powers inherent in
the personality—can she properly fulfil her duties as daughter, wife,
and mother. She can consciously sacrifice a part of her personality, for
example forego the development of a talent, but she can never subjugate
nor surrender her whole personality and at the same time remain a
strong-willed member of the family or of society, in the broadest
meaning of the word. She must assert her conception of life, her feeling
of right, her ideals. And no social considerations for children,
husband, or family life are, for her, above the consideration which, in
this respect, she owes to her own personality. When conflicts arise, she
seeks, wherever possible, a solution that will permit her to fulfil her
duty without annihilating herself. But if this is not possible, then she
feels that it is her first duty not to fall below her ideal, either
physically or spiritually. For this would prevent her from fulfilling
precisely those duties for which she has so sacrificed herself; duties
which she can perhaps perform later under other conditions, provided she
has saved herself from being extinguished by brutality or despotism.
But along with this individualism there exists in the new woman a
feeling for the unity of existence, the unity in which all things are
parts and in which nothing is lost. She does not, then, look upon
husband and children as continually demanding sacrifice and upon herself
as being always sacrificed; she sees herself and them, as in the
antiquity of the race, always existing _by means of one another_. She is
not consumed by her love, for she knows that under such circumstances
she would deprive her loved ones of the wealth of her personality. But
although she will not, like the women of earlier times, abandon her ego
_absolutely_, she will not, on the other hand, like certain modern
feminists, keep it _unreservedly_. She will preserve upon a higher plane
the old division of labour which made man the one who felled the game,
fought the battles, made conquests, achieved advancement through
victories; and which made woman the one who rendered the new domains
habitable, who utilised the booty for herself and hers, who transmitted
what was won to the new generation—all that of which woman’s ancient
tasks as guardian of the fire and cultivator of the fields are beautiful
symbols. She feels that when each sex pursues its course for the
happiness of the individual and of mankind, but at the same time and as
an equal helps the other in the different tasks, then each is most
capable, then society is most benefited.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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