In Keller’s writings the German woman saw herself for the first time reflected as in a truthful mirror, and she was astonished when she recognised the likeness and learned to know herself. How many of us have been told by Keller what we are, and what we need, and what we endure, and what we ought not to endure! He became, what he least of all men ever dreamed of becoming, an awakener of women, and while he bade them glance into that part of their being of which they knew nothing, he awakened in them the consciousness of their personality. In their surroundings and external circumstances, Keller’s women belonged to a bygone age. The social conditions in which they lived were simple and primitive as their own souls. They were never in want, or overworked, and they had no need to earn their living. In Paul Heyse’s writings also there is no outward misery, no cruel restraint. But in spite of the absence of this peculiar feature of the time, he too has become an awakener of the individual woman of our century. In the first place he understood women. Not one of his contemporaries can produce as rich a portrait gallery. His success did not depend upon one or two special types, for he never confined himself to exteriors, however interesting. He understood women in all the impetuosity of their being, he had the intuition necessary for seeing them as they really are in all their various moods, and he, of all the writers of the age, was the only one who invariably respected them. By these means he introduced something into literature and into the nature of women which was destined to bear incalculable results, for by regarding them in every position and under all circumstances as individuals, he taught them so to regard themselves. Till then women had been accustomed to be more or less at the disposal of others--Paul Heyse aroused them to the consciousness of their own worth. He gave them the right to dispose of themselves. He led them out of mere vegetation into the light of existence and taught them to reverence their sex. He taught them the courage of individualism. He did more. After having improved and enriched these women, he freed them from household drudgery, and gave them the grace and manners of the outer world. To a cultivated soul he added a cultivated mind, a fearless gaze, and a certain _savoir faire_ in all the circumstances of life.