Ellen Key
Ellen Key
Ellen Karolina Sofia Keywas a Swedish difference feminist writer on many subjects in the fields of family life, ethics and education and was an important figure in the Modern Breakthrough movement. She was an early advocate of a child-centered approach to education and parenting, and was also a suffragist...
NationalitySwedish
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth11 December 1849
CountrySweden
egoism social synthesis women
Social motherliness has made women's struggle for liberty the loveliest synthesis of egoism and altruism.
women home world
The home was a closed sphere touched only at its edge by the world's evolution.
mother women home
The socially pernicious, racially wasteful, and soul-withering consequences of the working of mothers outside the home must cease. And this can only come to pass, either through the programme of institutional upbringing, or through the intimate renaissance of the home.
generation however labour might monotonous obtaining older succeeded thankful wearing women work younger
While the women of the older generation were thankful if only they succeeded in obtaining 'a work and a duty,' however monotonous and wearing it might be, the will of the younger generation for a pleasurable labour has fortunately increased.
cease conflict equality extend far indeed legal marriage period received shall social storm stress thereby twentieth within woman women
The storm and stress period of women and the new social and psychological formations thereby entailed must indeed extend far into the twentieth century. This period of conflict will cease only when woman within and out of marriage shall have received legal equality with man.
beginning conception dogma esteemed formula immoral legal love marriage might moral opposed simplest women
The simplest formula for the new conception of morality, which is beginning to be opposed to the moral dogma still esteemed by all society, but especially by the women, might be summed up in these words: Love is moral even without legal marriage, but marriage is immoral without love.
adapted against astronomy considered contains exact exactly example far life thus warning women
The exact sciences, which would be considered a priori as little adapted to women, for example mathematics, astronomy and physics, are exactly those in which thus far they have most distinguished themselves. This contains a warning against too precipitate conclusions about the intellectual life of woman.
art bringing demands equal expect family flowers forth happy homes interest life living servants window women
The art of living demands that our interest in bringing forth flowers in our family life equal the interest we take in bringing them forth in our window gardens. So long as their home-life aesthetics have not become ethics, women need not expect husbands, children, or servants to feel happy in the homes of their creation.
activity among charity duty experience expression family finds focused law means regard resistance seldom social soul women
On the whole, the experience that the activity of the soul obeys the law of least resistance has been verified even in regard to women's social morals. As a rule, these have been focused on the family and on charity - among other reasons, because woman's sense of duty seldom finds means of expression in other directions.
conception conflict deep insight learn life man men regard womanly women
Men have desired, and justly, that women should learn from their confessions in regard to the conflict between man and woman. But woman, because of the conventional conception of womanly purity, has been intimidated from conceding to men a deep insight into her erotic life experiences.
brilliant business choose courage european examples freedom hotel increasing lack means spite successful woman women
Lack of courage or means often deters the European woman from more independent business activity, and this in spite of increasing freedom to choose her occupation, in spite of brilliant examples of successful undertakings of women, in photography, hotel or boarding-house management, dress-making, etc.
action approval formative home province quite sea society wishes woman women
It is in the province of home and society that woman has fashioned the customs. Here, women's approval and disapproval, wishes and wants, have been quite as formative and reformative as the action of the sea on the mainland.
coming courage create dare exactly feminine feminists measure shall supplement thousand women
If, in the coming thousand years, a feminine culture shall really supplement the masculine, then this will be exactly in the measure in which women have the courage to create and to act as most feminists now do not even dare think.
accomplish countless craving example immorality lame limbs parasites pleasure satisfy social themselves whom womanly women work
Countless are the women parasites who, to satisfy their craving for pleasure and luxury, impoverish father or husband. These lame limbs in the social organism, which themselves accomplish nothing, but for whom all other limbs work, are the most flagrant example of womanly immorality in the present.