“The University and other colleges are probably not justified by the existence of any one individual of excellence who may emerge from their course of study but by the fact that every member of the community should be provided the opportunity to develop his or her abilities for their own and the community’s betterment. I have not heard of any preening man being singled out for not achieving the pinnacle of success, so long as he is otherwise conscientious and useful and does not become a financial burden to society.”
The first thing to note about that quotation is how much it would be nice if College Presidents and PR departments talked like that. Most students, by definition, will not become the Best in the World, but all too often colleges talk as if their only goal is to produce more graduates who become internationally famous.
The second thing to note is the source. Kitty Kielland’s The Woman Question: In Answer to Pastor J. M. Faerden. That particular paragraph is demolishing the argument that women don’t need higher education because women are incapable of rising to the summits of success. There are, Pastor Faerden suggests, no female Beethovens or Mozarts, no famous historians. (Why historians? I have no idea.) Kielland suspects that women would be capable of rising to those heights, but the clever thing about her argument is that it bypasses it entirely by noting that not all educated men rise to great heights. She was too polite to note that Faerden is a good example.
The book was written in 1886, but until now, there has never been an English translation of the Norwegian text. Christopher Fauske just remedied that rather surprising fact. Kielland is not a name most people recognize, but they should. Kitty’s brother, Alexander, wrote what was for a time considered one of the Greatest Books in Western literature, Skipper Worse. (It is in the Harvard Classics five foot bookshelf of the great works of the West.) A few years back, Fauske translated the novel, and in doing the background work on Kielland, he discovered this book which his sister wrote.
(Side note: At present, Amazon does not have a decent English translation of Skipper Worse for sale. You can get the Fauske translation here. It was a rather good novel: review here. The Woman Question is on Amazon—you can click on the picture of the cover above to go there.)
Kitty Kielland was also, once upon a time, a well-known name in the art world, being one of the first generation of female painters showing they could create art every bit as amazing as their male counterparts. Undoubtedly in part because of her annoyance at the implicit barriers to female artists, she took her complaints to print. Faerden was displeased by Kielland’s arguments, so he proceeded to criticize them. Kielland replied in devastating fashion in The Woman Question.
The book was obviously written in an impassioned haste full of snark. Most amusingly, there is no Pastor J. M. Faerden. It is actually M. J. Faerden; the initials were reversed on the title page. The argument is episodic, reading like many of my students venting about something that really annoys them, jumping from arguemnt to argument, each new argument adding to the indignation of the last argument.
Two of the arguments really intrigued me. First:
In any case, the position of the housewife is that of the manager, and think how easy this work is for her because of inventions which more and more simplify housework. What a difference there is from our grandmother—yes, our grandmothers. How could they not look contemptuously at how things now are in a home we find ourselves comfortable in? They respected the fact that everything was spun, woven, knitted, and sewn in the house, that they themselves baked the bread, brewed the beer, and molded the candles. Who knows if there won’t be even more differences some few decades in the future, even greater simplification and family happiness?
I have read that exact argument many times in writings from the feminists of the 1960s. Managing a house in the age of electricity and indoor plumbing and refrigerators and dishwashers and gas or electric stoves and ovens is a rather different thing than doing the same job in the 19th century. But Kielland wrote that passage in 1886, not 1966. Yeah, there were a few innovations in homelife in the decades that followed her. As Robert Gordon documents at length in The Rise and Fall of American Growth, the half century after Kielland wrote was the biggest revolution in managing homelife in the history of the world. Just about every appliance you regularly use in your house came into being in the “some few decades” Kielland foresees. Kitty Kielland is a prophet.
Second:
The author does not deny our time contains specific “moral hazards for the growing family,” but he believes this is in large part due to modern literature. While no one seems to think any book of modern literature is appropriate as a confirmation or birthday present for young people, that cannot be the standard by which literature is judged. And is it books that promote immorality or is it, in our case, the exact opposite? Is it not the immorality of society that shapes literature, mainly to be a scourge of chastisement?
Ah, yes, those immoral books of the 1880s. The year 1886, for example, saw the publication of Henry James’ The Bostonians and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. But, the most striking thing about that remark is comparing it to our age. Which is more likely to be considered immoral these days: a modern book or a book from the past? The Pastor Faerdens are still among us, they just switched sides in the literature wars.
Kielland’s The Woman Question is not a Great Book, but it is a fun book. As Fauske notes: “Her verve and confidence, scathing wit, and indignant ability (and willingness) to point out stupidity and hubris brought me back to the text again and again.” Exactly so. The Kiellands, both Kitty and Alexander, deserve to be better known these days than they are. Let us hope Fauske keeps going with the translations.
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