The Surplus Woman by Catherine L. Dollard

Author:Catherine L. Dollard [Dollard, Catherine L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Family & Relationships, History, Europe, Germany, Women, Social Science, Sociology, Marriage & Family, Gender Studies
ISBN: 9780857453136
Google: bbj9NebOsvMC
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Published: 2012-01-15T01:06:28+00:00

In the middle and higher classes we meet an arbitrary disparity, hence, one that may easily be removed; and in these classes we meet most unmarried women. Here man has privileges; he has not only advantages given him by nature, but also advantages bestowed upon him by society, that is, by his own sex; and thus the weight of the misery, which may be supposed if we look at the foregoing figures, is doubled. He has all the opportunities for education, and all imaginable facilities. To woman is denied the state's sanction, even to an education acquired independently of state aid, except the professional education of a teacher. To him are open all the many places in the civil service, where life-long maintenance awaits him; to women places are open to such limited extent that they almost disappear from sight.24

Omitting statistical analysis, Lange claimed that more unmarried women were to be found among the bourgeoisie, tapping into the general understanding of the female surplus. The crux of the issue then was straightforward: middle-class women did not have the educational or institutional opportunities that were available to middle-class men. Yet by identifying the middle-class unmarried as her target for reform, Lange had to grapple with a deep-seated, archaic stereotype: the alte Jungfer, or old maid.

The inequity between the bourgeois old maid and the bachelor offended Lange's sensibility, because she believed that single men bore no small measure of responsibility for the female surplus. Lange claimed that while middle-class men waited longer to marry as they gained professional training and advancement, they remained free to engage in amorous liaisons at will. Adding injury to insult, these same men often were most vocal in opposing the expansion of middle-class female education and work opportunities: “A cry of desperation is raised among the better educated classes…when their women make an attempt at participating in male privileges in order to acquire the knowledge made necessary for competition…they are ever and again reminded of their ‘natural calling.’”25 Those men who “exercised their sex outside of marriage”26 refused bourgeois women the opportunities to exercise their intellect or capacity for work. Lange condemned the double standard: “Verily, he is not to be envied for his heart or his judgment who in the face of the foregoing figures still has the courage to point out to those who cry for bread or a satisfactory sphere of activity a calling which they are unable to follow…The fate of women is made easier by opening all the professions, and thus offering at least a limited number of them satisfactory maintenance.”27 Lange castigated all who hallowed a ground upon which single women could not walk.

Because so many women could not exercise their “natural calling,” Lange argued that middle-class men needed to expand their understanding of the female Bestimmung and open professional and educational avenues for women. The ideology of spiritual motherhood provided a comforting framework from which to straddle the realms of tradition and progress. Steering clear of advocacy limited only to single women, Lange maintained that improved female education would serve all women.

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