Motherhood at center: Ellen key's social vision

Abstract

The new Swedish women's movement was hampered in its analysis in part by the association of ‘feminism’ with a glorification of traditional feminity attributed to turn-of-the-century essayist Ellen Key. This paper examines Key's production during one controversial decade (1896–1905) and finds that she, in fact, sought freedom for women to be true to their own characters rather than follow patriarchal definitions or emulate male behavior. She advocated a new world-view based on social solidarity and the ‘self-assertion and self-surrender’ of the mother-child relationship, as well as a transformation of society that would put motherhood at the center of public life. Dismayed at sexual hypocrisy and the suffering it caused, she wanted to remove reproduction from its patriarchal moral and legal strictures and replace ‘man's erotic dualism’ with genuine love and a new understanding of sexuality based on ‘maternal feeling’. Several interpretive questions are raised: Where is the locus of feminism? How do we recognize it when we see it? Why is the so-called ‘exaltation’ of motherhood so problematic for modern feminists?