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after her initial recovery she moved first to Karlsruhe and then to
Frankfurt, and was involved in a bevy of feminist and welfare activities.
Still, current discussions of her story tend to focus on the way Freud han–
dled her therapy, on his insights versus Breuer's, and on issues of hysteria,
rather than on the fact that after leaving Freud she was prototypical of the
daughters of her class-whose only outlet for their intellect was in social
work and feminism. So, when Freud asked Marie Bonaparte, "What do
women want?" I would say that they wanted most of all to break out of
their cocoons, and that they had good reason to envy their brothers-first
as little boys and then as men.
In 1866, the first wave of feminists managed to create the Women's
Employment Association, which was meant to engage wayward women
(with illegitimate children) and widows in learning a trade that would get
them off the dole and allow them to support themselves. Even so, at the
beginning of that century, women in Vienna did not yet have the right to
vote; girls had been admitted to take
Matura
exams-a requirement for uni–
versity studies-only since 1896. In 1909 they still could not enter the
Faculty of Law-a prerequisite to high-level civil service jobs. If young
girls displayed intellectual leanings and joined feminist causes, they were
deemed masculine and unmarriageable-in an ambiance where marriage
was their only means of support.
None of the many books about
Jin-de-siecle
Vienna list the names of
the early feminist leaders in their index. Since marriage was women's pre–
scribed career, most women had husbands and saw little reason for change:
they were satisfied that they now could take jobs without their husbands'
consent and were allowed to vote in local elections. The success of specif–
ic causes in one way or another threatened to deprive women of some of
the male protection they counted and depended on. Consequently, the
majority of women were ambivalent and often opposed the feminists' ini–
tiatives. Basically, they were hemmed in by their inherent Catholicism and
conservatism, as well as by the proscribed chauvinism, and by their realis–
tic dependence on husbands and/or fathers. About those who did not
marry, for instance, the writer Olga Waissnix bitterly remarked to Arthur
Schnitzler: "Marriage is prescribed to us as the only profession which can
bring us happiness; if we don't find it,
tant pis,
calmly renounce and bear it
is the message then... that demands a heroism of which not one single man
in a thousand would be capable."
The Women's Employment Association nevertheless expanded its mis–
sion and eventually trained girls for more than factory work. Its founder,
Marianne Hainisch, the wife of a cotton-factory owner and leading mem–
ber of the League of Austrian Women's Associations, also pushed for
welfare for the poor, and for the promotion of women's moral, intellectual,
