Los Angeles herald., 1910-05-08

nAclS. IIefS SOMEONE uiScoNeIeu that
she had a voice.
Then the Philharmonic club, local
musical organization, picked her up
and gave her what training was pos
siblc until the day arrived when Olive
Fremstadt, eager to go farther, could
go no more unless she should go to
Europe And that is just where she
went The club arranged details and
Olive went abroad to continue her
studies. When she came back she
joined the Metropolitan forces.
In Minneapolis there Is a little, old
lady, a widow now, who frequently
says:
"Oh, yes. Olive was a good girl She
was happy and contented. and she al
ways sang over her work"
Mime. Ala 'Nazlmoya, the days most
distinguished interpreter of Ibsen's
women, has just declared that the
great Norwegian has been Woefully
misunderstood. Doubtless you yourself
may have had some such suspicion
after seeing one of the plays perform
ed not quite to your liking. But you
thought it was the actor who misun-
derstood. Not so, says Nazimova. 1t
is the public the great. stupid public,
which doesn't recognize life when 1t
sees it, and which insists upon reading
which the author never put into them.
Nine ALA, you see, regards the white
horse of Rosmersholm as merely a
white horse, nothing more. Witch
fires are witch fires, she says, and the
master builders vertigo merely a phys
ical disability by no means uncommon.
Thus NazimoVa, and more power to
her. She has taken from our shoulders
a great load. We. who have feared
Il WI
have been unable to prate learnedly of
his "cryptic psychology" whatever
that may be, now know that our fail
ure to arrive was because we were
looking for landmarks which did not
exist when, as a matter of fact, our
destination lay in plain sight, straight
ahead of us. That's always one diff
Guilty, you know. A man may miss a
mountain while looking for the road
to it which leads by little red barn.
In this age of Voluminous utterance
concerning the nature. the destiny, the
rights and the wrongs of woman, there
Is no writer in Europe whose opinions
on the subject are regarded with sucn
keen interest as Ellen Key. An ardent
advocate of perfect freedom for woman
and believing that all opportunities
for the complete development of her
individuality should be open to her,
Ellen Key nevertheless refuses to
identify herself with the regular fem
mist movement or even with any part
of it, the suffrage movement, for IN
stance. She believes the chief mission
of future womanhood lies in an enllght-
ened motherhood. Woman's endeaVor
should be not to become as much like
man as possible, but to develop to the
fullest extent the truly feminine in her
by freeing herself from conventions
and the moral shackles imposed on
her by man, shackles which are artl-
fetal because they are of mans max
ing and are unsuited to woman's ma
ture.
The ideal woman of Ellen Key
dream is foreshadowed in her prose
poem, ''The Woman of the Future. IN
those days to come woman will be not
more like man, but more unlike him.
She will contribute a larger amount
and a. better quality of intellect to the
worlds mental storehouse than she
does at present. But her special femi-
nine service will be the refined and
spontaneous emotion which she VIII
radiate about her in the future. These
attributes will enable her to love pet
ter. to educate her children better, to
he a better companion to man, not by
renlacing. but by supplementlng him,
Tn n word she will be of equal value
with man in the scheme of things,
but not of like value. Humanity VIII
be the gamer, because the womanly
element now largely suppressed In the
masculine regime will be allowed to
unfold itself freely and enrich the
world to the full limit OF its worth.
while Ellen Key does not accuse the
feminines Of directly opposing such an
ideal. and is in sympathy with many
of their objects, she does not think
their methods conducive to the end
she has in view.