When grandfather related an heroic deed of some ancestress whose proud countenance shone out among the family portraits, then the daughter of such a family must have asked herself why this deed was lauded while everything “manly” was forbidden her.
The days and years went by at the embroidery frame or netting needles, amid continuous chatter about the family and neighbours, amid eternal friction and in disputing back and forth over mere trifles. The confined nervous force sought an outlet, and in an existence where each one—according to the first paragraph of family rights—interfered in the greatest as in the smallest concerns of all the others, there was always plenty of material about which to become irritated and excited.
In the country, life was, however, fuller and fresher than in the city where the young girl had less to do and never dared go out alone; yes, where a walk was considered so superfluous, that the mother of the great Swedish feminist Fredrika Bremer advised her daughters to jump up and down behind a chair when they insisted that they needed exercise!
The relation to the parents, even if the principle of unswerving and mute obedience was not wholly carried out, was ordinarily a reverential alienation. Neither side knew the inner life of the other. The temperament of the mother determined the everyday domestic comforts, the will of the father the external occurrences of life, from the trip to the ball to marriage. The daughter whose inclination corresponded with the will of the father considered herself fortunate. The one married against her will wept, but obeyed. As an almost fabulous occurrence it was related of one or another girl that she dared to say “No” before the marriage altar; cases were not unusual in which daughters received a box on the ear and were confined to their room until they accepted the bridegroom whom the father had chosen. Even if a mother, moved by the recollections of her own youth, attempted to support a daughter it rarely succeeded. For the power of the father rested quite as heavily upon the wife. But the worst however was to water myrtle year after year, without ever being able to cut it for a bridal wreath. Even she, who in her heart loved another, found it therefore often wisest to give her consent to an acceptable suitor. Only the one whose dowry was valued at a “ton of gold”—or who also was a celebrated beauty—could run the risk of declining a courtship; yes, she could permit herself to occasion it only to decline it. The more suitors she could recount, the prouder she was; such a beauty even embroidered around her bridal gown the monograms of all her earlier wooers.