The Social Role of Woman

Abstract

In the social hierarchy which Kraus envisaged, woman’s role was distinctly different from man’s Kraus occupied himself with this problem especially in his earlier years. At that time this problem was in the air; it was a time of intense activity on the part of the feminist movement, especially in Germany and England. Strindberg hoped to find the true unrestricted human being in woman, and Ibsen sought to give her a more dignified place in human society. Most of Kraus’s articles dealing with this topic appeared in Die Fackel between the years 1905 and 1907, and were published in book form under the title Sittlichkeit and Kriminalität. All of them were concerned in one way or another with the activities of the Austrian, and especially the Viennese, courts. They were literal reproductions of court scenes, comments on them by Kraus and by the press, and discussions of related topics by Kraus, sometimes predominantly theoretical. By far the most attention was given to sex ethics. In this theme of what Kraus called “das Allzumenschliche” (the all-too-human) he was especially interested, feeling that its treatment by private individuals, officials, and by the law was a particularly important testing-stone of human sensitivity and tact.