Born: 11 December 1849, Sweden
Died: 25 April 1926
Country most active: Sweden
Also known as: NA
From Famous Women: An Outline of Feminine Achievement Through the Ages With Life Stories of Five Hundred Noted Women. Written by Joseph Adelman, published 1926 by Ellis M Lonow Company:
Ellen Key, a Swedish social and ethical writer, of international importance. Born of a family of landed gentry and statesmen in which strains of Scottish and English blood were blended, she was educated at home and became in her twentieth year the secretary of her father, a member of the Riksdag.
From 1870 on she was a contributor to periodicals, on literary, historical, and sociological subjects. Later she became a teacher and lecturer at the Peoples’ Institute in Stockholm and from 1899 to 1910 she lived much abroad, the success of her books afterward enabling her to make a permanent country home for herself in Sweden.
An ardent feminist, with views of love and marriage that startle the conventional, and with convictions on the sex relations that condemn at certain points old moral standards, she was exposed to unwarranted slander and abuse, which was offset by the admiration of eminent thinkers. Her works have been translated into many languages; those which have appeared in English include: The Education of the Child, Love and Marriage, The Woman Movement, The Resistance of Motherhood, and the Younger Generation.
The Danish critic, George Brandes said:
“Ellen Key has influenced women as no one else. She has known her sex. Women have felt themselves understood by her. She has widened their views, overcome their prejudices, liberated their thoughts, awakened their courage to live. Though caring little for the external forms of morality, she yet lives and breathes the highest and purest moral atmosphere. She is and remains a brave and noble priestess of high personal culture.”
The philosopher and dramatist, Maurice Maeterlinck, speaks of her as “the good, the noble, the heroic, Ellen Key – the great liberator who, in our children, will find more enlightened, more enthusiastic and trusty followers.”
And Vitalis Norström, professor of philosophy, one of Sweden’s most profound thinkers, paid her this tribute:
“When purging Time has passed over her works, there will remain that which will place Ellen Key among the signs foreboding the new day, the day which she herself had divined and dreamt, but which will be far better than her own prophetic vision.”
The following is excerpted from “400 Outstanding Women of the World and the Costumology of Their Time” by Minna Moscherosch Schmidt, published in 1933.
This celebrated thinker and author was the daughter of a well-known Swedish liberal politician and inherited from her father a liberal mind. From 1880 she was a teacher at a school in Stockholm and, from 1893, a lecturer in history and literary history.
From she devoted herself entirely to writing. In 1910 she bought the country-house “Strand” at Lake Vattern, where she resided for the rest of her life. She came into the public eye through her lectures on about How Reactions Ensue and The Freedom of Speech and of the Press. In these lectures she fought against certain verdicts by which Hjalmar Branting (Swedish socialist and politician) had been sentenced for blasphemy , and against certain proceedings against the Board of the Society of Verdandi for a lecture on morality. She wrote essays on Ernst Ahlgren (pseudonym for Victoria Benedictsson), on Sonja Kovalevski in 1892, and Anne Charlotte LeflBer in 1893 (published in German in 1908 as Drei Frauen-Schicksale). Her excellent study on C. J. L. Almquist, “The Modern Poet of Sweden,” which contributed to the revival of interest for this author, the warm and graphic essays on Elizabeth and Robert Browning and on Goethe in Human Beings (Manniskor) her monograph Rahel Varnhagen (translated into English in 1913), and other works, were a continuation of her efforts in this direction. Women’s Energy in the Abuse 1894 (translated into German in 1898) and Natural Spheres of Activity for Women (Naturliga Arbetsomraden for Kvinnan’) caused a series of comments, to which Ellen Key replied in the treatise Feminine Psychology and Logic (Kvinnlig psykologi och logik). She approved the ultimate aims of the feminists but laid stress on the fact that the reforms were to be considered, only, as a means for women to fulfill their work as women, and not as an effort to gain equality with men. She emphasized woman’s motherly and erotic nature, which at this, time of the feminist movement was put into the background.
Thus she helped to give the movement for woman’s rights a broader and sounder basis in Sweden and abroad. She set forth her ideas in a book, called Womans Rights (Kvinnofragan ) — translated into German and English in 1909. Her views on pedagogy were unfolded in the Children’ s Century (Barnens Arhundre), Vols. i and 2 translated into English and several other languages in 190D. In essays entitled Thoughts (Tankar), Vols. 1 and 2, and Life Principles (Lifslinfer) , Vols. 1-3, she gave her philosophy of life. She believed in the ability of men to rise by their own will power. Her optimism has a trait of religions sincerity and the certainty of faith. In Ufe Principles she revealed her views on love and marriage. Marriage, she says, is sanctioned by mutual altection. She considered that sufficient reason for divorce existed in the desire for divorce by one of the contracting parties. She emphasized, however, that life-long monogamy was the noblest and happiest form of the love-life. In Sweden these theories were, at first, very much opposed. Her books, however, had an enormous influence in Sweden and abroad. The decade before the great war witnessed the height of her glory, for the clouds of the World War over-shadowed her influence abroad.
The decrease of her fame was due, partly to her frank utterance of neutrality, but essentially, to the fact that the war, apparently, defeated her optimistic philosophy of life. Until her death she defended untiringly the ideals of humanity and love.