Page:Emma Goldman - The Social Significance of the Modern Drama - 1914.djvu/85

 You think. . . because you are free and a grin artist, that you can set at naught-

Magda. Leave art out of the question. Consider nothing more than the seamstress or the servant-maid who seeks, among strangers, the little food and the little love she needs. See how much the family with morality demand from us! It throws us on our own resources, it gives us neither shelter nor happiness, and yet, in our loneliness, we must live according to the laws which it has planned for itself alone. We must still crouch in the corner, and there wait patiently until a respectful wooer happens to come. Yes, wait. And meanwhile the war for existence of body and soul is consuming us. Ahead we see nothing but sorrow and despair, and yet shall we not once dare to give what we have of youth and strength to the man for whom our whole being cries? Gag us, stupefy us, shut us up in harems or in cloisters-and that perhaps would be best. But if you give us our freedom, do not wonder if we take advantage of it.

But morality and the family never understand the Magdas. Least of all does the old Colonel understand his daughter. Rigid in his false notions and superstitions, wrought up with distress he is about to carry out his threat, when a stroke of apoplexy overtakes him.

In " Magda," Hermann Sudermann has given to the world a new picture of modern womanhood, a type of free motherhood. As such the play is of great revolutionary significance, not