Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/1009

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History of Woman Suffrage.

ing on the attention of parliament other reforms in favor of women; and he has recently written me that he believes that his efforts will be crowned with success.

In Denmark nothing has been done in the direction of political rights, nothing for school suffrage, though the liberal movement of 1848 improved woman's legal position slightly. But the situation of married women is still very unsatisfactory, for it may be summed up by saying that her property and her children are controlled by the husband. In 1879 many thousand women petitioned the legislature for the right to their own earnings, and a law was passed to this effect. During the last twenty years, thanks to the example set by Sweden, much has been done to open to women the field of work. In 1875 the university consented to receive women, but as the State furnishes them only primary instruction, and does nothing for their intermediate instruction, leaving this broad gap to be filled by private efforts, the educational situation of Danish women leaves much to be desired. But the women themselves have turned their attention to this matter, and high schools and professional schools for women, and generally managed by women, are springing up.

Denmark has produced several journals devoted to the interests of women and edited by women. The Friday (Fredagen), issued from July, 1875, to 1879, was edited by Vilhelmine Zahle. It was a bold, radical little sheet. The name was probably taken from the Woman's Journal and Friday Society, which appeared at Copenhagen in 1767, under the anonymous editorship of a woman. The Woman's Review (Tidsskrift for Kvinder) began to appear in January, 1882. Its editor, Elfride Fibiger, has associated with her Mr. Friïs, a very earnest friend of the women's movement, who has given a more progressive turn to the paper, which has come out for women's suffrage—the first journal in Denmark to take this radical step.

Perhaps the most encouraging sign of progress is the foundation, during the past few years, of numerous associations of women with different objects in view. John Stuart Mill's "Subjection of Women," which was translated into Danish and widely read; the "Letters from Clara Raphael," of Mathilde Fibiger, which appeared still earlier, in 1850; the writings of Camilla Collett, of Norway; the liberal utterances of the great poets of the North, Björnsen, Hostrup and Ibsen, whose "Nora" has