THE PRINCIPLE OF HOPE

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contrasting its rosy cheeks with the pallor of adults; whereupon they turned out to have little more in common than a fresh skin and a general air of the March
revolution. Proletarian youth, however, does not create any fictitious contrast to its class, but identifies itself with it. It sees the latter as just as young and futurist as itself,
and just as preoccupied with the morning of life, with the life of tomorrow. What it brings to that class is therefore not a goal of its own but an unbroken impetus
towards the common proletarian goal. Sorrow however, greatness, noble­mindedness, all naive and high­vaulted, do not constitute a future on their own. The good of
not being cheated of our youth will only be achieved when nobody can be cheated and deprived of their rights any more.
Struggle for the new woman, programme of the women's movement
Woman lies at the bottom, she has long been trained to do so. She is always available, always serviceable, she is the weaker sex and tied to the home. Serving and the
obligation to please are related in female life, since pleasing also makes for servitude. The young girl had to be provided for through marriage, so she sat on the perch,
and had to wait for a husband. Or she captured men with cunning and herself as the bait, remained a minor even then, without a hunting licence. If her catch was not
successful, or if the virgin was too choosy, then she suffered a barren mockery: the woman ranked as an old maid. Sexual life, if it was present, as it mostly was, was
not allowed to be shown. A job was regarded as indecent right down to the lower petit­bourgeois levels of society. But courageous girls and women drew a different
conclusion, dreams of the new woman began. Around 1900, a little before and afterwards, a light flared up here which retains its attraction. The free girl announced her
arrival, but so too did the masculine woman, both no longer inclined to be oppressed or even misunderstood. The incipient disintegration of the bourgeois home and the
growing need for employees facilitated or justified this path into the open. New love, new life were demanded, a thoroughly self­chosen love, without the official stamp
of approval. But what seemed more important, and certainly more strongly affirmative was the access to public life, to a job. The longing was to enjoy life to the full,
happy brooding on the nest was no longer the goal. This lay instead outside the limits of the family, outside all the limits which had previously determined woman by
hemming her in. The bourgeois girl who did not yet need to earn her