Max Halbe's Jugend[1] and Wedekind's Fruhling's Erwachen[2] are dramas
which have disseminated radical thought in an altogether different
direction. They treat of the child and the dense ignorance and
narrow Puritanism that meet the awakening of nature. Particularly
this is true of Fruhling's Erwachen. Young boys and girls sacrificed
on the altar of false education and of our sickening morality that
prohibits the enlightenment of youth as to questions so imperative to
the health and well-being of society,—the origin of life, and its
functions. It shows how a mother--and a truly good mother, at
that--keeps her fourteen-year-old daughter in absolute ignorance as
to all matters of sex, and when finally the young girl falls a victim
to her own ignorance, the same mother sees her daughter killed by
quack medicines. The inscription on her grave states that she died of anaemia, and morality is satisfied.
The fatality of our Puritanic hypocrisy in these matters is especially illumined by Wedekind in so far as our most promising children fall victims to sex ignorance and the utter lack of appreciation on the part of the teachers of the child's awakening.
Wendla, unusually developed and alert for her age, pleads with her mother to explain the mystery of life:
"I have a sister who has been married for two and a half years. I myself have been made an aunt for the third time, and I haven't the least idea how it all comes about. . . . Don't be cross, Mother, dear! Whom in the world should I ask but you? Don't
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