Education and Women’s Contribution to Society. Ellen Key and Paola Lombroso

Abstract

The article compares the ideas in some of the writings of Ellen Key (1849-1926) and Italian writer and educator Paola Lombroso (1871-1954), daughter of famous physician and criminologist Cesare Lombroso. Paola Lombroso was the author of Saggi di psicologia del bambino [Essays of the psychology of the child] (1894) and in 1904 she published La vita dei bambini [Children’s life], four years after Ellen Key’s Barnets århundrade (The Century of the Child) (1900). Of particular interest are Key’s book Kärleken och äktenskapet (Love and Marriage) (1903) and Lombroso’s book Caratteri della femminilità [Characters of femininity] (1909) which was dedicated to Ellen Key. It is clear that the two writers had many ideas in common and that Lombroso admired Key highly. While Key was more polemic and outspoken, Lombroso, daughter to a famous man who claimed to scientifically have proved that women are inferior to men, found herself in an ambiguous position. Nevertheless she also wanted to upgrade women’s contributions to society.

Keywords

• Ellen Key
• Paola Lombroso
• children
• education
• women
• society