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 scold me for asking about it. Give me an answer.—How does it happen?—You cannot really deceive yourself that I, who am fourteen years old, still believe in the stork."
Were her mother herself not a victim of false notions of morality, an affectionate and sensible explanation might have saved her daughter. But the conventional mother seeks to hide her "moral" shame and embarrassment in this evasive reply:
"In order to have a child—one must love—the man—to whom one is married.... One must love him, Wendla, as you at your age are still unable to love.—Now you know it!"