foundations. Yet it is through the State that humankind will reach
its highest hopes. Her conclusion: women must add their special
virtues, what she calls "God's spirit," to the "law and order"
goals of men.

Selma Lagerlof's own home was a community of family and servants,
within which she experienced profound affections--for the
nursemaid who carried her as a crippled child upon her back, for
the old housekeeper, her younger sister, her grandmother who told
the children stories every afternoon. She never married; she spent
her entire life within communities of women, and her career could
be described as the author being handed up to greatness by a
procession of women who gave encouragement, advice, editorial
help, criticism, contacts, companionship. She called Frederika
Bremer the first feminist and "last old Mamsell" of Sweden,
meaning that Frederika Bremer's life's work had banished the "old
maid" from the realm of pitiful figures. Selma Lagerlof was
herself proof of her statement.

In The Treasure, written midway between her farewell to Frederika
Bremer and her plea for woman suffrage, the men are interested in
money, murder, and revenge. They miss the evil apparent even to
their dogs. When the old mistress (and who should know better that
the home is threatened?) warns that knives are being sharpened two
miles away, her lord refuses to believe that she could hear what
he cannot. The fishpeddler's dog has instinct enough to balk and
howl, sensing death; the fishpeddler's wife and the woman tavern-
keeper respond to the supernatural however little they understand;
the men turn their backs on understanding even when they are being
implored.