Isabel Hapgood

“ Nevertheless, Sonya's modesty amid her triumphs charmed every one; her delightfully dependent helplessness fascinated every man who came near her; while at times her love for woman's work, like embroidery, and her absolute talent for doing nothing for long intervals, drove Professor Mittag-Leffler to despair. ”

“ Nowadays women do not throw down the glove for devoted knights to rescue. They leap boldly into the lists themselves, and wage gallant battle, in company with the warriors, over many serious things, spiritual as well as material, but over none more hotly than over the question of woman's true sphere, and whether the higher education renders a woman unfeminine and unfits her for that sphere. ”

“ Only a strong and deeply interesting personality could worthily give rise to such a conflict, and such a personality Sonya Kovalevsky presented. She had no morbid self-consciousness, no precocious sense of her own importance to the universe, present and future, which could inspire her to keep a diary from the age of twelve, such as that of Marie Bashkirtseff, hitherto the best-known of her countrywomen so far as the revelation of inner life is concerned. ”

“ While many of them might hesitate or refuse, like Sonya Kovalevsky, to renounce a brilliant independent career already assured for the problematic happiness of married life, like her they desire to grasp the one without sacrificing the other. ”

“ Up to this point Aniuta, who knew only too well her father's prejudices, had conducted the affair clandestinely. But the letter with the money fell into her father's hands, and the scene which ensued was characteristic of Russian aristocratic ideas and manners. After awhile the father relented, and the family began to regard Aniuta as a genius; and when Mme. Krukovsky, with Aniuta and Sonya, went to St. Petersburg in the following winter, Aniuta carried with her the father's permission to make Dostoevsky's personal acquaintance, under the strictest surveillance of her mother. ”

“ But Sonya remained faithful and devoted to her, even to the detriment of her own interests, until Aniuta's death.
After winning many degrees and triumphs, Sonya was invited to go to Stockholm as privat-docent. She soon became professor at the university—the first woman admitted to that honor in Europe. The person who brought this about was Professor Mittag-Leffler. Sonya's intimate friend during her residence in Sweden was his sister, Anna Carlotta Leffler (Fru Edgren by her first marriage, the Duchessa di Cajanello by her second marriage to a mathematician of Naples) . ”

“ When, at last, she had found a man who entirely answered her requirements, she was radiantly happy until she discovered that he expected her to renounce her mathematical pursuits, merge her identity in his, and become simply his wife. ”

“ But parents in the higher ranks of life would not allow their daughters to go abroad to the foreign universities to study, and the higher courses of instruction for women connected with the universities of St. ”