Editing Bertha von Suttner (section)

== Writing ==

As a career writer, Suttner often had to write novels and novellas that she did not believe in or really want to write, to support herself. However, even in those novels there are traces of her political ideals; often, the romantic heroes would fall in love upon realising they were both fighting for the same ideals, usually peace and tolerance.{{according to whom|date=December 2019}}

To promote her writing career and ideals, she used her connections in aristocracy and friendships with wealthy individuals, such as Alfred Nobel, to gain access to international heads of state, and also to gain popularity for her writing. To increase the financial success of her writing, she used a male pseudonym early in her career. In addition, Suttner often worked as a journalist to publicise her message or promote her own books, events, and causes.

As Tolstoy noted and others have since agreed, there is a strong similarity between Suttner and [[Harriet Beecher Stowe]]. Both Beecher Stowe and Suttner "were neither simply writers of popular entertainment nor authors of tendentious propaganda.... [They] used entertainment for idealistic purposes."<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Braker|first=Regina|date=January 1991|title=Bertha von Suttner as Author: The Harriet Beecher Stowe of the Peace Movement|journal=Peace & Change|volume=16|pages=74–96|doi=10.1111/j.1468-0130.1991.tb00566.x}}</ref> For Suttner, peace and acceptance of all individuals and all peoples was the greatest ideal and theme.

Suttner also wrote about other issues and ideals. Two common issues in her work, apart from pacifism, are religion and sex.

=== Religion ===

There are two main issues with religion that Suttner often wrote about. She had a disdain for the spectacle and pomp of some religious practices. In a scene in ''Lay Down Your Arms'' she highlighted the odd theatricality of some religious practices. In the scene, the emperor and empress are washing the feet of normal citizens to show they are as humble as Jesus, but they invite everyone to witness their show of humility and enter the hall in a dramatic fashion. The protagonist Martha remarks that it was "indeed a sham washing."<ref name=":1">{{Cite book|title=Lay Down Your Arms|last=von Suttner|first=Bertha|publisher=CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform|year=2015|isbn=978-1514744314|pages=95–96}}</ref>

Another issue prominent in much of her writing is the idea that war is righteously for [[God]], and leaders often use religion as a pretext for war. Suttner criticised this reasoning on the grounds that it placed the state as the important entity to God rather than the individual, thereby making dying in battle more glorious than other forms of death or surviving a war. Much of ''Lay Down Your Arms'' discusses this topic.

This type of religious thinking also leads to segregation and fighting based on religious differences, which Bertha and Arthur von Suttner refused to accept. As a devout [[Christian]], Arthur founded the League Against Anti-Semitism in response to the pogroms in Eastern Europe and the growing [[antisemitism]] across Europe.<ref>{{Cite book|title=All her Paths were Peace: The Life of Bertha von Suttner|last=Longyel|first=Emile|publisher=Thomas Nelson Publishers|year=1975|isbn=978-0840764508|location=Scotland}}</ref> The Suttner family called for acceptance of all people and all faiths, with Suttner writing in her memoirs that "religion was neighbourly love, not neighbourly hatred. Any kind of hatred, against other nations or against other creeds, detracted from the humaneness of humanity."<ref name=":0" />

=== Sex ===

Suttner is often considered a leader in the women's liberation movement.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Braker|first=Regina|date=1995|title=Bertha von suttner's spiritual daughters: the feminist pacifism of Anita Augspurg, Lida Gustava Heymann, and Helene Stöcker at the International Congress of Women at The Hague, 1915|journal=Women's Studies International Forum|volume=18|issue=2|pages=103–111|doi=10.1016/0277-5395(95)80047-s|issn=0277-5395}}</ref>

Von Suttner broke through [[sex barrier]]s by her work as a writer and activist. She was an outspoken leader in a society in which women were to be seen, not be heard. But she did not actively participate in the movements for women's suffrage, for instance, which she explained due to  a lack of time. She instead focused on reaching out to other women in the international peace movement, though she kept close contact to the women's [[suffrage movement]]. As a sign of joint solidarity, for instance, Von Suttner was a prominent participant of the 1904 '[[Second Conference of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance|International Women's Conference]]' ('Internationale Frauen-Kongress') in Berlin. Von Suttner knew, though, that conflict can only be avoided if both men and women together struggle for peace, which required an absolute belief in [[sex equality]]. "The tasks involved in mankind's continuing ennoblement are such that they can only be fulfilled through fair and equal cooperation between the sexes", she wrote.<ref name="asser"/>

In ''[[Die Waffen nieder!|Lay Down Your Arms]]'', the protagonist Martha often clashes with her father on this issue. Martha does not want her son to play with toy soldiers and be indoctrinated to the masculine ideas of war. Martha's father attempts to put Martha back in the female sexed box by suggesting that the son will not need to ask for approval from a woman, and also states that Martha should marry again because women her age should not be alone.<ref name=":1" />

This was not simply because she insisted that women are equal to men, but that she was able to tease out how sexism affects both men and women. Like Martha being placed in a female structured sex box, the character of Tilling is also placed in the male stereotyped box and affected by that. The character even discusses it, saying, "we men have to repress the instinct of self-preservation. Soldiers have also to repress the compassion, the sympathy for the gigantic trouble which invades both friend and foe; for next to cowardice, what is most disgraceful to us is all sentimentality, all that is emotional."<ref name=":1" />