The unwelcome child

Dear Friend:

In the three preceding letters, I have endeavored to present to you the crime of an undesigned and undesired Maternity, especially in its bearing on the mother and the child. I have shown how it wrongs the mother by crushing out of her heart her love and respect for her husband, and converting them into a settled feeling of bitterness and contempt: and also by filling her with feelings of murderous hostility towards her child, and driving her to deeds which her soul abhors,—thus destroying her self-respect, and making her to seem like a loathsome and degraded object in her own estimation. I have shown, also, how it wrongs the child, by depriving it of a mother’s loving sympathy, by forcing it into an existence that is detested by father and mother, by stamping on it, before birth, disease and crime, and tendencies to all that is evil, and thus subjecting it to the detestation of its fellow-beings, in its future manhood or womanhood. The father perpetrates the deepest crime against the child, by committing its ante-natal education to the hands of one to whom its very existence is her abhorrence and loathing. What greater crime could a husband and father commit against his wife and child? None; no, none!

In this letter, I will give you the experience of a husband and wife, as given by themselves, and by a mutual friend, who is also a wife and a mother. I extract from their letters with few omissions. See, in the experience of this wife and mother, the deep, unutterable anguish, and the deeper woe of conscious degradation, to which woman, in her mistaken notions of conjugal duty, her fear of losing a husband’s love and confidence, and her horror of an undesired maternity, will subject herself. Read over her experience, as detailed by her friend and herself, and then say if any crime man can commit, can surpass that which husbands and fathers often do to their wives and children, merely for the momentary gratification of their sensual passions:

“Some fifteen years ago, a man of culture, and engaged in public life, was united in marriage with an intimate friend of mine. With pride and confidence, he selected her from a large and admiring circle of friends, as one embodying his ideal of womanly excellence. My friend was thought a fortunate girl (only seventeen), and many thought him quite as fortunate. They were much in society, and she began to enjoy life intensely.

“She was too much a woman not to desire offspring some time, but she felt unprepared to have maternity forced upon her youth and inexperience. It came at a time when her husband’s calling led him much from home, to mix in the society she so much enjoyed, and which she felt was contributing to make her what she so much desired to be,—her husband’s fitting and equal companion. It was not without a severe struggle she resigned these advantages and checked her aspirations. However, she submitted, though she keenly felt the sacrifice.

“Though overwhelmed with the greatness of her responsibilities, and an undefined dread of physical suffering, she was determined not to appear weak, but bravely to meet and bear the burden imposed upon her. Her husband was absent when the trial hour came; but when he returned, he took his babe and wife to his bosom with pride and joy, though its gestational development had, apparently, scarcely given him an anxious thought.

“My friend’s future looked bright. She did not see or understand the fact, that she was to continue to develop the germs of human beings into life, with little sustaining help from the father, whose caresses generally ended in exhausting her vital powers by passional indulgence. She did not complain, but rather rejoiced, as she saw her other powers of attraction to her husband depart one by one, that she was so organized as to be able to meet what she knew he considered an essential want of his nature.

“Eleven years passed, at which time she gave birth to her sixth child. She was a devoted mother, of a joyous spirit, and possessed of wonderful elasticity. But woman cannot be entirely happy in maternity alone, without the presence and sustaining power of her husband. If she is a true wife, she desires to be more to her husband than merely the mother of his children.

“Her husband made for her a beautiful material home, and seemed happy when with her; but he was much away; he sought other pleasures, social and intellectual, in which she could not participate;—she must stay at home, alone, with her children. Little did he know the trials of patience and strength in his wife, in being compelled to bear the responsibility of the health and training of her little ones alone. The world called her a happy wife, and she felt that she ought to be so; but a dark cloud was coming over her once joyous spirit. She began to realize the fact, so fatal to a wife’s happiness, that her husband did not feel her to be his equal, and a fitting companion to meet his social and intellectual necessities. When he brought home a friend, she listened to conversations and discussions in which she could not participate. She felt keenly the growing distance between them, and she knew too well how it had come about.

“She quietly made up her mind to have no more children. How did she propose to bring it about? Not by asking her husband to deny himself his accustomed indulgence; no, that, she thought, would be to cut herself off from her strongest hold on his affection and confidence, and to sever the last link of the chain that bound them together. She did not expect that any precaution would enable her to escape conception. She brought herself to do what was most repugnant to her nature, and which, as she felt, would destroy her self-respect, and make her, in her own estimation, a degraded woman, namely, TO PROCURE ABORTION.

“The first shock given to her constitution by this abuse of her nature was comparatively light. But once did not suffice. As a longer interval passed without a new-born babe than ever before, she had begun to take her place by her husband’s side in society, earnestly praying that she might be spared maternity evermore. Her husband delighted to have her with him. He felt that he had a right, by law and the customs of society, to his gratification; he persevered in demanding it, and she continued to yield. Several times in four years did she nip the young flower of fœtal life in the bud, and each time told more and more terribly on her constitution, until the power of conception was nearly destroyed, at little more than thirty-five years of age. She was shorn of her Womanhood, and became a sickly, broken-down wife and mother, in the very spring-time, as it were, of her life, being driven frequently to perpetrate a degrading outrage upon herself, or endure a maternity abhorrent to her soul;—and all to gratify the sensual passion of her husband, thinking thereby to secure his affection and respect. How fatally mistaken! By yielding, she strengthened his passion, but not his love.

“Reflecting on her sad experience, in the light of your book on ‘Marriage and Parentage,’ which I had placed in her hands, she saw clearly where the wrong had been, but for a long time felt powerless to destroy what she regarded as her last hold on her husband. He was absent, and I prevailed on her to write and lay the matter frankly and plainly before him, and send him your book. She was then prostrated in body and soul by the last outrage upon her womanly and maternal nature. She wrote, and, hoping that you may do good with these letters, the husband and wife have granted me the privilege of copying portions of them for you. Here is a part of hers to him:

“‘I feel like lying down and weeping that I have become unworthy, intellectually and spiritually, of mating with you; but love is the foundation of true marriage, is it not? and I feel strong in my love-nature. It is high, and deep, and rich, and who shall say, if rightly cultivated, what flowers of intellect and spirituality might not blossom out from its soil?

“‘My husband! forgive me if I say, that I deeply and sadly feel that my Womanhood has been robbed of its most precious charm, for your sake, through a weak indulgence and subjection to that in you which is lower than the spiritual. My body has been painfully desecrated, perhaps not more by your act than mine. You suffer the loss of that refining and ennobling influence which only an undefiled woman can impart to man.

“‘In view of our past, words cannot express my remorse and self-condemnation; but believe me, the bitterest suffering is caused to me by the knowledge that through this sin and misery, I am rendered incapable of becoming to you a tithe of what I desire to be. How can you do otherwise than shrink from the wreck I am fast becoming? And though I may feel, in my moments of anguish and remorse, that you are as much the cause of my mental and physical wreck and imbecility as I am, God grant I may not unjustly murmur or accuse you!

“‘It is said, “Men never love complaining women.” Alas! if they treated their wives with half the respect and tender consideration they do other women, there would be less ground for complaint. I am convinced, that in proportion as woman yields to the demands of animal passion in her husband, in that same ratio he loses his love and respect for her. By bitter and humiliating experience, this conviction is forced upon me.

“‘My husband! I love you. The power lies in you to bless and save me; the power lies in me to bless and save you; but have we not cursed each other instead? I cry unto you for life,—will you give me death? I would make my Womanhood a crown of glory to your life, your Manhood to mine. Shall we allow the very life-essence of our being to be exhausted in sensual indulgence, till we lose the power to feel and appreciate a pure spiritual love? My heart is reaching out to you for life, at the same time that my body is suffering untold agonies from the outrages perpetrated on my nature to escape the anguish and horror of an unwelcome maternity; outrages which have polluted and humbled my soul, and nearly destroyed my body—all for your sake; that I might retain your love and respect.

“‘I would rather lay down my life now, than live without your love. Can we not love purely and nobly, without prostituting that love in mere sensual indulgence? My soul would arise and go to you as an inspiration from God; but I am suffering, and a realization of my present condition, my physical diseases, and mental anguish, and the knowledge that it was all caused by having maternity put upon me when I was not prepared joyfully to meet its trials and responsibilities, and the consciousness of the terrible outrage that I have been driven to perpetrate on myself and your unborn children, harden my soul, and lower me in my own opinion, so that I do now feel, and shall yet more deeply feel, if this function is still to be imposed upon me, that I am unworthy to appear in society. But for the consciousness that your passion has been, unconsciously and ignorantly, it may be, the primary cause of my misery and conscious degradation, I should scarcely dare to claim the right any more to rest in your bosom as your wife. We have both erred.

“‘You love my person; you worship the animal in me. If you love not my mind, my heart and soul more, and feel not more reverence and worship for the God in me than for the animal, if I am unworthy and unable to meet the wants of your intellectual and spiritual nature, PERISH ALL OUTWARD BONDS! Tell me, have I no power to hold you by any bonds but the sensualistic? Has my soul no power over you? If this be so, let me no longer seek to hold you at all. It crushes me, and overwhelms me with conscious degradation, to feel that I have no power over your intellectual and moral nature; that you come to me, caress me, and call me WIFE, only that I may administer to your sensual pleasure, and that you have no fond regard and loving adoration for me, except for my mere outward, physical womanhood. I cannot live so, feeling that your presence and caresses are ever to be but a prelude to the surrender of my person to your animal passion.

“‘I know I have powers of soul, which, if suffered to be developed, without this horrible crucifixion, might bless you. I will not yet believe you will turn a deaf ear to this appeal of your wife, who, as you know, has had, and can have, no life apart from you. I pray, with tears, that you will spare me from a maternity which my soul repudiates, and whose sufferings I cannot endure. You will not deny me this privilege, which, more than anything else, I ask of you.

“‘Though much guilt is on my soul, through repeated efforts to get rid of the results of your passional relations with me, and save myself from the pain and anguish of a maternity I have felt unable to bear, and of giving birth to children that I do not want, yet I will not despair of salvation reaching me through your love. To live as pure as my aspirations are, and have my life the natural outgrowth of the deep love which I feel and must express or die, would bring us both nearer heaven.

“‘I cannot consent to have the woman, the real soul-and-spirit woman in me, obliterated. I cannot believe it is my destiny to have the woman expunged from my nature. I want to be a strong, pure woman. I want to be lovely to you. Yet, heretofore, the strongest manifestations of love to you have, usually, had little other effect than to arouse your animal nature, and thus have been so turned as to render me unlovely; for a wife must become unlovely and repulsive to her husband, the moment he ceases to reverence her soul, and feels that she is to him but the means of mere sensual gratification.

“‘You will acknowledge that there is terrible wrong somewhere. May God show us a Moses to lead us out of this wilderness, this Egypt! You have often chided me for feeling unworthy of your love; reminding me how strange it was, since other and worthy men regarded me highly, and that I did not feel myself unworthy their regard. Were there no abuse of our sexual nature, your tender and noble love would so elevate and consecrate the functions of my Womanhood, that I should no more be tormented with that want of self-respect, which, alone, ever causes me to doubt your love, and feel unworthy of it. I feel, at times, that love would not, could not, thus crush my Womanhood; that it would, by intuition, guide you in your passional relations with me, so as never to do a wrong or outrage to my nature, even unwittingly. The feeling which other men’s regard awakens in me is not brought down and thus prostituted to sensual gratification, but is awakened only to vitalize and bless soul and body. Help me and save me, by your manly strength, even from myself!

“‘I appeal to you, in behalf of myself, of my husband, and my children. Deep and enduring consciousness of guilt and shame must rest on my soul, in view of the outrages I have perpetrated on myself and my unborn children, whom I was reduced to the necessity (as it then seemed to me) of killing before they were born, or of cursing with an existence loathed and detested even by the mother that bore them.

“‘My husband! you will, for my sake, for your own sake, for our children’s sake, reflect on these things, and send me your reflections. You will respond to this appeal from

THE HUSBAND’S RESPONSE.

“‘I have a word to say to you now, such as I never said before. Your letter has revealed you to me as I have never before seen you. It shows me to what utter misery I have brought you;—how, for my gratification, you have descended into the lowest hell.

“‘You intimate that I treat other women, personally, more tenderly and reverently than I do you. That is true: to my shame and regret I say it. And yet, why should I do so? Why should I crush and desecrate you, while I have too much respect for other women ever to think of doing the same to them? There is no reason for it. You are my dearest love. I should treat you more tenderly than any others; be more careful of your health, and beauty of body and soul. Of all women, the husband should most anxiously watch over the health of his wife, and most shrink from the abuse and desecration of her physical as well as spiritual womanhood.

“‘But I have not been wholly blind to your deep misery. I have seen it, and, at times, feared that I might be the cause. I did not dare ask the cause. Feeling not myself that degradation and misery of which you speak, I did not know how much you suffered; but I should have known, had I not been blinded by passion, and by the false idea that man had a right to the indulgence of his passional nature whenever he wished it, and that, too, without regard to the feelings of his wife, or the welfare of the child that might ensue.

“‘True, I, at times, heard your words of remonstrance and entreaty, but they did not touch my heart; my passion made me deaf or indifferent to your appeals to my manhood to spare you from a maternity which you could not joyfully welcome. I was lost in my own hell, and tormented. I was blind; but now and then, glimpses came to me, from your own keen anguish, of the real truth. But the blur of selfish, craving passion, would come over my sight, and I would go on my old way, cheating myself always, and sometimes you, into the feeling that it was all right; that man had a right to that indulgence, whatever might be the conditions of the wife, and whatever her feelings in regard to Maternity. At least, I persuaded myself and you that I could not help it, and that my health would suffer unless I frequently held that relation with you.

“‘Now that blind dominion of passion is at an end. Your appeal to my manhood has reached its deepest depths. The gratification of animal passion shall no more guide me in my relations to you. That it ever has is my shame, as well as your degradation. I wish you could see my soul as it now is; you would see a revolution in it. The deep wail of your spirit has reached my heart, and I am ready to go up with you out of the perdition into which my uncontrolled sensualism has cast us.

“‘You have descended into hell, for my gratification. You have consented to terrible anguish of body and soul, for no higher object than my momentary pleasure. You have sacrificed your body and soul, your self-respect, your unborn children, on the altar of my ungovernable passion. From this hour, I will seek to repair the wrong I have done you. I have forced on you, in contempt of your entreaties, a maternity which could not be otherwise than most hateful to you. I have compelled you to pass through sufferings of body and anguish of mind which you were not ready to meet, and which were all the more severe, because they were imposed by one whom you loved, and who should have known better. I have imparted to you the elements of a new life, when your very soul spurned and loathed them. I have filled your heart with deadly hatred towards the young life, my own child, that was being developed beneath it. I have compelled you to a deed of all others the most loathsome and hateful to a pure, refined and noble woman,—to the murder (it should have no other name) of your children, to the murder of my children, ere they were born, to save them from the more fearful and horrible doom of an unwelcome and hated existence.

“‘Talk not to me of your guilt, of your unworthiness to stand by my side, and to tread with me the path of life as a true, noble and loving wife. If you are guilty, what am I? If you feel degraded by the loss of self-respect, what ought I to feel? The fault is all my own. I should have known better, and had a higher appreciation of the passional relation. Had I consulted your wishes as to maternity, had I counselled with you as to when you could, with safety and exultation, take charge of the germ of my child, and naturally develop it into life, had I never imposed on you a repulsive and abhorred maternity, would the stain of abortion now darken your soul? Yes, I see it all: the deep damnation of the deed is my own, and would to God that the penalty might descend on me; that I could save you, my long-suffering, too lenient and forgiving wife, the pain and anguish!

“‘God help me! I am very sick at heart. The bitterness of death enters my soul, as I reflect on the unseen and unexpressed pain of body and desperation and anguish of soul to which my ungoverned passion has brought you. Can you forgive me? Can you again restore me to your loving confidence? Can you ever again respect my manhood, which has brought upon you all this woe? I will, henceforth, comply with the teachings of the book you sent me, and hold my entire nature in abeyance to your wishes and happiness, and in all my passional relations with you, my object shall be your health and happiness, rather than my own gratification. I will be to you an Ernest, God helping me.

“‘Dearest! believe me and trust me now, for I mean what I say, and it shall be done. I have written it here, and this shall be my pledge; and if ever I urge on you a relation that will subject you to the liability of maternity, when you do not call for it, lay this pledge before me and it shall be respected.

“‘We shall yet rejoice together on earth as we never did before. This world may not bring to you entire restoration to health of body, nor peace of mind, nor yet self-abandoned trust in your husband; but the effort to effect this, on my part, shall not be wanting. Believe me, and trust to the love, the faith and energy which your letter, and that experience of Ernest and Nina, have awakened in me. We will together seek the aid of the angel helpers, who never condemn save to restore and bless, and who are even now lifting up and vitalizing the desponding and heart-stricken.

“‘Dear wife! look up, and trust—trust—TRUST! and with strong nerve, and in conscious pride and innocence, you shall yet stand by my side, and tread with me the pathway of the future, a proud, loving, trusting, joyous wife. Your soul shall yet shine with deeper lustre on my manhood, to elevate and save your conscience-stricken, but not despairing husband. You shall yet be, in deed and in truth, my Saviour, and I will be yours.

“‘These are not idle words, but come from the heart of your loving, penitent, yet hopeful and confident

“It will do your heart good to know that that husband has, thus far, been true to his pledge; that that wife is now blooming again in comparative health. Hope and triumph are shining in her face, love quickens the intellect, and vitalizes the whole woman. And woman is intuitional, to understand and appreciate a true and noble manhood. You will not wonder, then, that she feels nearer to him, in mind and spirit, than ever before, for now she understands him, and he her. Could they have talked over the subject of passional relations, and understood each other before they entered upon their marriage life, it had saved her years of anguish. May their history be a beacon light to warn others to shun the rocks and shoals that lie, unseen, in the inner depths of wedded life!

“It may encourage you to know that they owe their salvation to you, though they allow that I have had a hand in it. True, it was through me that the experience of Ernest and Nina came to their knowledge, but I am quite willing that the author of ‘Marriage and Parentage’ should bear the responsibility and have the glory of their redemption. Their names are sacredly private. They would meet you without feeling that you know them. I shall not reveal them further than I have done.

“God speed you in your efforts to vindicate the most sacred and important of all human rights,—the right of woman to say when and under what circumstances she shall assume the office of Maternity, and the right of her child to a joyous welcome into life.

“The crime of an enforced and abhorred maternity! Well and truly do you call it, ‘THE CRIME OF EARTH.’ In whatever light it is viewed, whether in its bearing on the mother, on the child, on the husband, on home, on society, or on humanity, it is, indeed, THE CRIME OF CRIMES.

“With fervent prayers for the triumph of truth on this subject, I am

My friend, how many wives would thus appeal to their husbands, if they dared? “Sever the last link of the bond that binds her to her husband!” Mere sensualism “the last link” in such a union! I do not like to talk of chains, links, and bonds, in connection with such a relation. Talk of these in connection with slaveholders and slaves, but let them not sully a relation like this. “The last link,” indeed! Yet it is true; it is, often, the first, and last, and only link in the chain that binds the husband to the wife, in what is called marriage. Man seeks woman as a legal wife, that he may legally and respectably give indulgence, without restraint, to his passion. If the wife seeks to preserve her soul and body from desecration, he threatens to leave her, and seek his gratification where he can find it. She submits, to keep him with her; both of them, unmindful and regardless of the results to the mother and the child. “Perish all outward bonds” of marriage at once, rather than that the relation should continue in this way!

Wives! be frank and true to your husbands, on the subject of maternity, and the relation that leads to it. Interchange thoughts and feelings with them, as to what nature allows or demands, in regard to these. Can maternity be natural, when it is undesigned by the father, or undesired by the mother? Can a maternity be natural, healthful, ennobling to the mother, to the child, to the father, and to home, when no loving, tender, anxious forethought presides over the relation in which it originated?—when the mother’s nature loathed and repelled it, and the father’s only thought was his own selfish gratification; the feelings and conditions of the mother, and the health, character and destiny of the child that may result being ignored by him? Wives! let there be a perfect and loving understanding between you and your husbands, on these matters, and great will be your reward.

Maidens! a word to you. Never enter into the physical relations of marriage with a man, until you have conversed with him freely and fully on maternity, and the relation that leads to it. Learn distinctly his views and feelings, and his expectations, in regard to that purest and most ennobling of all the functions of your nature, and the most sacred of all the intimacies of conjugal life. Your self-respect, your beauty, your glory, your heaven, as a wife, will be more directly involved in his feelings and views and practices, in regard to that relation, than in all other things. As you would not become a weak, a miserable, imbecile, unlovable and degraded wife and mother, in the very prime of your life, come to a perfect understanding with your chosen one, ere you commit your person to his keeping in the sacred intimacies of home. Beware of that man, who, under pretence of delicacy, modesty, and propriety, shuns conversation with you on this relation, and on the hallowed function of maternity. Concealment and mystery, in him, towards you, on all other subjects pertaining to conjugal union, might be overlooked; but if he conceals his views here, rest assured it bodes no good to your purity and happiness as a wife and a mother. You can have no more certain assurance that you are to be victimized, your soul and body offered up, slain, on the altar of his sensualism, than his unwillingness to converse with you on subjects so vital to your happiness. In the relation he seeks with you will he, practically, hold his manhood in abeyance to the calls of your nature and to your conditions, and consecrate its passions and its powers to the elevation and happiness of his wife and children? If not, your maiden soul had better return to God unadorned with the diadem of conjugal and maternal love, than that you should become the wife of such a man and the mother of his children.

How much of woman’s suffering and degradation, under the horrors of an unnatural maternity, are owing to herself, I will not say. My appeal is to husbands, and I would show them the extent of their responsibility in this crime. Doubtless, woman might save herself much anguish and suffering, if she would approach man frankly, in womanly love, tenderness, and dignity, and open to him the depths of her soul in regard to Maternity, and the relation in which it originates. Men are not all below the brutes, in their nature. If woman were true to purity, to justice, to her own nature, and would be just and true to her husband and her children, and freely and lovingly converse with man on these relations and functions, he would, often, with manly pride and affection, respond to her. On no subject would a true and noble man respond to the words of a pure and trusting woman with more manly pride and dignity, and a more conscious self-respect, than on Maternity, and the relation that leads to it. Let wives, then, be true to themselves, if they would have their husbands true to them!