CHAPTER VII.

I did not fully understand the meaning of Mr. Lister’s words. “In what respect,” I said, “does woman want the ownership of her own person? Does she not have it already?”

“In respect to maternity,” he replied.

“I do not understand you,” I said; “please explain more fully.”

“Well,” said Mr. Lister, “the women say that while they are willing, under all proper conditions, to undergo what George Sand grandly called ‘the august martyrdom of maternity,’ they utterly refuse to have that martyrdom imposed upon them any longer. They say that maternity, multiplied and practically enforced as it is, constitutes the primeval curse that has rested upon them since they were driven out from the Garden of Eden. They say that they can bear that curse no longer, and that the time has come for man, by the same enlightenment that is flooding all other fields of knowledge, to adopt a manner of life that shall remove it.”

“In short, they demand, as a final, inalienable right, that man shall give them an irrevocable, perpetual guarantee, that no woman from this time forth and forever, shall be subjected to the woes of maternity without her free and specific consent in all cases.”

“What a preposterous idea!” I exclaimed in astonishment. “Upon what ground do they base this extraordinary claim?”

“Simply,” replied my friend, “upon the ground that maternity is what George Sand called it, a ‘martyrdom.’ It puts the life of every woman who enters upon it in real jeopardy. It imperils an existence which is as sweet to woman under true conditions as man’s existence is to him. The terrible risks of maternity are woman’s and woman’s alone. They cannot be shared by man, and woman therefore contends that she alone should freely elect when she should incur those risks. Besides the real peril and physical anguish of maternity, there are the weary months of sleepless watching, of wearing care and wasting anxiety. For man to lightly or indifferently expose woman to such peril and suffering without her free and undoubted assent, is, she claims, worse than the worst form of African slavery, obsolete, barbaric and unchristian.”

“Unchristian!” I feeble echoed, for the sudden opening of such an entirely new field to me for woman’s rights confused me so that I mechanically repeated his last word in a kind of stupor, “Unchristian!”

“Yes, unchristian,” he resumed; “the women quote the saying of St. Paul, ‘Love worketh no ill to his neighbour,’ and say that man, under the sacred name of love, casts upon woman, who is his nearest and dearest neighbour, the most grievous ills that humanity is capable of bearing. He compels woman to continually run a gauntlet as cruel as the Indian’s tomahawk, and multitudes of them sink down before it is run. In the face of such terrible ills as man heaps upon woman, ‘the clods of the valley are sweet to her.’ See, here is a specimen of the exceeding bitter cry which began to be heard in the public magazines just before the Strike began.” And Mr. Lister picked up a magazine which lay on the table, and opening it, pointed to a letter which was contained in an article entitled “To marry or not to marry.” This letter was entitled

WHY I CANNOT THANK GOD FOR MY CHILDREN.

Poetically speaking, children are the rose-buds of life; practically, they are the torments of existence, I speak from a long and miserable experience. Married at twenty-five, I am now, at thirty-five, the mother of seven children, the eldest nine years, the youngest nine weeks. I am called their mother, but am really their slave. I was once a careless, happy, joyous girl, but my children have made me a fretful, nervous, care-worn woman. All the romance of my life has gone, the poetry of existence has changed to the dullest prose. I live in the midst of quarrelling children, instead of enjoying the society of congenial friends. From Monday morning till Saturday night I am working for my children, yet they show not the slightest gratitude, and make not the least return for all the devotion lavished upon them. Sick or well, I am compelled to live in a state of noise and confusion, distracting to my nerves and detestable to all my finer feelings.

I do not think my children are exceptionally bad or mischievous; all children are more or less so; and, of course, the more children there are in a family, the more trouble they give. Had the Roman matron, Cornelia, been the mother of seven children, instead of two, she would not have treasured them so highly, and called them her “jewels,” as the story says. Instead of being her pets, they would have been the pests of her life, as my seven children are of mine.

I feel--I know I am made for a better, a higher destiny than to be the helpless victim of seven little domestic despots. The delicious bloom of my life is gone for ever. The sweet fancies, the lovely aspirations, the serene happiness that made my girlhood a perpetual joy, will nevermore be mine. My days are passed in a pandemonium from which there is no escape.

I love my husband devotedly, and he deserves all my love, for a kinder, sweeter, tenderer husband never lived; but, dear as he is to me, had I known that marriage would have made my life what it is, I never would have married him.

A MISERABLE MOTHER.

“But surely,” said I, after I had finished reading the letter, “this must be a very extreme case. There are women who prefer large families, and who think the rearing of them no hardship.”

“I scarcely think that it can be said that they do not consider it any hardship to rear such families,” replied Mr. Lister. “I remember hearing my grandmother say once that for nineteen years she did not know a single night’s unbroken rest. She had nine children. But if there be now and then a woman who is content to become a mere propagative drudge, the great majority of them are not. They have tastes and aspirations of their own, and do not care to merge them all in children. But I beg you to remember that the essential point which woman seeks to gain in her controversy with man on this subject, is the acknowledgment of her undeniable right to the complete ownership of her own person, whether the children she bears may be many or few. And on this point I assure you that woman is in dead earnest. She will have this ownership of her own person or she will allow the race to lapse from the face of the earth. Malthus certainly never foresaw any such fearful contingency. It can be compared to nothing in the entire history of the human race, unless it be the stopping of the sun at Joshua’s command.”

“But if woman is granted this astonishing right,” I said, “will she not seek to escape the burden of maternity to such a degree as to seriously diminish the population?”

“Of that,” replied Mr. Lister, “we have no certain means of judging. Nor does it, indeed, concern the principle of justice involved. _Fiat justitia ruat cælum._ But if woman is really given her freedom, her innate instincts will undoubtedly expand naturally and strongly, and certainly the desire for children is strongly implanted in her. But her children from this time forward, if she ever has any, will be only children which are desired, and to the bearing of which she has joyfully consented. This simple condition alone must mark the beginning of a new race.”

As at many times before during the last two days, I could scarcely persuade myself that I was not dreaming. The discovery of this astounding separation between the sexes, the strange intelligence that woman, by a simple edict of her own, had solved the social evil and swept it summarily into the limbo of the abominations of the past, and now this undreamed of right to say whether she should bear children or not!

I knew not what to say; the world seemed turned to sudden and inexplicable chaos; a thousand difficulties and perplexities presented themselves to my mind, and I was about to excuse myself and go out into the street to cool my heated brain, when a dull, heavy alarm bell sounded in the town.

“It is fire,” said Mr. Lister, springing from his chair. “Good God! what if it should be among the buildings occupied by the women!”

Even as he spoke there came the sound of the swelling, hurrying rush and tread that springs up in the track of a dread ravager. We rushed tumultuously into the street.

[Illustration]