The Mother’s Influence
By “Ouida”
(Mlle. Louise de la Ramee, Author of “Under Two Flags,” “A Dog of Flanders,” etc. Died Jan. 28, 1908. The following is from one of a series of articles written and sold to Lippincott’s 28 years ago with the request that they be not published until after her death. The articles appeared in the May, June, and July, 1909, issues.)
When we reflect on the enormous weight which the woman’s influence has on the growing child; when we consider the incurable superstitions, the unreasonable fables, the illogical deductions, the warped and stifled judgments, which millions of young boys learn in education and religion at their mothers’ knees in infancy,—it is impossible to over-rate the invaluable consequences of any introduction of geist into the minds of women. But for the backward pressure of woman—woman ever conservative, ever reculante, ever wedded to form and precedent, and to tradition—the world of men would have forsaken many a cultus built on fable, many a dominion of priestcraft, many a limbo of worn-out and oppressive credulity. The evil mental influence of women is fully as great as can be the good moral influence of the best of their sex. Wars hounded on; fetters freshly riveted; the withes of dead beliefs binding down the free action of living limbs; the pressure of narrow ties, and of egotisms deified to virtue, forcing men aside from paths of greatness or justice—all those, and much more, are due to the baleful intellectual influence of women.