Yes, of what good is an encyclopedia or the other wise books to the quivering, restless spirit of the child? No answer anywhere, least of all from your own mother, as Wendla and many another like her have found out.
The girl, learning that her sister has a new baby, rushes to her mother to find out how it came into the world.
Wendla. I have a sister who has been married for two and a half years, I myself have been made an aunt for the third time, and I haven't the least idea how it all comes about—Don't be cross, Mother dear, don't be cross! Whom in the world should I ask but you! Please tell me, dear Mother! Tell me, dear Mother! I am ashamed for myself. Please, Mother, speak! Don't scold me for asking you about it. Give me an answer—How does it happen?—How does it all come about?—You cannot really deceive yourself that I, who am fourteen years old, still believe in the stork.
Frau Bergmann. Good Lord, child, but you are peculiar!—What ideas you have!—I really can't do that!
Wendla. But why not, Mother?—Why not?—It can't be anything ugly if everybody is delighted over it!
Fran Bergmann. O—O God, protect me!—I deserve—Go get dressed, child, go get dressed.
Wendla. I'll go—And suppose your child went out and asked the chimney sweep?
Fran Bergmann. But that would be madness!—Come here, child, come here, I'll tell you! I'll tell you everything— ... In order to have a child—one must love—the man—to whom one is married—love him, I tell you—as one can only love a man! One must love him so much with one's whole heart, so—so that one can't describe it! One must love him, Wendla, as you at your age are still unable to love—Now you know it!
How much Wendla knew, her mother found out when too late.
Wendla and Melchior, overtaken by a storm, seek shelter in a haystack, and are drawn by what Melchior calls the "first emotion of manhood" and curiosity into each other's arms. Six months later Wendla's mother discovers that her child is to become a mother. To save the family honor, the girl is promptly placed in the hands of a quack who treats her for chlorosis.
Wendla. No, Mother, no! I know it. I feel it. I haven't chlorosis. I have dropsy—I won't get better. I have the dropsy, I must die, Mother—O, Mother, I must die!
Frau Bergmann. You must not die, child! You must not die—Great heavens, you must not die!
Wendla. But why do you weep so frightfully, then?
Frau Bergmann. You must not die, child! You haven't the dropsy, you have a child, girl! You have a child! Oh, why did you do that to me!
Wendla. I haven't done anything to you.
Frau Bergmann. Oh, don't deny it any more, Wendla!—I know everything. See, I didn't want to say a word to you.—Wendla, my Wendla—!
Wendla. But it's not possible, Mother.... I have loved nobody in the world as I do you, Mother.
The pathos of it, that such a loving mother should be responsible for the death of her own child! Yet Frau Bergmann is but one of the many good, pious mothers who lay their children to "rest in God," with the inscription on the tombstone: "Wendla Bergmann, born May 5th, 1878, died from chlorosis, Oct. 27, 1892. Blessed are the pure of heart."
Melchior, like Wendla, was also "pure of heart"; yet how was he "blessed"? Surely not by his teachers who, discovering his essay on the mystery of life, expel the boy from school. Only Wedekind could inject such grim humor into the farce of education—the smug importance of the faculty of the High School sitting under the portraits of Rousseau and Pestalozzi, and pronouncing judgment on their "immoral" pupil Melchior.
Rector Sonnenstich. Gentlemen: We cannot help moving the expulsion of our guilty pupil before the National Board of Education; there are the strongest reasons why we cannot: we cannot, because we must expiate the misfortune which has fallen upon us already; we cannot, because of our need to protect ourselves from similar blows in the future; we cannot, because we must chastise our guilty pupil for the demoralizing influence he exerted upon his classmates; we cannot, above all, because we must hinder him from exerting the same influence upon his remaining classmates. We cannot ignore the charge—and this, gentlemen, is possibly the weightiest of all—on any pretext concerning a ruined career, because it is our duty to protect ourselves from an epidemic of suicide similar to that which has broken out recently in various grammar schools, and which until to-day has mocked all attempts of the teachers to shackle it by any means known to advanced education.... We see ourselves under the necessity of judging the guilt-laden that we may not be judged guilty ourselves.... Are you the author of this obscene manuscript?
Melchior. Yes—I request you, sir, to show me anything obscene in it.
Sonnenstich. You have as little respect for the dignity of your assembled teachers as you have a proper appreciation of mankind's innate sense of shame which belongs to a moral world.
Melchior's mother, a modern type, has greater faith in her child than in school education. But even she cannot hold out against the pressure of public opinion; still less against the father of Melchior, a firm believer in authority and discipline.