“‘My dear Husband:
“‘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.