“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
Your friend,
——.”
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.