The unwelcome child

by Henry Clarke Wright

I have read your letter with deep interest. Your inquiries respecting the mission of the sexes, and the government of your passional relations with your wife, seem right and proper, and what every man, who would secure and perpetuate the love and respect of his wife, and the purity and happiness of his home, will make, and on which, above all other subjects, he will seek for light. They shall receive frank and candid answers, so far as I can give them. I thank you for proposing them, as, in answering, I shall take occasion to give my views on a subject which, of all others, most directly concerns the organization and development, the character and destiny of the men and women of the future, and which involves the purity and peace of home, and the growth and prosperity of society.

Here let me say, that on no subject should a man and woman, as they are being attracted into conjugal relations, be more open and truthful with each other than on this. No woman, who would save herself and the man she loves from a desecrated and wretched home, should enter into the physical relations of marriage with a man until she understands what he expects of her as to the function of maternity, and the relation that leads to it. If a woman is made aware that the man who would win her as a wife regards her and the marriage relation only as the means of a legalized gratification of his passions, and she sees fit to live with him as a wife, with such a prospect before her, she must take the consequences of a course so degrading and so shameless. If she sees fit to make an offering of her body and soul on the altar of her husband’s sensuality, she must do it; but she has a right to know to what base uses her womanhood is to be put; and it is due to her, as well as to himself, that he should tell her beforehand precisely what he wants and expects of her.

Too frequently man shrinks from all allusion, during courtship, to his expectations in regard to future passional relations. He fears to speak of them, lest he should shock and repel the woman he would win as a wife. Being conscious, it may be, of an intention to use the power he may acquire over her person for his own gratification, he shuns all interchange of views with her, lest she should divine the hidden sensualism of his soul, and his intention to victimize her person to it, the moment he shall get the license. A woman had better die at once than enter into or continue in marriage with a man whose highest conception of the relation is, that it is a means of licensed animal indulgence. In such a relation, body and soul are sacrificed. “Let there be light” as to what constitutes a natural, divine parentage!

I shall not, in answering your queries, attempt to point out minutely what I think to be the fixed laws of human nature for the government of human parentage. I have some things to say to you, and to all who are, or hope to be, husbands, respecting the crime of an undesigned and an undesired Maternity. From what I shall say on this subject, it may be that you will get some hints as to the regulation of your passional relations with your wife.

You are a husband; you hope to be a father, and to make for yourself, your wife and children, a pure and happy home, where perfect freedom, perfect love and trust shall dwell, and where your entire nature shall expand and be perfected in all purity and nobleness. You would elevate and perfect the nature you bear in yourself and in your children. This you hope to do, not through your relations to Church or State, but through your relations as a husband and father, and by obedience to those laws of Nature which are designed to control your life in those relations. As compared with the question of the right use of the reproductive element,—its bearing on the growth, elevation and happiness of your entire being, in this and in all states of your present and future existence,—all questions of wealth, of reputation, of religion, and government, sink into insignificance. Your treatment of your wife in regard to Maternity, and to the relation from which it results, must shape your destiny and hers, at home and abroad. How can you respect yourself, knowing that your disregard of her rights, in reference to this most sacred function, has destroyed all respect for you in the heart of your wife?

Maternity is the subject under consideration. Ought it ever to exist except at the desire of the woman, and when her nature calls for it? Can it be right for man to impose on her this most sublime and overwhelming of all human responsibilities, when her nature recoils from the burden? She is not prepared to take charge of the germ of a new life, and to meet the suffering and the responsibility of developing and giving birth to a child, if her body and soul shrink from it. Under such circumstances, can it be right for man to urge on her a suffering and responsibility so much dreaded, or subject her to the possibility of a maternity against which her soul so earnestly protests?

It may be asked,—Why confine the discussion to Maternity? Why not look at the broad question of Parentage, and include the responsibility of the father, as well as of the mother? For the reason, that Maternity holds a far more intimate relation to the organization and character than Paternity. The mother has a more direct control over human destiny than the father. Woman is far more liable than man to suffer deep and enduring wrong in the office of perpetuating the race. Man, as will be shown, is generally the wrong-doer, when wrong exists; to woman belong the suffering and anguish. Woman is the victim; on man rests the responsibility. Woman’s appeal is to man to spare her this suffering and anguish, except when her nature calls, and then will she, for his sake and her own, joyfully meet and bear the cross. It is meet that woman’s appeal should be sustained. I wish to sustain it; and in so doing, while my remarks will bear mainly on Maternity, Paternity will necessarily come under review. Maternity, when a crime, suggests the questions, Who is the criminal? To what extent is he responsible for the consequences? So, in fact, the whole subject of Parentage is open, as involving the conduct and responsibility of both parents.

But, before proceeding to consider this wrong and outrage upon woman, and its influence on her, I wish to allude to two facts bearing directly on the subject.

1. That which forms the body and soul of the child must come to it, previous to birth, through the maternal organism.

Pause, my friend, and contemplate this fact, in its bearing on the birthright tendencies, the character and destiny, of your child. You and your wife wish to have a child. She prepares herself cheerfully and bravely to bear the sufferings and responsibilities of Maternity. The germ, so small when she takes charge of it, in a brief space assumes the form of a human being, and is increased in size and in weight hundreds of thousands of times.