“But it is so strange, so insane, as it seems to me. Do you mean to throw contempt on motherhood per se?”
“I am not discussing motherhood per se; no woman has yet been in a position to know what it is per se, strange as it may appear. No woman has yet experienced it apart from the enormous pressure of law and opinion that has, always, formed part of its inevitable conditions. The illegal mother is hounded by her fellows in one direction; the legal mother is urged and incited in another: free motherhood is unknown amongst us. I speak of it as it is. To speak of it per se, for the present, is to discuss the transcendental.”
There was a moment’s excited pause, and Hadria then went on more rapidly. “You know well enough, Henriette, what thousands of women there are to whom the birth of their children is an intolerable burden, and a fierce misery from which many would gladly seek escape by death. And indeed many do seek escape by death. What is the use of this eternal conspiracy of silence about that which every woman out of her teens knows as well as she knows her own name?”
But Henriette preferred to ignore that side of her experience. She murmured something about the maternal instinct, and its potency.
“I don’t deny the potency of the instinct,” said Hadria, “but I do say that it is shamefully presumed upon. Strong it obviously must be, if industrious cultivation and encouragements and threats and exhortations can make it so! All the Past as well as all the weight of opinion and training in the Present has been at work on it, thrusting and alluring and coercing the woman to her man-allotted fate.”
“Nature-allotted, if you please,” said Henriette. “There is no need for alluring or coercing.”
“Why do it then? Now, be frank, Henriette, and try not to be offended. Would you feel no sense of indignity in performing a function of this sort (however noble and so on you might think it per se), if you knew that it would be demanded of you as a duty, if you did not welcome it as a joy?”
“I should acknowledge it as a duty, if I did not welcome it as a joy.”
“In other words, you would accept the position of a slave.”
“How so?”