“Oh, bosh! In the first place, what is a good woman?”
“A woman who is virtuous and honorable and industrious and—Well, you know what ‘good’ means as well as I do.”
“I know a lot better than you do, you old mud-turtle. There are plenty of good women on the stage. And there are plenty of bad ones off. There are more Commandments than one, and more than one way for a woman to be bad. There are plenty of wives here in Blithevale whose physical fidelity you could never question, though they’re simply wallowing in other sins. You know lots of wives that you can’t say a word against except that they are loafers, money-wasters, naggers of children, torturers of husbands, scourges of neighbors, enemies of everything worth while—otherwise they are all right.
“They neglect their little ones’ minds; never teach them a lofty ideal; just teach them hatred and lying and selfishness and snobbery and spite and conceit. They make religion a cloak for backbiting and false witness. And they’re called good women. I tell you it’s an outrage on the word ‘good.’ ‘Good’ is a great word. It ought to be used for something besides ‘the opposite of sensual’!”
“All right,” Bret agreed, “use it any way you want to. You’ll admit, I suppose, that a good woman ought to perpetuate her goodness. A good woman ought to have children.”
“Yes, if she can.”
“And take care of them and sacrifice herself for them.”
“Why sacrifice herself?”
“So that the race may progress.”
“How is it going to progress if you sacrifice the best fruits of it? Suppose the mother is a genius of the highest type, a beautiful-bodied, brilliant-minded, wholesome genius. Why should she be sacrificed to her children? They can’t be any greater than she is. Since genius isn’t inherited or taught, they’ll undoubtedly be inferior. And at that they may die before they grow up. Why kill a sure thing for a doubtful one?”