But within my own memory woman’s fall her infringement of her duty-has begun, and within my memory it has spread more and more widely.
Woman, having forgotten her law, has believed that her strength lies in the fascination of her allurements, or in her dexterity in the imitation of the sham work done by men.
But children are a hindrance to both of these.
And so with the help of science (science is always ready to do anything nasty) within my memory it has come about that among the wealthy classes dozens of methods of preventing pregnancy have appeared, and appliances for preventing childbirth have become common accessories of the toilet; and so the women-mothers of the wealthy classes who held power in their hands are letting it slip in order to compete with street-women and not be outdone by them.
That evil has spread far and spreads farther every day, and soon it will have reached all the women of the wealthy classes; and then they will be on a level with the men and like them will lose every reasonable sense of life. And then for that class there will be no recovery: but there is yet time.
For all that, more women than men still fulfil their law, and so there are reasonable beings among them, and therefore some women of our class still hold in their hands the possibility of saving it.
Ah!-if those women understood their worth, their power, and used these in the work of saving their husbands, brothers, and children-saving mankind!
Women-mothers of the wealthy classes, in your hands alone is the salvation of the men of our world from the evils from which they suffer! Not those women who are occupied with their figures, bustles, coiffures, and their attractiveness for men, and who against their will, by inadvertence and in despair, bear children, and hand them over to wet-nurses;1 nor yet those who attend various university lectures and talk about the psychomotor centres and differentials, and who also try to avoid child-bearing in order not to hinder the stupefaction they call their ‘development’,-but those women and mothers who, having the power to avoid child-birth, simply and consciously submit to that eternal, immutable law, knowing that the hardship and labour of that submission is their vocation.
Those are the women and mothers of our wealthy classes in whose hands, more than in any others, lies the salvation of the men of our world from the evils that oppress them. You, women and mothers, who consciously submit to the law of God, you alone in our unhappy perverted circle which has lost the semblance of being human, you alone know the whole true meaning of life according to the law of God. And you alone can by your example show men that happiness of life in submission to God’s will, of which they deprive themselves. You alone know those raptures and joys, seizing your whole being, and that bliss which is ordained for man when he does not evade God’s law.
You know the joy of love of your husband, a joy not ending, not broken-off like all others, but forming the beginning of a new joy of love for your child. You alone, when you: are simple and submissive to God’s will, know, not that farcical pretence of labour in uniforms and in illuminated halls which the men of our circle call labour, but the labour imposed on us by God, and you know the true rewards for it, the bliss it brings.
You know this when after the joys of love you await with agitation, terror, and hope, that torture of pregnancy which makes you ill for nine months, brings you to the verge of death and to unbearable sufferings and pains; you know the conditions of true labour when with joy you await the approach and increase of most dreadful sufferings, after which comes the bliss known to you alone.
You know it when, directly after these sufferings, without rest, without interruption, you undertake another series of labours and sufferings-those of nursing, in which you at once forgo, and subject to your duty and your feeling the strongest human demand-that of sleep (which the proverb says is ‘dearer than father or mother’), and for months and years do not have an undisturbed night’s sleep, but sometimes, and often, do not sleep for whole nights together, but walk up and down with numbed arms rocking the sick child who is tearing your heart.
And when you do all this, not be lauded by anyone, not noticed by anyone, not expecting praise or reward from anyone, when you do this not as an achievement but as the labourer in the Gospel parable who came from the field, considering that you are only doing your
1 The employment of wet-nurses was very much more usual in Russia than in England.-A. M.
duty-then you know what is sham fictitious labour for the praise of men, and what is real labour to fulfil God’s will-the indication of which you feel in your heart.
You know that if you are a real mother it is not enough that no one sees your labour or praises you for it-people merely consider that so it ought to be-but that even those for whom you have toiled will not only not thank you but will often torment and reproach you-and with the next child you will do the same: you will again suffer, again endure the unseen terrible labour, and again not expect reward from anyone, and will again feel the same satisfaction.
In your hands, if you are such women, should be the influence over men, and in your hands lies their salvation. Every day your number diminishes: some occupy themselves with their fascination for men and become street-women, others are engaged in competing with men in their artificial, trifling occupations, others again who have not yet been false to their vocation, already repudiate it in their minds: they perform all the achievements of women and mothers, but accidentally, repiningly, with envy of the free, sterile women, and deprive themselves of their sole reward-the inner consciousness of the fulfilment of God’s will-and instead of satisfaction, suffer from what should be their happiness.
We are so confused by our false way of life, we men of our circle have all so utterly lost the sense of life that there is no longer any distinction between us. Having shifted the whole burden and danger of life on to the backs of others, we are unable to give ourselves the true name deserved by those who compel others to perish in providing life for them,-scoundrels and cowards.
But among women there is still a difference.
There are women-human beings-women presenting the highest manifestation of a human being; and there are women-whores. And this distinction will be made by future generations, and we too cannot help making it.
Every woman, however she may dress herself and however she may call herself and however refined she may be, who refrains from child-birth without refraining from sexual relations, is a whore. And however fallen a woman may be, if she intentionally devotes herself to bearing children, she performs the best and highest service in life-fulfils the will of God-and no one ranks above her.
If you are such a woman, you will not, either after two or after twenty children, say that you have borne enough, any more than a fifty-year old workman will say he has worked enough, while he still eats and sleeps and has muscles demanding work. If you are such a woman you will not shift the nursing and tending of your children on to another mother any more than a workman will let another man finish the work he has begun and nearly completed, because you put your life in that work and therefore your life is fuller and happier the more of that work you have.
And if you are such a one-and happily for men there still are such women-then that law of the fulfilment of God’s will by which you guide your own life, you will apply also to your husband’s life and to that of your children and of those near to you.
If you are such a one and know by your own experience that only self-sacrificing, unseen, unrewarded labour done with danger of life and uttermost effort for the life of others, is the mission of man which gives satisfaction and strength, then you will apply those same demands to others, will incite your husband to such labour, and by such labour will value and estimate people’s worth, and for such labour will prepare your children.
Only a mother who considers child-bearing an unpleasant accident and thinks that the meaning of life lies in the pleasures of love, the comforts of life, education, and sociability, will bring up her children so that they shall have as many pleasures and enjoy them as much as possible, will feed them daintily, dress them up, give them artificial amusements, and teach them not what will make them capable of self-sacrificing labour (male or female) done with risk to life and to the last extremity of effort, but what will secure them diplomas1 and the opportunity not to labour.
Only such a woman, having lost the significance of her life, will sympathize with that deceptive, false, male work by which her husband, freeing himself from man’s duty, finds it possible, together with her, to avail himself of other people’s labour. Only a woman of that kind will choose such a husband for her daughter, and will esteem people not
