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PREFACE, 5

INTRODUCTORY LETTER: A Husband to Henry C. Wright--Inquiries respecting the Laws of Nature designed to govern Parentage, 9

PREFACE.

Maternity, the relation that leads to it, and the responsibilities, anxieties, and agonies generally connected with it,--the right of Woman to decide for herself when she shall assume the responsibilities, and be subjected to the sufferings, of Maternity, and to the relation in which it originates,--Man, without regard to the wishes and conditions of his wife, heedless of the physical and spiritual welfare of his offspring, and solely for his own gratification, imposing on his wife Maternity, with all its attendant anguish of body and soul,--the crime of earth,--the greatest outrage one human being can perpetrate on another,--ante-natal murder,--the ante-natal history of a human being, and its bearing on his post-natal character and destiny, in the body and out of it,--such are the topics which are presented and discussed in the following pages.

The author has aimed so to present these subjects that no intelligent and pure-minded man or woman need to misunderstand or misconstrue his meaning, or be offended by his words and modes of expression. These subjects belong to the holy of holies of human existence. With them is associated all that is nearest and dearest to the heart of man and woman. In the inmost sanctuary of Home, these should be the topics of freest and most anxious conversation. All that is pure, lovely, beautiful, and ennobling, in the relations of Husband and Wife, and Parent and Child, is directly connected with these subjects, and the views entertained of them by men and women in and out of legal marriage. But that which transpires during the period between conception and birth, as the foundation of character in the future man or woman, as an index to their thoughts, feelings, plans, motives, actions, to their virtues and vices, to successes and failures in life's conflict, has been entirely overlooked by biographers and historians, by poets and novelists, in their efforts to delineate human life as manifested in individuals, or in civil and ecclesiastical combinations. Yet all admit that physical, intellectual, and social tendencies and conditions are organized into the body and soul of every child, during that period, that must give tone and direction to the man or woman in all their future life. In their relations as husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, friends and neighbors, in all their commercial, social, civil, and ecclesiastical relations, their feelings, and their treatment of all with whom they may be associated, must depend greatly on these ante-natal influences and tendencies.

The life of every good man and the life of every bad man, the life of a teetotaller and the life of a drunkard, a life of love and a life of hatred, a life of forgiveness and a life of revenge, a life of truth, justice, and purity, and a life of falsehood, injustice, and impurity, the life of Jesus and the life of Napoleon,--who can determine to what extent all these have been, are, or will be, controlled by birthright tendencies, and by influences that, before they were born, bore upon those who live these lives? Certain it is that, to a great extent, the diseases, sufferings, and premature deaths, and many of the individual, social, governmental, and ecclesiastical thefts, robberies, and murders, committed in the post-natal state of our being, are but the natural, if not the necessary results of these ante-natal organic and constitutional conditions and tendencies.

To all Husbands and Wives, to all Fathers and Mothers, and to all who hope to enter into these most ennobling and most potent of all human relations, are the following pages earnestly commended, by

INTRODUCTORY LETTER. A Husband to Henry C. Wright.

BOSTON, January 10, 1857.

MY DEAR FRIEND:

I was but a boy when I first heard you utter such sentiments. I did not then understand their full import. They had not entered into the experience of my inner or outer life. Yet I took the impression, that woman would be to man just what he chose and had power to make her; and that it depended on man to say whether woman should be to him a purifying and ennobling influence, or a source of degradation and ruin.

From that time I had a desire, so far as woman is concerned, to place myself in such relations to her, that her influence on my life might be pure and ennobling. I have studied to get clear and definite views of my nature and needs as a man, and how woman can most perfectly accomplish her mission of love and salvation to me.

I am now a husband; made so, not by any enactment, ceremony or license of Church or State ; nor by the consent of any third party; nor by any formal contract or bargain between me and the woman to whom I hold this relation; but by a law or necessity of my being; by a power, unseen, but ever present, and ever potent to guide, like that which binds the needle to the pole, or the soul to God.

All that qualifies me to be a husband and a father, I have consecrated to the development and happiness of my wife, and of the children who may result from our union. I have done this, not because she demands it as her right, but solely because I find in myself a necessity for so doing. She make no demands on me as a right; she asks of me only what I feel the necessity of giving. My love for her gives me no rights over her property, her person, or her affections. It makes no demands on her, as a right, but it makes great demands on my own manhood. True conjugal love never creates rights over the loved one, but necessities in the one who loves. This necessity is laid upon me, not by any arbitrary decree of Church or State, but solely by the concentrated, exclusive love, which, as a husband, I bear to my wife. The purity and dignity of my nature are involved in my yielding to this necessity.

I would consecrate my manhood to the perfection and happiness of my wife, and of the children who may be born of our union, in the home which, by our united efforts, we hope to create. Your conversation with me, as a boy and a youth, and your counsel, have been invaluable in the regulation of my life in my relations with women. I have read your work, entitled "MARRIAGE AND PARENTAGE; or, the Reproductive Element in Man as a Means of his Elevation and Happiness." To us, in the home of our love, your teachings will ever be as divine oracles, to regulate our relations as husband and wife. We would embody in our lives your "ERNEST" and "NINA," especially in regard to parentage, and the relation that leads to it; believing that those who do actualize that ideal husband and wife, cannot fail to receive a divine reward, in an ever-growing and an ever-ennobling love and trust. To that husband who shall embody your Ernest, the love, the respect and trust of his wife, will be as the sun and dew of heaven to the opening buds of spring; they will expand and beautify his manly soul, and cause his manhood to give out all its beauty and fragrance, and shed a bright and steady light on the pathway of his wife, and bring enduring rest to her heart in the home of her wedded love. We would live in and for each other, and in and for our offspring. We would be represented in the great human family by those whom we shall be proud to call our children, and whom all of human kind shall feel honored to recognize as brothers and sisters. We would not see our nature degraded, nor our glory tarnished, in ourselves or our posterity, but we would see that glory made brighter, and that nature more noble.

I know that on the government of my passional relations with my wife depends her health and life of body and soul, the health of our children, and the beauty and happiness of our home. I know, if she ever is made to fear my passion, and to shrink from the personal intimacies of her husband, home, from that hour, becomes desolate and repulsive, no matter what may be the natural or artistic elegance of our material surroundings. I know that in proportion as she cherishes a loving and trusting respect for all that constitutes me a man, will she lovingly and calmly rest in the bosom of her husband; and that the most sacred sanctuary of our home, instead of being an altar of cruel and merciless sacrifice of her health and life, will be a fountain of eternal life and peace to us both,--a temple consecrated to all true manifestations of an unselfish conjugal and parental love.

I feel the responsibility that rests upon me. I would have my wife associate my manhood with her own purity, and not with my selfish gratification. I would have her assured that my nature, as a man, is under the control of conscience and reason, and held in subjection to her perfect development, and that of our children. I would be an unselfish, noble husband, and a true and happy father; a husband and father who can stand in the pride and dignity of conscious nobility before his wife and children. I would be a MAN; one whose soul, vitalized and ennobled by the presence and power of conjugal and paternal love, shall never cower before its own consciousness, nor in the presence of its God.

If you can give me your thoughts and feelings in regard to parentage, and the relation that leads to it, you will confer a favor on one whose love and respect for you will never end.

Yours, A HUSBAND.

THE

CRIME OF AN UNDESIRED MATERNITY

Letters to a Husband.

MY FRIEND:

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!

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?

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.

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.

How did the substance reach it which constituted its growth? Every particle of matter that reaches it to form its brain, its nerves, its heart, its lungs, its blood, its bones and sinews, was prepared in the maternal organism, and was carried to it through the medium of her blood. Whatever is received into her system, in the shape of food, drink, air, and various gases, and which goes to nourish her brain, heart, nerves, and other organs, and keep them in healthful activity, must go to form the corresponding portions of the child's body. The material that nourishes the brain of the mother forms, from the beginning, the brain of the child; that which nourishes the lungs and nerves of the mother forms also the lungs and nerves of the child. So of every organ and portion of the body. From whatever the mother takes into her system must come the body and soul of her child.

Whatever, then, affects the nervous system, affects the organic functions. That the nervous system is deeply affected by the kind and quality of our food and drink, and by mental impressions, cannot be doubted. Witness the influence of tea, alcohol, opium, tobacco, and various kinds of food, on the nerves, and also of anger, grief, revenge, fear, love, hate, &c. As Carpenter says, "The influence of particular conditions of the mind in exciting various secretions is a matter of daily experience." He instances the increased secretion and flow of saliva by the idea of food, the secretion and flow of tears by joy, tenderness, or grief, and the influence of the love of offspring on the mammary secretions.

"The sexual secretions," he says, "are strongly influenced by the conditions of the mind;" instancing the effects of a "fitful temper," "fits of anger," "grief," "anxiety of mind," "fear," "terror," on the mammary secretions, and showing that these emotions often so poison the mother's milk as permanently to affect the health, and sometimes destroy the life of the nursing child.--

On every hand, life is full of facts illustrative of the influence of the mental and physical conditions of the mother on the organic structure and constitutional tendencies of the body and soul of her unborn child. As the maternal blood is healthfully or otherwise affected by what she eats and drinks, and by her mental conditions, so will the organization of her child be healthful or diseased. If the mass of blood from which the foetus is nourished and receives its material for growth is filled with disease, from any cause, the child must be similarly affected.

The mother has a fearful power. It is absolute for good or evil. Terrible is the doom of that child whose organization and development, before birth, were controlled by the mother's ignorance, folly, or hatred. Emphatically, as she is true to herself, she is true to her unborn child. It seems a mystery that the character and destiny of a human being should so materially depend on the food, drink, thoughts, feelings and passions of the mother during that brief period; but such is the fact, and we can only bow in silence to the fiat of God, being assured that whatever power the mother has for evil, she has the same for good; and that the question whether she shall use that power for good or evil over her child is one which may be settled mainly, if not solely, by the father, as will hereafter be shown. I will only say here, that the answer to the question, Will the mother use her power over her child for good or for evil? depends on the answer to a previous question--Is her maternity a willing or unwilling one? This question it is generally in the power of the husband and father to answer.

Now, my friend, contemplate the bearing of these two facts on the post-natal character and destiny of your child. The germ is placed in the maternal system, there to be nourished and to be developed through the substances conveyed to it by the maternal blood. Whatever the mother eats and drinks directly affects the nutrition and organization of her child. Whatever thoughts, feelings and passions agitate her mind, leave their traces on that which goes to form its body and soul. How important, then, to the health, character and happiness, of the future man or woman, that the mother, during gestation, should receive into her system only the purest and most healthful food and drink, and into her mind only bright, cheerful, happy, peaceful thoughts and feelings! To her husband, woman looks for sympathy and support to enable her truly and bravely to meet this great demand upon her nature. She should be encircled by a tender, consecrating love. To the father of her child she looks for this. Shall she look in vain, or be left to bear the cross alone?

Thine, HENRY C. WRIGHT.

MY FRIEND:

Before considering the wrong done to the mother, I would state two points which I shall take for granted:

What is the influence of an undesired maternity on the mother, in regard to the father of her child? is my first inquiry. What is it? It is felt, but seldom spoken. It cannot be expressed in words, as it is felt in the heart.

A woman comes into the relation of a legal wife. At once, it may be, the husband reveals himself to her in a way she did not anticipate, and she is made to know what he expects of her, and for what he married her. She yields her person to his passion, not in obedience to a call in her own nature, but because she thinks that such is the right conferred by law and custom on the husband over the wife. She has, it may be, been duly taught that the only way to secure and strengthen his love is to yield to his passion, whenever it demands indulgence. So she yields, and before she is aware, and before her mind is prepared to meet them, the responsibilities, anxieties and sufferings of maternity are upon her. Grief, anguish, and a dread of some unknown, but terrible suffering, overwhelm her. Consternation seizes the heart, so recently buoyant with the hopes and joys of a loving and trusting bride.

The wife, in such a situation, cannot cherish loving and tender thoughts of her husband when absent, nor receive his caresses with rapture when present. She bears in herself the result of the wrong he has inflicted on her. It is ever present to her thoughts and emotions. She cannot escape from it but by an outrage on herself and child; and as, in her moments of solitary suffering and anguish, she reflects on her condition, and why she must endure them, how can she regard the author of them with loving respect? The sense of the wrong done her is ever present,--can she tenderly cherish the wrong-doer, especially when he continues to demand of her a constant renewal of the relation in which her present afflictions and forebodings of future sorrows originated? She cannot; for he, by inflicting on her a maternity which her own soul cannot sanction, and from which, perhaps, she shrinks with horror, has rendered himself unworthy of her love and respect.

It is in vain to urge a woman thus situated to love and honor her husband. At no command of God or man can she, as a wife, love and cherish him. Indeed, no wife can love her husband at the word of command. If she loves him at all, it is because she must, not because she is ordered to do it. Her love will flow out to him as a necessity of her being, not by the command of a third party. If he has no power to call it out and concentrate it on himself, it will not go out to him. Nothing can force it out. She is not to blame if she does not love him. She gives him all he has power to awaken and call out,--all the love he has power to take; more he has no right to ask, more she cannot give. Her love for him will correspond to his lovableness in her eyes; he will seek to render himself lovable to her, just in proportion to the value he sets on her love. Expect no love from a woman because she is your legal wife. The legal bond can impose on her no obligation to love you; and if it did, she cannot love you, if your person and your passion become disgusting to her.

Would you, my friend, increase and perpetuate the love and respect of your wife? Then beware how you demean yourself towards her in regard to maternity, and the relation that may, at any time, result in it. To a true woman and a loving wife, maternity, and the passional expressions of her husband, must ever be ennobling, or degrading. It is for him to say which they shall be. It is for you to say whether, as the father of her child, you shall seem to your wife altogether pure, noble and attractive, or selfish, ignoble and repulsive. You must determine whether the mother of your child shall see in you a generous, tender, kingly husband, all-worthy to be the father of her child, and to rule over the empire of her heart, or a mean, merciless tyrant, having no purer or higher aim, in your relations with her, than that of animal indulgence, and whom it is impossible to respect. It is for you to say to what extent, and how long, she shall love and respect you. She must love and honor you, if you seem to her to be worthy; she cannot, if you seem otherwise. How can you thus seem, when she is made to feel that for your gratification, and against her earnest appeal to you, as a man and husband, you have imposed on her a burden which she feels unable and unwilling to bear?

Maternity, when it exists at the call of the wife, and is gratefully received, but binds her heart more tenderly and devotedly to her husband. As the father of her child, he stands before her invested with new beauty and dignity. In receiving from him the germ of a new life, she receives that which she feels is to add new beauty and glory to her as a woman,--new grace and attraction to her as a wife. She loves and honors him, because he has crowned her with the glory of a mother. Maternity, to her, instead of being repulsive, is a diadem of beauty, a crown of rejoicing, and deep, tender, and self-forgetting are her love and reverence for him who has placed it on her brow. How noble, how august, how beautiful, is Maternity, when thus bestowed and received!

But, in proportion as it is holy and ennobling when designedly conferred and joyfully received, is it unholy and debasing, when undesigned and undesired. In proportion as a mother's heart overflows with tender gratitude and loving reverence towards the father of her child, when that child comes in answer to the call of her womanly and wifely nature, will it be filled with aversion to the father of a child which she did not want, and which she is conscious is the result of a relation sought only for a sensual purpose.

Many wives become indifferent to, or positively and forever alienated from, their husbands, from this cause. Nothing will so surely and so irrevocably destroy the love of a wife for a husband, as a disregard, on his part, of her feelings and wishes in regard to Maternity, and to the relation from which it comes. In nothing are husbands so unmindful of the entreaties and wants of their wives, as in these respects. They often demand the surrender of their persons without any inquiry into their feelings and conditions; consequently, before they are aware, the very life of God in their hearts,--that is, their love and respect for their husbands,--is crushed out of them. No wonder, when we consider what liabilities, what a sense of self-degradation, and what a shrinking of soul, are involved, to a true woman, in a surrender of her person to mere sensual passion, and to a maternity so dreaded. On the contrary, how certainly and how permanently a husband will secure the love and respect of his wife, and her perfect trust, when he so treats her as to make her feel secure that she is never to become a mother till her own nature calls for it; and when, knowing his own nature, he can assure her that he shall never subject her to the possibility of that suffering till she is able and willing to bear it!

When a woman once feels that the power of her husband is controlled by a tender love and reverence for her, and a desire to subject it to her growth and happiness, rather than to promote his own selfish ends, she rests in his bosom knowing no fear, assured that this very passion will but intensify the holy love that encircles her. When all fear of his passion is gone, her love and trust are perfected. But let the fear of that once settle on her heart, and her love is gone. Love and respect for the husband cannot exist in the heart of the wife simultaneously with a dread of his passion.

One distinctive characteristic of a true and noble husband is a feeling of manly pride in the physical elements of his manhood. His physical manhood, as well as his soul, is dear to the heart of his wife, because through this he can give the fullest expression to his manly power. But if such manifestations are made when the wife is not prepared to receive them, and when she repels them and dreads the consequences, his physical nature becomes associated, not with the pure joy of a longed-for maternity, but with a deep sense of shame and degradation, with an outrage on her nature, and with the protracted suffering and anguish of an abhorred maternity. How can she respect the person of her husband? How can she cherish, and proudly care for, the purity, health and comfort of his physical nature? He has made it disgusting to her. She regards it as the deadliest enemy of her purity and peace as a wife, and as the bane of her home. She cannot look upon his person but as the source of her degradation and ruin. In its presence, she feels as in the presence of some hated reptile, from which her soul and senses shrink. How can she lovingly cherish and care for it? How can the husband respect himself, when by his own abuse of his wife and of himself, he has made his physical manhood thus contemptible to her?

Woman is ever proud, and justly so, of the manly passion of her husband, when she knows it is controlled by a love for her, whose manifestations have regard only to her elevation and happiness. The very power which, when bent only on selfish indulgence, becomes a source of more shame, degradation, disease and wretchedness, to women and to children, than all other things put together, does but ennoble her, add grace and glory to her being, and concentrate and vitalize the love that encircles her as a wife, when it is controlled by wisdom, and consecrated to her highest growth and happiness, and that of her children. It lends enchantment to her person, and gives a fascination to her smiles, her words and her caresses, which ever breathe of purity and of heaven, and make her all lovely as a wife and mother to her husband and the father of her child. Manly passion is to the conjugal love of the wife like the sun to the rosebud, that opens its petals, and causes them to give out their sweetest fragrance, and to display their most delicate tints; or like the frost, which chills and kills it ere it blossoms in its richness and beauty.

Beware, then, how you perpetrate this wrong against your wife, as you would secure her love and respect. Trifle not with the function of Maternity in her; for as this comes to her as the crowning joy and glory of her earthly existence, or otherwise, will be her estimate of you as her husband and the father of her children. See to it that she is never subjected to the possibility of becoming a mother unless she calls for it, and is ready with joy to assume the responsibilities of maternity.

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