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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.

But I will let woman tell her own story. She can speak on such a theme, and tell her own needs and wrongs, as no man can. The following extracts from a private letter will give you an insight into the wants and feelings of a wife and mother in regard to this subject. When woman speaks of her feelings while suffering an undesired maternity, let man reverently give heed to her words:

"In the first years of my married life, I had no thought but to submit to the passion of my husband, without regard to the consequences to myself. As every true woman does, living in conjugal relations, I desired to be caressed by my husband, and to be pressed to his manly bosom. I did not suppose it was incumbent on him to control himself.

"I have known many instances in which the fathers of children, unintentionally and unwillingly conceived, became so repulsive to the mother, during gestation, that they would be made seriously ill by coming in contact with them, in any way; though ordinarily they would be agreeable and congenial.

"I have heard many women say they would gladly strangle their children, born of undesired maternity, at birth, could they do so with safety to themselves. I believe, judging from a long and intimate acquaintance with many mothers, and from much conversation with them on this subject, that there are many children whose existence is undesigned by their fathers and undesired by their mothers. Yet among those heterogeneous and unnatural combinations called marriages, there is enough love to produce some tolerable specimens of humanity; and when there is any thing remarkable in development, there will be found physiological and psychological conditions sufficient to produce it.

"No words can express the helplessness, the sense of personal desecration, the despair, which sinks into the heart of woman when forced to submit to maternity under adverse circumstances, and when her own soul rejects it. It is no matter of wonder that abortions are purposely procured; it is to me a matter of wonder that a single child, undesignedly begotten and reluctantly conceived, is ever suffered to mature in the organism of the mother. Her whole nature repels it. How can she regard its ante-natal development but with sorrow and shrinking?

"Sensitive as woman ever is at such periods, she rarely meets with any special consideration; indeed, that very situation is too often made the occasion for increased passional indulgence on the part of the husband, or of neglect and contempt. Woman must have had, doubtless has, a very large amount of what you call the God-element in her nature, to enable her to do as well as she does in the function of Maternity, under such debasing and depressing influences.

"There are few, very few, wives and mothers who could not reveal a sad, dark picture in their own experience, in their relations to their husbands and their children. Maternity, and the relation in which it originates, are thrust upon them by their husbands, often without regard to their spiritual or physical conditions, and often in contempt of their earnest and urgent entreaties. No joy comes to their hearts at the conception and birth of their children, except that which arises from the consciousness that they have survived the sufferings wantonly and selfishly inflicted on them.

When woman's rights in regard to Maternity, and to the relation that leads to it, are truly understood and appreciated by man, then, and not before, can marriage become what it was designed to be,--a diadem of beauty, a crown of glory, to the husband and wife, and "the power of God and the wisdom of God" unto salvation to the generations of the future. Husbands! if you would secure the loving respect of your wives, you must reverently regard their protest against an undesired Maternity.

H. C. W.

DEAR FRIEND:

On all hands, society is full of the victims of such a relation,--of a maternity forced on woman when, from various causes, body and soul are prostrated, and too destitute of vital energy even for the ordinary demands of daily life; how much more destitute of that fulness and vigor of life, so necessary to the sublime and responsible act of true and healthy conception! If ever the current of life should flow with deep, concentrated, joyous energy in woman, it should be in the moment of conception, when she takes charge of the germ of a new and immortal life, and enters upon the sublime and overwhelming responsibilities of maternity. Then, indeed, she needs that all the energies of her womanhood should be in most perfect and healthful activity; then, if ever, she should be filled "with all the fulness of God."

But not only are the vital forces of your wife exhausted by other labors and anxieties, but your own energies are, from various causes, prostrated. Yet, excited by some artificial stimulant, and when the vital forces of your manhood are powerless, you demand this relation with your wife. Maternity is the result. What have you done for your child? Imparted to it, not the true life and vigor of your manhood, but its momentary imbecility. Your child, it may be, is rendered imbecile in body and idiotic in mind, solely through your fault. You exhausted your life, and then gave that exhausted, soulless life to your child. You exercised no wise and manly forethought for your child. Its well-being entered not into your designs; only your own gratification. Hence, for your child's sake, you used no exertions, by abstinence from exhausting toil or enfeebling amusements and indulgences, to exalt and perfect your physical and mental energies; but by debilitating pleasures, by sleepless nights, spent in pursuit of amusement, by dissipating games, and by exhausting indulgences in the use of narcotic and alcoholic drugs, drinks and food, you are rendered imbecile to think, to feel, or to act. And these conditions you entail on your child as its birthright, lifelong, fearful legacy, from the effects of which no power can rescue it. Can you do a greater wrong to your child? Can you commit against it a greater crime? A living death is its doom.

When maternity is imposed on your wife without her consent, and contrary to her appeal, how will her mind necessarily be affected towards her child? It was conceived in dread, and in bitterness of spirit. Every stage of its foetal development is watched with a feeling of settled repugnance. In every step of its ante-natal progress, the child meets only with grief and indignation in the mother. She would crush out its life, if she could. She loathed its conception; she loathed it in every stage of its ante-natal development. She cannot love and cherish it, for nought, it may be, is associated with its existence, from the beginning, but pain and sorrow. Tender, cherishing, vitalizing love does not preside over its conception and development, but grief and anguish. Instead of fixing her mind on devising ways and means for the healthful and happy organization and development of her child, before it is born, and for its post-natal comfort and support, her soul is intent on its destruction, and her thoughts devise plans to kill it.

The unwelcome child is ever before the mother. She regards it as a sacrilegious intruder into the domain of her life; an invader of the holy of holies of her being. She had never called for it; it was thrust upon her, as it were, by fraud and violence. Besides, it is the child of one whom this very outrage has caused her to dread or despise. The child is ever present to her, not as a pledge of love, an answer to the earnest prayer of her wifely soul, as a source of living joy and ennobling hopes; but as a witness of her shame and degradation, and of the great wrong done her by its father, and by one whom she had loved and trusted, but to be betrayed. She meets her innocent, unconscious babe, at every step of its ante-natal development, with a frown, and beats it back with threats and weapons of death.

It is vain to talk to her about cheerfully and joyfully submitting to her condition, and, for her child's sake, to give it a loving, joyous welcome. She cannot, by an effort of will, nor by any course of discipline, nor from considerations of duty, compel her nature to acquiesce in such a wrong to herself and her child, and willingly and joyfully accept a maternity thrust upon her in contempt of her dearest and most sacred rights, and in opposition to her heart's appeals for mercy. She finds no call in her nature for a child; she cannot create it by an effort of will. She is not yet prepared, mentally or physically, to meet the sufferings and responsibilities of such a relation. She can no more force herself into giving a loving reception to that unwelcome child, and to that undesired maternity, than she can force herself into a true love and respect for the father of such a child, and the doer of this wrong.

Just so far as she was accessory to its conception, and a willing partner in the relation in which it originated, she is responsible, and worthy of condemnation; but she is not to blame for not joyfully accepting a maternity thrust upon her without her consent. As well blame a woman for not loving and respecting a husband thrust upon her by parental, ecclesiastical, or civil authority, and from whom, by the instincts of her nature, she is strongly repelled. As well blame the flower for shrinking from the mildew that blights it, or the dove for shrinking from the vulture that would rend it.

War is declared between that mother and her child before it is born; a war that must be lasting as life,--a deadly conflict, to which the happiness, and, it may be, the life of the child must be victimized. No efforts of the mother of your child, after it is born, can make peace between her and her child, and obliterate from its mind all traces of the wrong done to it before it was born. And this internal, organic discord, this war, must extend to you, the father, as well as to the mother. The mother cannot feel toward your child, thus originated, as she would had her soul rejoiced in its conception, its development and birth, with a pure, concentrated joy, which such a maternity alone can bring. After the child of an undesired maternity is born, pity for the helpless babe, rather than a rapturous welcome to a longed-for treasure, prompts her to care for it,--though facts demonstrate that a deadly hate in the mother's heart can pursue the offspring of such a maternity after it is born. Yet before it is born, but one feeling fills her soul,--a feeling of deep, settled hostility against its existence,--a feeling that it has no right to be. Its existence is unsanctioned and unconsecrated by its mother. The child struggles into life against the spirit of murder in her heart. Talk of a mother's joy over such a birth! It is blasphemy against Maternity.

Consider well the power your wife holds over your child, and over its destiny as a man or woman, and ask--Shall that power be for good or evil? Shall it be exerted to give your child a beautiful, healthy, vigorous body, or a body corrupted and deformed by a painful and loathsome disease? Shall it be used to secure to your child's soul tenderness, truth, justice, generosity and nobleness, or wrath, revenge, meanness and falsehood?--to impress on its moral nature the stamp of Divinity, or the stamp of a thief, a slaveholder, a pirate, a murderer, or an assassin?

How ennobling, how imposing is Maternity, when thus bestowed and thus accepted! How sublime its responsibilities, how pure its joys! How heroic its sufferings, how august its martyrdom, when thus joyfully and calmly endured! There is no heroism of earth so imposing, so sublime, and so full of glory, as that of Maternity, when joyfully accepted, and lovingly and calmly endured! No human act can be so potent and so lasting in its results. But no agony is so appalling as that of a Maternity from which the soul of woman shrinks with disgust and horror.

The character of individual and social man, and the destiny of the race, are wrapped up in Maternity. Shall a function so replete with suffering and responsibility be imposed on woman, against her prayers and her tears, merely for the momentary gratification of man? Manhood as well as womanhood, cries out against the outrage. All that is true and noble in man says, "Forbear!" Only that which is sensual, brutal, devilish, can perpetrate this wrong against the mother and child, or approve of it.

Woman would find rest and fulness of joy in man. She rushes to him as to her tower of strength, to shelter and be sheltered to love and be loved, to bless and be blessed. A love that knows no fear, a trust that fears no danger, lay her in his bosom, and prompt to and consecrate the entire surrender of her soul and body to his manly keeping. Will you call that man true, noble or honorable, who can take advantage of a love so pure and a trust so boundless, to impose on her a suffering and anguish, and a responsibility, for which she is not prepared, and from which her soul shrinks; thus placing her in an unnatural position in regard to her child, and thus outraging his own offspring, by giving it an existence loathed even by the mother who give it birth? What shall be said of the man who will commit a deed so atrocious? A husband he is not; he ignores the first principles of a true and noble manhood. He is but a selfish, disgusting sensualist. A father he is not, deserving tender and loving reverence from his wife, but an ANIMAL, whose brutal gratification is the first law of life, and one whom neither mother nor child can respect.

But I will reserve further remarks on this subject until my next letter.

Thine, H. C. W.

DEAR FRIEND:

In the preceding letter, I have shown how, and to what extent, a maternity, undesigned by the father and undesired by the mother, affects the organization, character and destiny, of the child. I wish to pursue the question still further.

You see and worship God in man, not in his incidents. In those relations which bear most directly and powerfully on the development, purity and nobility of your manhood, and on your character and destiny, you recognize the most perfect manifestation of the Divine presence and power. In them, the great thinking intellect and pulsating heart of the universe,--the God-element of Nature,--speak to you as in nothing else.

Of all your relations, which is most potent to develop your manhood, to unfold to yourself, and to all, the hidden wealth and depths of your being; to vitalize and call into manly activity all the powers of your physical and intellectual nature? Your soul promptly answers, "That of the HUSBAND and the FATHER." No man who has lived in those relations can doubt the truth of your answer. God speaks to you through your wife and child, as through no other being of the past or present. Through those loved ones, He, as it were, renders himself visible, audible, tangible to you, and you meet him and talk with him face to face. They are his natural prophets and messiahs to you--the media through which the God-element of the universe flows into you, quickening and vitalizing, and arousing to energetic activity, all the powers of your manhood. Through them, an influence is thrown upon and around you, which silently, but surely, defines and shapes your plans of life, and quickens, expands, and ennobles your affections. In them, a PRESENCE is ever before you, whose beauty and brightness illuminate your pathway, and which is ever beckoning you onward and upward, and breathing into your soul a desire and a daring to reach the sublimest height of purity and nobleness. In truth, you may say, in your wife and child are the hidings of God's power, to form your character and shape your destiny.

What, then, so important to you, as a true knowledge and just appreciation of your relations as a husband and father? As a husband and father, you can do more to elevate and perfect the human type, and to save yourself, than you can in any other relation: political, ecclesiastical, commercial and social relations are insignificant, in comparison. I know you live but to glorify the nature you bear, and to enjoy that glorified nature forever. Such being with you the chief end of existence, I ask you to weigh, with candor and earnestness, the following observations on THE ANTE-NATAL EDUCATION AND HISTORY OF MAN. I have long been accustomed to consider human beings in connection with three states, and to think, speak and write on the comparative influence of these states on their character and destiny:

Come, my friend, go with me back to that which Church and State have overlooked, and view human beings between conception and birth. The period is brief; but is it not important? Is it powerless? Are no influences exerted and no events transpiring there, of sufficient moment to render them worthy attention, in considering the history and estimating the character of the individual man or woman, or of states and nations?

Many years since, the conviction was settled in my mind, that that period, though so brief, and hidden from observation in the very holy of holies of the temple of life, has more to do in giving tone to our feelings, intensity, activity and character to our passions and appetites, direction to our thoughts and plans, and in moulding our character and shaping our destiny, in the post-natal spheres of our being, than all that is brought to bear on us after we are born. OUR ANTE-NATAL HISTORY IS THE KEY TO OUR POST-NATAL LIFE. There is not a man or woman who is not a living witness to the truth of this assertion.

From a long and critical observation of facts, and a persevering effort to trace the physical, intellectual, social and spiritual conditions and phenomena of the individual and social lives of children and adults, in the many thousands of families in which, for a longer or shorter time, I have been an inmate, I long ago came to the conclusion, that to their ANTE-NATAL EDUCATION, men and women are more beholden for their healthful or diseased physical conditions, sufferings or enjoyments, and for their mental and spiritual tendencies, their peculiarities of temper and disposition, their aptitudes to truth or falsehood, to justice or injustice, to love or hate, to peace or war, to temperance or drunkenness, to forgiveness or revenge, to sexual purity or impurity, to happiness or misery, than to all the influences that are brought to bear on them, after they are born, to whatever age they may attain. These tendencies, whether of body or soul, are mainly, if not entirely, organized as fixed facts of existence in the individual man or woman, in their ante-natal state. There is not a human being, there never was one, and never will be, whose whole life is not essentially, constantly, and in its minutest details instigated and directed, more or less, by gestational influences.

If this be so, where are we to look for the forming and controlling causes of human character and destiny, and of physical, mental, and spiritual idiosyncrasies? Where shall we go to find the true foundations of biography and history, and the controlling elements of all religions and governments? Where go to find the mainsprings of war, slavery, drunkenness, polygamy, licentiousness, and of all the sufferings, anguish and woes of marriage and domestic life, that arise from the abuse of the sexual element? Where go to find the cause of a repulsive and loathed maternity, and of the horrors to which it leads? Where, indeed, but to the germs of diseases, and the aptitudes to good or evil, that were organized into the bodies and souls of men and women, as fixed facts and elements of life, by influences that were brought to bear upon them, through the maternal organism, between the periods of conception and birth?

This ante-natal education makes the man and woman, the Religion and Government, the Church and State, the social, educational, and commercial customs and institutions; and whoever attempts to write the biography of an individual, or the history of a Church or State, without reference to that education, and its controlling power over human character and destiny, fails to present the whole truth. He fails to trace effects to their causes, and must necessarily give a partial or perverted view of the phenomena of life.

See what a future is wrapped up in that unconscious embryo man or woman! It may be that the fates of states and empires are being inscribed, by some unseen power, on that body and soul. Already that unformed child may hold in its grasp the destinies of millions and of ages. But who is the educator? Who guides the pen that is inscribing peace or war, liberty or slavery, life or death, to those millions and those ages, and the scroll of destiny to states and kingdoms, to religions and governments on the soul of that unborn babe? THE MOTHER. Through her must come every element essential to constitute the body and soul of that child; and, as it passes through her system, it must receive the stamp of her physical, social and spiritual conditions.

Keep in mind the great fact, that the mental states of the mother, during gestation, must necessarily and permanently affect every particle of that substance which goes to make the organization and growth of her child, for good or evil. Whatever injuriously affects her thoughts and feelings, must permanently affect the physical, social, intellectual and moral aptitudes of her child.

That mother, whose heart is thus filled with murder towards your child, is its educator! Into her hands you committed its destiny; and in the very act of so doing, you aroused in her heart the spirit of murder against the unconscious, innocent being whom she is to nourish into life. In the very act of committing the germ of the new immortal to her, you destroyed in her the power to be its loving, nursing mother. You knew that she would not and could not love and reverence it, and do justice to it; that she would hate it, and kill it if she could. All this you knew, yet you forced the charge upon her!

What else do you do, when you impose on your wife a maternity unasked and abhorred? You commit the development and education of your child, during the most important and susceptible period of its existence, to one who assures you she is not prepared for the charge, who entreats you to spare her, and who loathes the very thought of its existence. Every element of her womanly nature, for the time being, recoils from its presence in her system. She pleads that you would spare her this burden, at this time, and until her nature calls for it, and is prepared joyfully to meet the martyrdom maternity must bring to her. Heedless of her prayers, and, it may be, of threats of death to your child, you demand the surrender of her person to your passion. Maternity ensues. Murder enters her heart towards your child at the same time. She tries to "get rid of it,"--to murder it. She succeeds. The young life you had committed to her care is nipped in the bud, as you were assured it would be before you resigned it to her keeping. Where rests the responsibility? On you, primarily and mainly. You murdered your own child, not, indeed, with your own hands,--you drove another to do the desperate deed, and that other, your wife, who came to you with a loving and trusting heart, to save and to be saved; and you, to gratify your selfish passion, drove her to the commission of the crime of ante-natal child-murder,--a crime that must forever weigh upon her soul like a mountain of guilt and shame; a deed, after the doing of which, no true woman can ever, in this life, stand proud and stainless, in conscious innocence and dignity, before the tribunal of her womanhood. She has done a deed for which great Nature can find no excuse but ignorance; but which, even when done in ignorance, she regards as a violation of her just laws, and punishes as such, with appropriate penalties,--the loss of self-respect, and the consciousness of degradation.

Yet all this suffering, anguish, crime and conscious degradation, you, the husband, have forced upon her, solely for the momentary, and, under the circumstances, most unnatural, gratification of your sensual passion,--a passion which, when controlled by manly love and wisdom, and held in abeyance to the health, purity, and happiness of your wife and children, would bring only honor to their hearts and to your home, but which, when thus indulged without regard to the wishes and conditions of your wife, and merely for your personal pleasure, spreads crime, pollution, misery and death, all around.

How dare you, how dare any husband, commit the destiny of his child into the hands of one, who, as he knows, thus loathes the thought of its existence? How can you subject your child to the possibility of such a gestational organization and development; such an ante-natal education; or force upon your wife the suffering and anguish of a loathed and hated maternity, or the necessity of doing a deed from which the soul of every noble woman must shrink with sickening horror? You could not do this wrong to your wife and child, till your manhood was sunk in the mire of disgusting sensualism.

A loathed and hated maternity! A woman, a mother, shrinking with disgust and horror from the thought of giving existence to her child! A mother's heart throbbing with murder toward the child over whose development and education it is presiding! Do you say this is strong language?--too strong? That it cannot be? Do you say a mother does not, cannot, hate and loathe her unborn babe? Why, then, does she kill it? Her spirit is known by its fruit. Is not her whole soul bent on its destruction, even at the risk of her own health and life?

Ponder the following extract from a private letter, containing the experience of a wife and mother, in regard to enforced and hated maternity and ante-natal child-murder. The letter is of recent date; the writer and her family are known to me personally:

"Before we married, I informed him of my dread of having children. I told him I was not yet prepared to meet the sufferings and responsibilities of maternity. He entered into an arrangement to prevent it, for a specified time. This agreement was disregarded. After the legal form was over, and he felt that he could now indulge his passion without loss of reputation, and under legal and religious sanctions, he insisted on the surrender of my person to his will. He violated his promise at the beginning of our united life. That fatal bridal night! it has left a cloud on my soul and on my home, that can never pass away on earth. I can never forget it. It sealed the doom of our union, as it does of thousands.

"In one year, I found I was again about to be a mother. I was in a state of frightful despair. My first-born was sickly and very troublesome , needing constant care and nursing. My husband chopped wood for our support. Of the injustice of bringing children into the world to such poverty and misery, I was then as sensible as now. I was in despair. I felt that death would be preferable to maternity under such circumstances. A desire and determination to get rid of my child entered into my heart. I consulted a lady friend, and by her persuasion and assistance, killed it. Within less than a year, maternity was again imposed upon me, with no better prospect for doing justice to my child. It was a most painful conviction to me; I felt that I could not have another child at that time. All seemed dark as death. I had begged and prayed to be spared this trial again, till I was prepared to accept it joyfully; but my husband insisted on his gratification, without regard to my wishes and conditions.

"I consulted a physician, and told him of my unhappy state of mind, and my aversion to having another child, for the present. He was ready with his logic, his medicines and instruments, and told me how to destroy it. After experimenting on myself three months, I was successful. I killed my child about five months after conception.

"A few months after this, maternity was again forced upon me, to my grief and anguish. I determined, again, on the child's destruction; but my courage failed as I came to the practical deed. My health and life were in jeopardy; for my living child's sake, I wished to live. I made up my mind to do the best I could for my unborn babe, whose existence seemed so unnatural and repulsive. I knew its young life would be deeply and lastingly affected by my mental and physical conditions. I became, in a measure, reconciled to my dark fate, and was as resigned and happy as I could be under the circumstances. I had just such a child as I had every reason to expect. I could do no justice to it. How could I?

"Soon after the birth of my child, my husband insisted on his accustomed indulgence. Without any wish of my own, maternity was again forced upon me. I dared not attempt to get rid of the child, abortion seemed so cruel, so inhuman, unnatural, and repulsive. I resolved again, for my child's sake, to do the best I could for it. Though I could not joyfully welcome, I resolved quietly to endure, its existence.

"After the birth of this child, I felt that I could have no more to share our poverty and to suffer the wrongs and trials of an unwelcome existence. I felt that I had rather die at once, and thus end my life and my power to be a mother together. My husband cast the entire care of the family on me. I had scarcely one hour to devote to my children. My husband still insisted on his gratification. I was the veriest slave alive. Life had lost its charms. The grave seemed my only refuge, and Death my only friend.

"In this state, known as it was to my husband, he thrust maternity upon me twice. I employed a doctor to kill my child, and in the destruction of it, in what should have been the vigor of my life, ended my power to be a mother. I was shorn of the brightest jewel of my Womanhood. I suffered, as woman alone can suffer, not only in body, but in bitter remorse and anguish of soul.

"All this I passed through, under the terrible, withering consciousness, that it was all done and suffered solely that the passion of my husband might have a momentary indulgence. Yet such had been my false religious and social education, that, in submitting my person to his passion, I did it with the honest conviction that, in marriage, my body became the property of my husband. He said so; all women to whom I applied for counsel, said it was my duty to submit, that husbands expected it, had a right to it, and must have this indulgence, whenever they were excited, or suffer; and that in this way alone could wives retain the love of their husbands. I had no alternative but silent, suffering submission to his passion, and then procure abortion, or leave him, and thus resign my children to the tender mercies of one with whom I could not live myself. Abortion was most repulsive to every feeling of my nature. It seemed degrading, and, at times, rendered me an object of loathing to myself.

"When my first-born was three months old, I had a desperate struggle for my personal liberty. My husband insisted on his right to subject my person to his passion, before my babe was two months old. I saw his conduct then in all its degrading and loathsome injustice. I pleaded, with tears and anguish, for my own and my child's sake, to be spared; and had it not been for my helpless child, I should then have ended the struggle by bolting my legal bonds. For its sake, I submitted to that outrage, and to my own conscious degradation. For its sake, I concluded to take my chance in the world with other wives and mothers, who, as they assured me, and as I then knew, were all around me, subjected to like outrages, and driven to the degrading practice of abortion.

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