_One of the Pillars of Respectable Society_
Ever since your call and our conversation regarding Sybyl Marchmont, I
have felt a rising tide of indignation. It has reached the perigee mark
and must overflow. If it reaches you and gives you a thorough soaking, I
shall feel satisfied.
I have always known you were only half-developed. There are many such
people in the world. They serve their purpose and often do much good.
They miss a great deal of life, but as they rarely know that they miss
anything, it is a waste of sentiment to pity them.
I have pitied you, nevertheless. I have often wished I could give you
the vital qualities you lack.
My pity turned to indignation when I heard you express yourself in such
unqualified terms of condemnation regarding other women who happened to
be unlike you in temperament.
You say there is a certain line which no well-born and womanly woman can
pass in thought or feeling or action.
You regard the true women of earth as a higher and rarer order of
creation than the best of men, and any woman who by action or word
confesses herself to be quite human in her temperament, you feel is, to
a certain extent, "unclean and unsexed." You believe the really good
women of earth are always on a plane above and beyond the physical. When
any woman falls from her pedestal you despise her.
How dare you, madam, sitting in your cold, white chastity, lay down laws
of what you consider purity, morality, and cleanliness, for other human
souls?
How dare you condemn those who do not reach your standard?
What do you know of life, great, palpitating, throbbing, vital life,
terrible and beautiful life, terrible while passing through the valleys
of temptation, beautiful upon the heights of self-control?
How dare you assume greater virtue, greater respectability, greater
fineness of sentiment, than the tempest-tossed, passion-beaten souls,
about you?
What do you know of real virtue, real strength?
You have been poor, you tell me, in worldly riches, and you have been
lonely, yet you have never once degraded your womanhood by an "unworthy
" impulse. Never known a temptation of the senses. Those things
disgusted you.
You have preferred toil to taking favours from inferiors, and you have
kept yourself clean in thought, word, and deed, and now you have the
reward of such virtues--a good home, a husband, and children.
You are a more devoted mother than wife, as you have always dwelt upon a
lofty white peak of chaste womanhood, from which any descent into the
earthly realms of life and love was repugnant--so rarely "pure" and high
your nature.
Yet you have been a dutiful, loyal wife, and you are a devoted mother.
You despise all carnal-minded women, and cannot understand how women
fall--save that they lack good birth and breeding.
You will aid in a benefit for their reformation, but you do not want to
see them or to come near them. It makes you ill.
You are to be congratulated on never having added to the evil in the
world.
But permit me, madam, to tell you some truths about yourself--and the
large army of "respectable women" you represent.
However "well born" you may be, you are only half-born. The complete
human being has three sides to his nature--spiritual, mental, physical.
The men and women who are evenly developed on the three sides are few.
This is sometimes their fault--sometimes their misfortune.
We all pity the human being who is mentally dwarfed. We are sorry for
the one whose spiritual nature is undeveloped.
But why should the many women who are devoid of the physical qualities
of human nature presume to lay claim to perfection and to regard the
normal woman as a suspicious character?
You have a fine, active mind, a highly spiritual nature, but you are
stunted in strong, physical emotion. You are incapable of it, and pride
yourself upon the fact.
If that pleases you, well and good.
But how dare you criticize God's _complete human_ beings, who feel the
great vibrations of the universe, who glow and thrill with that divine
creative force, who live a thousand lives and die a thousand deaths
before they learn the glory of self-conquest.
How dare you shrink even from those who fall by the wayside, and call
your shrinking "purity"!
Let me ask you another question:
How dare you turn away from that girl who went through the door of the
Magdalene Home you helped establish, with her fatherless child in her
arms?
She fell from woman's holy estate!
Yes, through mad love for a man--she loved him with her soul, her mind,
her body. She lacked knowledge, balance, and wisdom; she had only love
and passion.
And you, madam, how about _your_ children?
They were born of a "dutiful" wife. You descended from your lofty
altitude unwillingly--only at duty's call. You are so "refined," yet you
are a loving mother and pose as the highest type of woman.
_God never made in his whole universe of worlds such a "duty" as
unwilling motherhood_. Motherhood without the call of sex for sex is
indecent--criminal. You, too, madam, _fell_.
That girl in yonder "home" your "charity" helped establish, who loved
unwisely, fell. Her fall was through love--yours through a legal
ceremony.
All the churches, all the religions and the laws of earth, cannot make
motherhood holy and right without the mutual mental, spiritual, and
physical union of two beings.
Heaven and earth _both_ must sanction a child's conception to produce a
"well-born" soul.
There is no greater sin on earth than the creation of a human life
without complete accord of the creators.
No wonder the world is full of miserable half-born beings, when mothers
like _you_ claim to be the Madonnas of earth.
No wonder natural, complete, striving souls hide their true natures
under a false exterior, when women like _you_ rule church and society.
What shame or degradation is there, pray, in being animate with the
all-pervading impulse which underlies the entire universe? Every planet,
every tree, every flower, every insect, is the result of sex seeking
sex, atom calling atom.
The universe _is_ because of the law of sex attraction.
And you, poor, puny, pallid woman, dare decry and despise that law, and
dare insult God's animate creature!
Know this, madam, there is no strength worth boasting that has not
conquered weakness. No virtue worth the name that has not conquered
temptation. No greatness of character that has not overcome unworthy
impulses.