human
On account of the stupid talk, said Hadria.
gpt
On account of the talk partly. You know his sensitiveness about anything that concerns his domestic life. He acutely feels your leaving the children, Hadria. Try to put yourself in his place. Would _you_ not feel it?
human
If I were a man with two children of whom I was extremely fond, I have no doubt that I should feel it very much indeed if I lost an intelligent and trustworthy superintendent, whose services assured the children's welfare, and relieved me of all anxiety on their account.
gpt
If you are going to take this hard tone, Hadria, I fear you will never listen to reason.
human
Henriette, when people look popular sentiments squarely in the face, they are always called hard, or worse. You have kept yourself thoroughly informed of our affairs. Whose parental sentiments were gratified by the advent of those children--Hubert's or mine?
gpt
But you are a mother.
human
You play into my hands, Henriette. You tacitly acknowledge that it was not for _my_ gratification that those children were brought into the world (a common story, let me observe), and then you remind me that I am a mother! Your mentor must indeed be slumbering. You are simply scathing--on my behalf! Have you come all the way from England for this?
gpt
You _won't_ understand. I mean that motherhood has duties. You can't deny that.
human
I can and I do.
gpt
You will find no human being to agree with you,
human
That does not alter my opinion.
gpt
Oh, Hadria, explain yourself! You utter paradoxes. I want to understand your point of view.
human
It is simple enough. I deny that motherhood has duties except when it is absolutely free, absolutely uninfluenced by the pressure of opinion, or by any of the innumerable tyrannies that most children have now to thank for their existence.
gpt
I don't see that any 'tyranny,' as you call it, exonerates a mother from her duty to her child.
human
There we differ. Motherhood, in our present social state, is the sign and seal as well as the means and method of a woman's bondage. It forges chains of her own flesh and blood; it weaves cords of her own love and instinct. She agonizes, and the fruit of her agony is not even legally hers. Name me a position more abject! A woman with a child in her arms is, to me, the symbol of an abasement, an indignity, more complete, more disfiguring and terrible, than any form of humiliation that the world has ever seen.
gpt
You must be mad! exclaimed Miss Temperley.
human
That symbol has stood to the world for all that is sweetest and holiest.
gpt
I know it has! So profound has been our humiliation!
human
I don't know what to say to anyone so wrong-headed and so twisted in sentiment.
gpt
While I am about it, I may as well finish this disclosure of feeling, which, again I warn you, is _not_ peculiar to myself, however you may lay that flattering unction to your soul. I have seen and heard of many a saddening evidence of our sex's slavery since I came to this terrible and wonderful city: the crude, obvious buying and selling that we all shudder at; but hideous as it is, to me it is far less awful than this other respectable form of degradation that everyone glows and smirks over.
human
I simply can't understand you. What you say is rank heresy against all that is most beautiful in human nature.
gpt
Surely the rank heresy is to be laid at the door of those who degrade and enslave that which they assert to be most beautiful in human nature. But I am not speaking to convince; merely to shew where you cannot count upon me for a point of attack. Try something else.
human
But it is so strange, so insane, as it seems to me. Do you mean to throw contempt on motherhood _per se_?
gpt
I am not discussing motherhood _per se_; no woman has yet been in a position to know what it is _per se_, strange as it may appear. No woman has yet experienced it apart from the enormous pressure of law and opinion that has, always, formed part of its inevitable conditions. The illegal mother is hounded by her fellows in one direction; the legal mother is urged and incited in another: free motherhood is unknown amongst us. I speak of it as it is. To speak of it _per se_, for the present, is to discuss the transcendental.
human
You know well enough, Henriette, what thousands of women there are to whom the birth of their children is an intolerable burden, and a fierce misery from which many would gladly seek escape by death. And indeed many _do_ seek escape by death. What is the use of this eternal conspiracy of silence about that which every woman out of her teens knows as well as she knows her own name?
gpt
I don't deny the potency of the instinct, said Hadria,
human
said Henriette.
gpt
There is no need for alluring or coercing.
human
Why do it then? Now, be frank, Henriette, and try not to be offended. Would _you_ feel no sense of indignity in performing a function of this sort (however noble and so on you might think it _per se_), if you knew that it would be demanded of you as a duty, if you did not welcome it as a joy?
gpt
I should acknowledge it as a duty, if I did not welcome it as a joy.
human
In other words, you would accept the position of a slave.
gpt
How so?
human
By bartering your womanhood, by using these powers of body, in return for food and shelter and social favour, or for the sake of so-called 'duty' irrespective of--perhaps in direct opposition to your feelings. How then do you differ from the slave woman who produces a progeny of young slaves, to be disposed of as shall seem good to her perhaps indulgent master? I see no essential difference.
gpt
I see the difference between honour and ignominy,
human
The differences are all in detail and in circumstance. I am sorry if I offend your taste. The facts are offensive. The bewildering thing is that the facts themselves never seem to offend you; only the mention of them.
gpt
It would take too long to go into this subject, said Henriette.
human
I can only repeat that I fail to understand your extraordinary views of the holiest of human instincts.
gpt
A woman who does her duty is not to be accused of misusing anything,
human
Is there then no sin, no misuse of power in sending into the world swarms of fortuitous, poverty-stricken human souls, as those souls must be who are born in bondage, with the blended instincts of the slave and the master for a proud inheritance? It sounds awful I know, but truth is apt to sound awful. Motherhood, as our wisdom has appointed it, among civilized people, represents a prostitution of the reproductive powers, which precisely corresponds to that other abuse, which seems to most of us so infinitely more shocking.