Charlotte Perkins Gilman

“ For our blind misdirection, our death and disease;
28For the grief of our childhood, the loss and the wrong;
For the pain of our childhood, the agony strong;
For the shame and the sin and the sorrow thereof—
Dare you say it is love?
Love? First give freedom,—the right of the brute!
The air with its sunshine, the earth with its fruit.
Love? First give wisdom,—intelligent care,
That shall help to bring out all the good that is there.
Love? First give justice! There’s nothing above!
And then you may love! TO A GOOD MANY.
O blind and selfish! ”

“ In all this atmosphere of wooings and weddings, Vivian walked apart, as one in a bad dream that could never end. That day when Dr. Bellair left her on the hill, left her alone in a strange new horrible world, was still glaring across her consciousness, the end of one life, the bar to any other. Its small events were as clear to her as those which stand out so painfully on a day of death; all that led up to the pleasant walk, when an eager girl mounted the breezy height, and a sad-faced woman came down from it. ”

“ The Patriarch lived on the labor of women and slaves. All down the ages, from frank piracy and robbery to the measured toll of tribute, ransom and indemnity, we see the same natural instinct of the hunter and fighter. In his hands the government is a thing to sap and wreck, to live on. It is his essential impulse to want something very much; to struggle and fight for it; to take all he can get.
Set against this the giving love that comes with motherhood; the endless service that comes of motherhood; the peaceful administration in the interest of the family that comes of motherhood. ”

“ I had never been so eloquent on the subject of religion. She could be horrified at Damnation, and question the justice of Salvation, but Immortality--that was surely a noble faith.
"Why, Van," she said, holding out her hands to me. "Why Van--darling! How splendid of you to feel it so keenly. That's what we all want, of course--Peace and Beauty, and Comfort and Love--with God! And Progress too, remember; Growth, always and always. That is what our religion teaches us to want and to work for, and we do!" ”

“ There was a splendid procession, wreathing dances, the new anthem I spoke of, and the whole great place pulsed with feeling—the deep awe, the sweet hope, the wondering expectation of a new miracle.
“There has been nothing like this in the country since our Motherhood began!” Somel said softly to me, while we watched the symbolic marches. “You see, it is the dawn of a new era. You don’t know how much you mean to us. It is not only Fatherhood—that marvelous dual parentage to which we are strangers—the miracle of union in life-giving—but it is Brotherhood. You are the rest of the world. ”

“ Like an ever-enlarging burning glass, still focussed upon one spot, the healthy, natural affection of the animal mother for its young has grown to what is really an immense social affection, too large for one family to profitably sustain. The child will get a far more just and healthful idea of human relation when he finds himself lifted and led on by a mother whose life has a purpose of its own, than when he finds himself encompassed and overwhelmed by a mother who has no other object or interest than himself. ”