Georgiana Bruce Kirby

“ Man appears to have been superendowed with amativeness since first he stood erect. Inferior intellect and strong passions characterized the primitive man. And as the head of the modern man still awaits the arch, he continues to be intemperate on this side of his nature, and to dominate woman in such degree as suits his pleasure. Over-indulgence is followed by a sense of shame, of disgust; and as this habit of excess was and is universal, man has learned to separate this passion from what he calls his higher nature, and brand it as degrading, sensual, shameful. ”

“ What father instructs his son before marriage as to his behavior under that most sacred bond? What mother advises with her daughter, assuring her that she is to be the judge and regulator in her private life with her husband? Too often the health of both is impaired, and the mutual attraction destroyed, because knowledge came too late. ”

“ Men, and women too, are astonished and perplexed when the superficial, but pleasing young wife of the man of genius proves the mother of dull boys and girls without possibilities. Still more incomprehensible to them is the mysterious Providence which has awarded the vicious or deficient child to the excellent and sensible couple, and presented the lazy [8] and disorderly one with a delicate saint, or an inventor. When the education, the training, had been exactly alike for all the children, why did the second or the sixth o’ertop the others in talent, high ambition, nobler presence? ”

“ We reason a priori that when the entire being consents, the spiritual as well as the affectional, the act of union is as pure in its character as the blossoming of the lily [18] or the rose. The pure, unselfish love of a noble man, when carried to its ultimate with a happily responsive wife, should be as free from shame as the opening violet. Emotion is as divine as thought. ”

“ It is his wife—the woman he adores, to whom he is drawn as by an invisible magnet, and children originating in this tender and impassioned embrace will be thus far magnetic and well-born children. A desire for parentage is as good as the love of woman, no doubt; but since it is in the order of nature for a man to be concerned for the woman alone, should we interfere? ”

“ It seems strange that the converse of this did not suggest itself, so that her sensibility could have been tested for the creation of beauty and symmetry.
It was also seen that the pregnant woman could affect the temper, the disposition of her child by yielding to angry emotions, but she was not credited with the ability to convey a serenity and sweetness of nature surpassing her own.
Through all the dark ages that have preceded us, woman has known herself a slave with less questioning as to the rightfulness of the position awarded her by man than she is sensible of to-day. ”

“ There are some cold, narrow, positive women so impervious to the influence of others, so insensitive that the husband, if he is superior, can hardly ever represent himself in his children.
I am acquainted with a gentleman conspicuous among his fellows for grace of soul and nobility of nature. He has the tenderness of a woman combined with masculine heroism. Of his six children not one equals the father. ”

“ There is nothing like singing to free the soul, and awaken its heights and depths. Nothing could have been more fortunate for little Clara, who made her entry into the world before her [66] aunt’s departure, than the antecedent occupation of her mother. In time her voice proved to be as sweet and far stronger than her mother’s, and in all her nature she realized the inspiring effect of those hours when persuaded by her sister, her mother had lost sight of herself in the pure emotions and thoughts of those famous masters. ”

“ How weak is a man without sufficient firmness, yet how unamenable is he who possesses too large a share. How valuable is acquisitiveness with conscience and the reasoning powers fully developed. Without the latter, acquisitiveness purloins cash and jewelry.
Excess of amativeness—the faculty most blindly abused hitherto—has worked most cruel wrong. Goaded by stimulants it has murdered its willing slave, sought satisfaction in promiscuous relations which destroy conjugal love, changing it to lust,—levied tax on the other organs of the brain, dragging them with itself to a shameful death. ”

“ It has also been proved, to the simplest observation, that woman has the large balance of power in the formation of character, and it is for her to assume the responsibility. Genius is dependent on a combination of influences outside our control, but good sense, integrity, generosity, and chastity take their growth from thoughts, emotions, and acts, over which we have control to a very great extent. Let women take courage. The larger their responsibility, the nobler their reward. ”

“ If the young couple have planned their life wisely; if they are hospitably inclined, it may be musical and social at once, and the wife especially take some kindly interest in the welfare of those less favored than themselves, all will be safe so far as the intellect is concerned; and if the delicate consideration and courtesy felt and shown before marriage by each to the other continue after the union is consummated, a happy temperament, a pleasing natural manner may be expected for the child. ”

“ Friends will often advise a pregnant woman to drink beer or spirits, assuming that nature at such times requires it. Now, nature is equal to her own emergencies, and pregnancy is not a disease. The brooding mother needs plenty of sunlight and fresh air, abundant sleep, moderate exercise, wholesome food, and congenial surroundings. Let her listen to no one who prescribes a stimulant which holds disease in itself.
There is such a thing as intemperance in eating, and I would counsel any woman to demand of herself a perfect self-control at the table. ”

“ No exhilarating rides on horseback, such as had been her wont, no genial, social company, no brisk walks and happy communion with nature, were possible in her peculiar circumstances. She must forego the healthy, harmonious, external life of her past, and live solely within the inmost chambers of her soul. ”

“ But why does she not give her children the benefit of her ambition and faculty? She put all the vitality, all the magnetism that belonged to her little daughter, into the kettles and pans, into the soap and butter. The butter may sell well in the market, but it will not atone for the absence of resource in her child. ”

“ As it is, she evades the responsibility, and abandons soul and body to the undisciplined will of one as ignorant of law as herself. Here, as elsewhere, men, and women too, persuade themselves that subserviency in woman is lovely as in a man it is contemptible. ”

“ She can neither clothe, educate, nor train the children properly, and the latest comers are apt to have a poorer make-up—a fag-end sort of air. Here, on the contrary, was the flower of the flock, a youth full of faculty, at home on the piano-forte stool as at the knife-board, determined to sustain his mother at all hazards. ”

“ The more highly-organized the mother, the more child-bearing exhausts her, because she is drained of her intellectual and spiritual forces. She, therefore, requires longer periods of rest and recuperation than the healthy, animal woman who can bear a child every two years for many succeeding years, and retain health and vigor.
Many of the most lovely, most charming, and altogether admirable women, become the inmates of insane asylums from having maternity thrust on them at too near periods of time.
For a child to be well born, his parents should be happily mated and in good health ”

“ The beauty, and alert, independent ways of the young woman in question, were set forth to the betrothed in a manner calculated to depress her own self-esteem, and raise a doubt of her lover’s satisfaction in her, but not enough doubt, she thought, to justify an explanation, or to impede the marriage, which therefore took place at once. ”

“ But the farmer’s wife, the mother of his progeny, who are to do him honor by their virtues, or cast reproach upon him by their mediocrity or vices, is over-worked every day of each of the nine months of each period that is to decide his case.
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When the mare has performed the labor that is good for her, she is turned into the sunny pasture for the rest of the day. But there is no considerate arrangement for the wife’s walking in green meadows to drink in the beauties of nature, and absorb the invigorating sunlight when she has had as much exercise as is good for her. ”

“ Birth-marks, whether unimportant in character, or amounting to deformity, are to be referred not so much to the first impression made on the mother’s mind, as to her subsequent and frequent reproduction of the image. The unfurnished mind of the illiterate woman seizes on and retains the ugly or grotesque picture, which another rich in thought and experience would have dismissed at once. ”

“ At the same moment I heard a loud cry for help, and the old lady came hurriedly round the corner of the house, followed by her son, with a hoe in his hand upraised to strike her. Seeing me, he flung the hoe aside and walked sullenly out of the gate. Sitting on the doorstep wiping her tears away with the corner of her apron, the unhappy woman apologized for her evil son in this wise:
“We were always poor, living from hand to mouth. My husband never had any faculty for making a living. I strove and strove to keep my children from want, and keep them looking decent. ”

“ In the following pages it is my wish to impress on women the grave truth, than which none can have more importance, that with them, with the mother, rests the greater power to mould for good or ill, for power or weakness, for beauty or deformity, the characters of her unborn children, and that with power comes the responsibility for its use. ”

“ If the husband, on his farm, or in his factory, or store, has extra or increasing work, he forthwith hires more help; but as child after child add to the responsibilities and labors of the home, the mother struggles on unassisted, until at last she becomes a hopeless invalid, or sinks at middle age under her burdens, leaving her husband with his accumulated means to marry a younger woman, who sits in the parlor, hires plenty of servants—now considered quite necessary—and has a good time generally, on the savings of her predecessor. ”

“ The father was an amiable, inefficient, illiterate, temperate man; a waster of other people’s time; an interminable talker of nothings. The mother, an amiable, industrious, capable woman, who patched and knitted and made a few dollars by nursing, at the call of the village doctor—a most tender and devoted mother, a too generous neighbor. ”

“ During courtship it is the habit of the mind to avoid all topics on which disagreement is anticipated. This comes of a longing for sympathy, and a fear of losing whatever degree of it is possible between the parties. It is a dangerous course, and imperils future happiness, because after marriage all disguises are sure to be dropped, and the want of harmony in opinion and feeling becomes at once prominent. ”

“ If she can think her own thoughts, she certainly must not express them. If she has any doubt concerning any part of the creed, she must force it back and make believe that the strait-jacket is as easy as a knitted shirt. ”

“ The cause of grief very seriously affects its character. If it is based on a sense of wrong, as in the case of a husband’s unfaithfulness, then indignation, anger, malice make a part of it, and a pregnant wife, distracted by these emotions, conveys to her child, as we have shown, the violent emotions she herself experienced. ”

“ We have seen that the abnormal sensibility of a pregnant woman insures large effects (on the child) from small causes. Thus a joy is absorbed by the young life that the mother outgrows; and depression that was but temporary with her, leaves its mark on the temperament and disposition of her offspring.
Thus the habit of taking just a drop to sustain your [78] fainting spirits during the day, and a glass of something hot at night, added, most likely, to the father’s moderate drinking, gives the child an uncontrollable passion for stimulants. ”

“ Love seeks only the happiness of the being loved, and is as refined in its most private as in its public demeanor. Lust cares only for selfish, animal gratification, without regard to the slave who gives enforced consent. ”

“ She listened, received, and grew en rapport with him.
Under these favorable auspices their first child was born. She was the child of the father, and wore his features, toned to greater delicacy of outline and purer colors. Her mind as she grew to womanhood was of a quite superior order, but wanted the breadth and generosity which more warmth in the father, and greater ripeness in the mother, would have secured to her. ”

“ Sweet and lovely thoughts resolve themselves into symmetry of form and face. Mental and physical traits do undoubtedly reappear in the same family after a longer or shorter period, but never without the right conditions for their re-incarnation. You may take at least half the credit of Daisy’s good looks to yourself, and the other half belongs to her good mother. ”