Matricide

“ Why do you grant to the husband a divorce for the adultery of the wife? Because he ought not to forgive her; and separation is inevitable. Where the wife cannot forgive,—and separation is inevitable by reason of the crime of the husband,—the wife is entitled to the like remedy. In this instance, reconciliation is impossible—the wife cannot forgive the husband and return to his house, without herself being guilty of incest. ”

“ Tens of thousands of wives and mothers are to be seen, all over the country, at once the perpetrators and victims of this cruel and disgusting act; all, all to administer to the sensualism of men, who are called husbands! Husbands! the guilt is mainly yours; and the damnation is just. Beneath your foul wrong to their nature, your wives sink, and you must go down with them.
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 worn-out tag which has so long done duty with Feminists in this connection—viz. the rule of the Divorce Court, that in order to procure divorce a wife has to prove cruelty as well as adultery on the part of a husband, whereas a husband has to prove adultery alone on the part of a wife—has already been dealt with and its rottenness as a specimen of a grievance sufficiently exposed in this work and elsewhere by the present writer. ”

“ No man may have more wives than one.
No man may marry among his own kin within six degrees of relationship or with the widow of a man as nearly related to him as that, or with a near relative of his first wife's, or his god- mother, or a divorced woman. Incest is punishable by payment of one's wergeld or a fine or forfeiture of all his possessions.
Grounds for divorce were mutual consent or adultery or desertion. Adultery was prohibited for men as well as for women. The penalty was payment of a bot or denial of burial in consecrated ground. ”

“ If the paramour kills the husband, the wife is strangled, whether she knew of the crime or not, provided the husband has not consented to the adultery. Grace is shown the woman only "when the murder was sudden and unpremeditated;" ”

“ As fidelity to the marriage-bed, especially on the part of woman, has always been considered as one of the most essential duties of matrimony, wise legislators, in order to secure that benefit have annexed punishment to the act of adultery; these punishments, however, have generally some reference to the manner in which wives were acquired, and to the value stamped upon woman by civilization and politeness of manners. It is ordained by the Mosaic code, that both the men and the women taken in adultery shall be stoned to death ”

“ Whilst, in the nations whom the Reformation of the sixteenth century tore from the bosom of the Church, the sacred laws of matrimony are trampled in the dust, whilst the statistics of these nations hold up to the world the sad spectacle of divorces as numerous as marriages, of separations of husband from wife, [Pg 275] and wife from husband, for the most trivial causes, thus granting to lust the widest margin of license, and legalizing concubinage and adultery ”

“ Is it a wonder that wives seek to justify themselves in resorting to ante-natal child-murder? I do not wonder at it. The wonder is, that a woman should live one hour, as a wife, with one who imposes on her a repulsive maternity, thus doing to her, and her child, the greatest 70possible wrong; or who can, for one moment, subject her to the liability of becoming a mother, when her own nature repels the office. One such maternity, imposed after the husband knows that his wife shrinks from it, should lead every woman to “bolt the legal bond” that binds her to such a man. ”

“ Why he had taken his neighbor's wife, a person he had no claim upon, and he not only committed adultery by thus taking the wife of another, but by his order her lawful husband was placed in front of the battle that he might be destroyed, and he was destroyed, hence, though he himself did not thrust a dagger to his heart, he became a murderer in the sight of heaven by having this man placed where his blood would be shed. ”

“ In my last, I showed, at some length, the crime of an undesired maternity against the mother; how it affects her mind towards the father of her child; how it tends to destroy all love and respect for him, instead of increasing them; how it destroys her self-respect, strips her of the conscious pride and dignity of a loved and loving wife, and reduces her to the feeling and condition of a degraded, self-condemned victim of legalized sensualism. ”

“ Still further, the mediæval church, while it had a doctrine of perfection and ideality for marriage, had also a practical system of concession to human weakness, by which it could meet cases of unhappy marriage. In the canon law, divorce and remarriage of the innocent party has been allowed to the man, in case of adultery, physical incapacity, leprosy, desertion, captivity, disappearance, and conspiracy to murder the husband, on the part of the wife ”

“ There are too many innocent victims of matrimony for their voices not to be heard; and when the law-giver knows how to surround divorce with all the most delicate guarantees, he will increase the sanctity of the family and free the children from [Pg 30] the cruelly abject spectacle of their two parents living under the same roof hating each other, with homicide in their thoughts, bearing the chains of convicts, without the courage or the strength to break them. ”

“ But the crime of abortion does not rest wholly with the mothers. A large part of the guilt also belongs to the fathers. We may warn the wives against the terrible sin and awful physical consequences of abortion, but so long as husbands are unwilling to govern their passions, or to regulate their marital relations in harmony with the teachings of Scripture, but insist upon unlimited self-indulgence, the evils cannot be wholly corrected. Husbands need to be taught to look at the question from the wife's standpoint. The wrong is not all upon one side. ”

“ The heart of the home is the cradle; it is the cementing tie between husband and wife. God intends that husbands and wives should become parents; and no pure woman nor honorable man will enter upon matrimony with intentions to the contrary. If they do, God will visit upon them degraded morals, ruined health, financial loss, or other terrible inflictions. The world has millions of faithful wives and mothers, but there are thousands of childless wives who are so because they entered into that black crime of conspiring with the devil to prevent them from being mothers. ”

“ According to a unique scheme, the grounds of absolute divorce are arranged in two groups: (1) A marriage will be dissolved, on petition of the aggrieved, when either consort has (a) committed adultery; (b) is guilty of three years' wilful and utter desertion; (c) has been sentenced to imprisonment for life, or for seven years or more, no pardon effecting a restitution of conjugal rights; or (d) has contracted "the disease known as Chinese leprosy, and is incapable of cure." (2) When one of the married persons has been guilty of (a) extreme cruelty; or (b) habitual drunkenness ”

“ Under the Matrimonial Causes Act 1859, on a wife’s petition for dissolution of marriage on the ground of adultery coupled with cruelty or desertion, husband and wife are competent and compellable to give evidence as to the cruelty or desertion. ”

“ Every encouragement is given to wedlock and to large families: polygamy itself, had its reason, in those hot climates where puberty is reached at so early an age, and where the child-bearing woman is so quickly aged into unfitness for mating with the robust husband. It was partly because the Mosaic law gave so little excuse for immorality, that adultery was so cruelly punished. ”

“ Many who have but one wife, and several of those who have more than one, take a course to excite adultery, and what is much worse, they often take that course at the most improper and unwise times, and thereby seriously injure their offspring. ”

“ The law of 1848, when the marriage bond is dissolved on account of infidelity, authorizes the court in its discretion to allow both parties to remarry or only the injured person, as may seem just. [271] Such substantially is the present law. "In granting [80] a divorce for adultery, the court may decree that the guilty party shall not marry again; in which case the bond of matrimony shall be deemed not to be dissolved as to any future marriage of such party, or in any prosecution on account thereof. ”

“ Children, especially when they are still young, follow the mother when she separates from the father. Matriarchy is quite natural in marriages of short duration, with change of wives, and in polygamy; while, in monogamous nations, it is patriarchy, or denomination after the paternal line, which dominates.
Among nations where the denomination of uncles exists, and where the married woman lives with her family till she has a child, matriarchy results quite naturally from this fact. ”

“ Incest with thy daughter-in-law thou shalt not commit: she is thy son's wife; thou shalt not commit incest with her. 16. Incest with thy brother's wife thou shalt not commit: it is incest with thy brother.
17. Incest thou shalt not commit with a woman and her daughter, neither shalt thou take her son's daughter, or her daughter's daughter, to commit incest with her: for they are her near kinswomen: it is wickedness.
18. Neither shalt thou take a wife to her sister, even though one after the other, to commit incest with her, to vex her in her life. ”

“ It will now be seen that the four means by which numerical disparity between the two sexes is conveniently maintained are: (1) burning the widow with her deceased husband; (2) compulsory widowhood—a milder form of burning; (3) imposing celibacy on the widower; and (4) wedding him to a girl not yet marriageable. ”

“ Matriarchism.—As we have already said, it is the children who constitute the real phylogenetic and [379] psychological bonds in marriage and the family, bonds which are deeply rooted in human nature. This is so true that among many savage peoples, if not in most, marriage is not considered legal as long as it is sterile. Even among civilized people sterile women are generally regarded as of less value. We may, therefore, regard the article in the Code Napoleon which forbids inquiry into paternity as an unnatural measure, or as a monstrosity of civil law. ”

“ Is it fit that the harlot should again become my brother's wife? You properly sanctioned the writing of divorcement; therefore to the law let her appeal. And if, in violation of justice, you act thus, be assured, that I will no longer be accounted your daughter." The second sister, who was called Truth, then said, "My father, she has spoken truly. You have adjudged this woman an adultress: if you permit her to return, you destroy the very essence of truth, and therefore I too, will no more fulfil the offices of a daughter." ”

“ The act of 1849 authorizes a divorce to the man when the woman at the time of the marriage, or when it was solemnized, was pregnant by another person without the intended husband's knowledge; and to the wife, when the man prior to the marriage or its solemnization had been convicted of a felony or infamous crime without the woman's knowing it when the marriage took place. ”

“ In choosing their wives they use a method that would appear to us very absurd and ridiculous, but it is constantly observed among them, and is accounted perfectly consistent with wisdom. Before marriage some grave matron presents the bride, naked, whether she is a virgin or a widow, to the bridegroom, and after that some grave man presents the bridegroom, naked, to the bride. ”

“ Husbands! it is your licentiousness that drives your wives to a deed so abhorrent to their every wifely, womanly and maternal instinct; a deed which ruins the health of their bodies, prostitutes their souls, and makes marriage, maternity, and womanhood itself, degrading and loathsome. No terms can sufficiently characterize the cruelty, meanness, and disgusting selfishness and injustice of your conduct, when you impose on them a maternity so detested as to drive them to the desperation of killing their unborn children, and often themselves. ”

“ To-day, countless women are still being sacrificed to this doctrine of marriage, or to its unconscious effects; their exhausted wombs are a poor soil for the new generation; their crushed souls a broken support for the growth of new wills. For one woman who defends herself with the resolution lent by horror, there are thousands who have conceived and still conceive children in loathing. For one wife who is met with the modest prayer of love, there are thousands who with a feeling of humiliation concede to their proprietors the right inculcated by the Lutheran doctrine of matrimony. ”

“ This is committed against the lawful spouse of the adulterer or adulteress. By the adultery of a wife, besides the injury done the husband by her infidelity, a spurious child may be born which he may think himself bound to sustain, and which may perhaps become his heir. For the injury suffered in the unfaithfulness of his wife restitution must be made to the husband, should he become apprised of the crime. ”