Perhaps the reader will begin to realize what Mrs. Gilman and those who
think with her are asking us to believe when they say that the primal
physical functions of maternity will be best fulfilled by the mother who
"mingles in the natural industries of a human creature." This statement
is either ridiculously false or can be rendered true by rendering it as
a truism. The primal physical functions of maternity _are_ the natural
industries of the particular human creature we call a mother; and the
better she fulfils them, the better she fulfils them, certainly. But the
so-called natural industries in which the modern mother is desired to
be engaged whilst she is bearing or nursing her children are as
unnatural as anything can be. As at present practised, they are morbid
products of civilization which it will require to cast off if it is to
survive.
It is the student of life and its laws who must have the last word in
these matters. If he utters it wrongly or is unheeded, Nature is not
mocked, but will be avenged. The writer who can lay down a new principle
on which our life is to be based, without paying any more attention to
lactation than is to be found in the argument we have been considering,
has left out the beginning, has omitted the foundations. No measure of
earnestness or literary skill can save her case.
Of course the reply will be that the biological criticism is simply the
ancient and oriental idea of woman as a helpless dependent, reasserted
for male advantage in our own day.
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