Marriage and Love | Page 4

"justice," to
put him safely behind closed doors; his labor, however, goes not to the
child, but to the State. The child receives but a blighted memory of its
father's stripes.
As to the protection of the woman,--therein lies the curse of marriage.
Not that it really protects her, but the very idea is so revolting, such an
outrage and insult on life, so degrading to human dignity, as to forever
condemn this parasitic institution.
It is like that other paternal arrangement--capitalism. It robs man of his
birthright, stunts his growth, poisons his body, keeps him in ignorance,
in poverty, and dependence, and then institutes charities that thrive on
the last vestige of man's self-respect.
The institution of marriage makes a parasite of woman, an absolute
dependent. It incapacitates her for life's struggle, annihilates her social
consciousness, paralyzes her imagination, and then imposes its gracious
protection, which is in reality a snare, a travesty on human character.
If motherhood is the highest fulfillment of woman's nature, what other
protection does it need, save love and freedom? Marriage but defiles,
outrages, and corrupts her fulfillment. Does it not say to woman, Only
when you follow me shall you bring forth life? Does it not condemn
her to the block, does it not degrade and shame her if she refuses to buy
her right to motherhood by selling herself? Does not marriage only
sanction motherhood, even though conceived in hatred, in compulsion?
Yet, if motherhood be of free choice, of love, of ecstasy, of defiant
passion, does it not place a crown of thorns upon an innocent head and
carve in letters of blood the hideous epithet, Bastard? Were marriage to
contain all the virtues claimed for it, its crimes against motherhood
would exclude it forever from the realm of love.
Love, the strongest and deepest element in all life, the harbinger of
hope, of joy, of ecstasy; love, the defier of all laws, of all conventions;
love, the freest, the most powerful moulder of human destiny; how can

such an all-compelling force be synonymous with that poor little State
and Church-begotten weed, marriage?
Free love? As if love is anything but free! Man has bought brains, but
all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued
bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man
has conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer love.
Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he has been utterly helpless
before love. High on a throne, with all the splendor and pomp his gold
can command, man is yet poor and desolate, if love passes him by. And
if it stays, the poorest hovel is radiant with warmth, with life and color.
Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king. Yes, love is
free; it can dwell in no other atmosphere. In freedom it gives itself
unreservedly, abundantly, completely. All the laws on the statutes, all
the courts in the universe, cannot tear it from the soil, once love has
taken root. If, however, the soil is sterile, how can marriage make it
bear fruit? It is like the last desperate struggle of fleeting life against
death.
Love needs no protection; it is its own protection. So long as love
begets life no child is deserted, or hungry, or famished for the want of
affection. I know this to be true. I know women who became mothers
in freedom by the men they loved. Few children in wedlock enjoy the
care, the protection, the devotion free motherhood is capable of
bestowing.
The defenders of authority dread the advent of a free motherhood, lest
it will rob them of their prey. Who would fight wars? Who would
create wealth? Who would make the policeman, the jailer, if woman
were to refuse the indiscriminate breeding of children? The race, the
race! shouts the king, the president, the capitalist, the priest. The race
must be preserved, though woman be degraded to a mere
machine,--and the marriage institution is our only safety valve against
the pernicious sex awakening of woman. But in vain these frantic
efforts to maintain a state of bondage. In vain, too, the edicts of the
Church, the mad attacks of rulers, in vain even the arm of the law.
Woman no longer wants to be a party to the production of a race of

sickly, feeble, decrepit, wretched human beings, who have neither the
strength nor moral courage to throw off the yoke of poverty and slavery.
Instead she desires fewer and better children, begotten and reared in
love and through free choice; not by compulsion, as marriage imposes.
Our pseudo-moralists have yet to learn the deep sense of responsibility
toward the child, that love in freedom has