الفصل الفصل 16 · Chapter XVI

. Chapter XVI

“The children came rapidly, one after another, and there happened what

happens in our society with children and doctors. Yes, children,

maternal love, it is a painful thing. Children, to a woman of our

society, are not a joy, a pride, nor a fulfilment of her vocation, but

a cause of fear, anxiety, and interminable suffering, torture. Women

say it, they think it, and they feel it too. Children to them are

really a torture, not because they do not wish to give birth to them,

nurse them, and care for them (women with a strong maternal

instinct—and such was my wife—are ready to do that), but because the

children may fall sick and die. They do not wish to give birth to them,

and then not love them; and when they love, they do not wish to feel

fear for the child’s health and life. That is why they do not wish to

nurse them. ‘If I nurse it,’ they say, ‘I shall become too fond of it.’

One would think that they preferred india-rubber children, which could

neither be sick nor die, and could always be repaired. What an

entanglement in the brains of these poor women! Why such abominations

to avoid pregnancy, and to avoid the love of the little ones?

“Love, the most joyous condition of the soul, is represented as a

danger. And why? Because, when a man does not live as a man, he is

worse than a beast. A woman cannot look upon a child otherwise than as

a pleasure. It is true that it is painful to give birth to it, but what

little hands! . . . Oh, the little hands! Oh, the little feet! Oh, its

smile! Oh, its little body! Oh, its prattle! Oh, its hiccough! In a

word, it is a feeling of animal, sensual maternity. But as for any idea

as to the mysterious significance of the appearance of a new human

being to replace us, there is scarcely a sign of it.

“Nothing of it appears in all that is said and done. No one has any

faith now in a baptism of the child, and yet that was nothing but a

reminder of the human significance of the newborn babe.

“They have rejected all that, but they have not replaced it, and there

remain only the dresses, the laces, the little hands, the little feet,

and whatever exists in the animal. But the animal has neither

imagination, nor foresight, nor reason, nor a doctor.

“No! not even a doctor! The chicken droops its head, overwhelmed, or

the calf dies; the hen clucks and the cow lows for a time, and then

these beasts continue to live, forgetting what has happened.

“With us, if the child falls sick, what is to be done, how to care for

it, what doctor to call, where to go? If it dies, there will be no more

little hands or little feet, and then what is the use of the sufferings

endured? The cow does not ask all that, and this is why children are a

source of misery. The cow has no imagination, and for that reason

cannot think how it might have saved the child if it had done this or

that, and its grief, founded in its physical being, lasts but a very

short time. It is only a condition, and not that sorrow which becomes

exaggerated to the point of despair, thanks to idleness and satiety.

The cow has not that reasoning faculty which would enable it to ask the

why. Why endure all these tortures? What was the use of so much love,

if the little ones were to die? The cow has no logic which tells it to

have no more children, and, if any come accidentally, to neither love

nor nurse them, that it may not suffer. But our wives reason, and

reason in this way, and that is why I said that, when a man does not

live as a man, he is beneath the animal.”

“But then, how is it necessary to act, in your opinion, in order to

treat children humanly?” I asked.

“How? Why, love them humanly.”

“Well, do not mothers love their children?”

“They do not love them humanly, or very seldom do, and that is why they

do not love them even as dogs. Mark this, a hen, a goose, a wolf, will

always remain to woman inaccessible ideals of animal love. It is a rare

thing for a woman to throw herself, at the peril of her life, upon an

elephant to snatch her child away, whereas a hen or a sparrow will not

fail to fly at a dog and sacrifice itself utterly for its children.

Observe this, also. Woman has the power to limit her physical love for

her children, which an animal cannot do. Does that mean that, because

of this, woman is inferior to the animal? No. She is superior (and even

to say superior is unjust, she is not superior, she is different), but

she has other duties, human duties. She can restrain herself in the

matter of animal love, and transfer her love to the soul of the child.

That is what woman’s _rôle_ should be, and that is precisely what we do

not see in our society. We read of the heroic acts of mothers who

sacrifice their children in the name of a superior idea, and these

things seem to us like tales of the ancient world, which do not concern

us. And yet I believe that, if the mother has not some ideal, in the

name of which she can sacrifice the animal feeling, and if this force

finds no employment, she will transfer it to chimerical attempts to

physically preserve her child, aided in this task by the doctor, and

she will suffer as she does suffer.

“So it was with my wife. Whether there was one child or five, the

feeling remained the same. In fact, it was a little better when there

had been five. Life was always poisoned with fear for the children, not

only from their real or imaginary diseases, but even by their simple

presence. For my part, at least, throughout my conjugal life, all my

interests and all my happiness depended upon the health of my children,

their condition, their studies. Children, it is needless to say, are a

serious consideration; but all ought to live, and in our days parents

can no longer live. Regular life does not exist for them. The whole

life of the family hangs by a hair. What a terrible thing it is to

suddenly receive the news that little Basile is vomiting, or that Lise

has a cramp in the stomach! Immediately you abandon everything, you

forget everything, everything becomes nothing. The essential thing is

the doctor, the enema, the temperature. You cannot begin a conversation

but little Pierre comes running in with an anxious air to ask if he may

eat an apple, or what jacket he shall put on, or else it is the servant

who enters with a screaming baby.

“Regular, steady family life does not exist. Where you live, and

consequently what you do, depends upon the health of the little ones,

the health of the little ones depends upon nobody, and, thanks to the

doctors, who pretend to aid health, your entire life is disturbed. It

is a perpetual peril. Scarcely do we believe ourselves out of it when a

new danger comes: more attempts to save. Always the situation of

sailors on a foundering vessel. Sometimes it seemed to me that this was

done on purpose, that my wife feigned anxiety in order to conquer me,

since that solved the question so simply for her benefit. It seemed to

me that all that she did at those times was done for its effect upon

me, but now I see that she herself, my wife, suffered and was tortured

on account of the little ones, their health, and their diseases.

“A torture to both of us, but to her the children were also a means of

forgetting herself, like an intoxication. I often noticed, when she was

very sad, that she was relieved, when a child fell sick, at being able

to take refuge in this intoxication. It was involuntary intoxication,

because as yet there was nothing else. On every side we heard that Mrs.

So-and-so had lost children, that Dr. So-and-so had saved the child of

Mrs. So-and-so, and that in a certain family all had moved from the

house in which they were living, and thereby saved the little ones. And

the doctors, with a serious air, confirmed this, sustaining my wife in

her opinions. She was not prone to fear, but the doctor dropped some

word, like corruption of the blood, scarlatina, or else—heaven help

us—diphtheria, and off she went.

“It was impossible for it to be otherwise. Women in the old days had

the belief that ‘God has given, God has taken away,’ that the soul of

the little angel is going to heaven, and that it is better to die

innocent than to die in sin. If the women of to-day had something like

this faith, they could endure more peacefully the sickness of their

children. But of all that there does not remain even a trace. And yet

it is necessary to believe in something; consequently they stupidly

believe in medicine, and not even in medicine, but in the doctor. One

believes in X, another in Z, and, like all believers, they do not see

the idiocy of their beliefs. They believe _quia absurdum_, because, in

reality, if they did not believe in a stupid way, they would see the

vanity of all that these brigands prescribe for them. Scarlatina is a

contagious disease; so, when one lives in a large city, half the family

has to move away from its residence (we did it twice), and yet every

man in the city is a centre through which pass innumerable diameters,

carrying threads of all sorts of contagions. There is no obstacle: the

baker, the tailor, the coachman, the laundresses.

“And I would undertake, for every man who moves on account of

contagion, to find in his new dwelling-place another contagion similar,

if not the same.

“But that is not all. Every one knows rich people who, after a case of

diphtheria, destroy everything in their residences, and then fall sick

in houses newly built and furnished. Every one knows, likewise, numbers

of men who come in contact with sick people and do not get infected.

Our anxieties are due to the people who circulate tall stories. One

woman says that she has an excellent doctor. ‘Pardon me,’ answers the

other, ‘he killed such a one,’ or such a one. And _vice versa_. Bring

her another, who knows no more, who learned from the same books, who

treats according to the same formulas, but who goes about in a

carriage, and asks a hundred roubles a visit, and she will have faith

in him.

“It all lies in the fact that our women are savages. They have no

belief in God, but some of them believe in the evil eye, and the others

in doctors who charge high fees. If they had faith they would know that

scarlatina, diphtheria, etc., are not so terrible, since they cannot

disturb that which man can and should love,—the soul. There can result

from them only that which none of us can avoid,—disease and death.

Without faith in God, they love only physically, and all their energy

is concentrated upon the preservation of life, which cannot be

preserved, and which the doctors promise the fools of both sexes to

save. And from that time there is nothing to be done; the doctors must

be summoned.

“Thus the presence of the children not only did not improve our

relations as husband and wife, but, on the contrary, disunited us. The

children became an additional cause of dispute, and the larger they

grew, the more they became an instrument of struggle.

“One would have said that we used them as weapons with which to combat

each other. Each of us had his favorite. I made use of little Basile

(the eldest), she of Lise. Further, when the children reached an age

where their characters began to be defined, they became allies, which

we drew each in his or her own direction. They suffered horribly from

this, the poor things, but we, in our perpetual hubbub, were not

clear-headed enough to think of them. The little girl was devoted to

me, but the eldest boy, who resembled my wife, his favorite, often

inspired me with dislike.”