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Title: Free Love, Free Motherhood Author: Paul Robin Date: 1900 Language: en Topics: free love, motherhood, feminism, children Source: Translated from https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k5545104v/f562.item Notes: Originally published in L'Humanité Nouvelle (November 1900), and then as a booklet by Régéneration (several editions). Translation by João Black.
Marriage has been practiced everywhere and always under conditions so
absurd, so odious, so oppressive; it has resulted, in such an immense
majority of cases, in changing the joys of love into an atrocious
double, reciprocal slavery; so much and so often efforts have been made
in vain to improve it, that it is not astonishing that a very large
number of thinkers have long adopted the only radical and effective
solution, the complete freedom of love.
Among the works in which this thesis has been defended, I like to cite,
in the first line, the remarkable book, The Elements of Social Science
[Eléments de science sociale], by a Doctor in medicine, published in
1854, in English, translated into many languages.[1][2]
One of its chapters is audaciously titled: "Poverty, Its Only Cause, Its
Only Cure!" The cause is marriage; the remedy is... sterile love (the
author uses a more precise expression that I dare not reproduce). This
work is big, compact, very stuffed with facts and arguments; he is one
of those that light-minded people rarely read.
On the contrary, The Gospel of Happiness [l’Evangil du Bonheur],
published two years ago by Armand Charpentier, is a book that could not
be more pleasant to read for all, thanks to its elegance, clarity and
conciseness. But, if it indicates the evil very well, the remedy which
it proposes, simply free love, is a solution which it is necessary to
complete.
Others have approached only part of the problem by combating legal
marriage and replacing it with union, free marriage, which must, in
their minds, present chances of duration, of constancy, equal or
superior to that of marriage consecrated by authority. Paul Lacombe
defends this idea in his already old book, Free Marriage [le Mariage
libre].
Better still, making propaganda by the fact, a large number of couples
declare with brilliance to unite freely and to abstain from any
ceremony, or accompany their act only with family ceremonies.
Let us cite, in France, the unions of the daughters of Elisée Reclus; in
England, those of E. Lanchester, of Walstall...
These new unions are rid of a fatal detail, so be it! but they still
have all the germs of suffering that make marriage detestable.
Naturally, neophobes of all kinds do not fail to protest against what
they call at the very least "the most abominable shamelessness", as if
the current apparent, legalistic, official society, affecting
correctness, respectability, were the impeccable collection of all
virtues, including the exclusive, so silly, virtue of woman, chastity.
I do not want to dwell for a single moment on the objections of
theological origin presented against free love. Whoever is with the
fiction of God is against the reality of man. He who seeks the happiness
of man quickly rejects the idea of ​​an almighty and ferocious God,
created by the terrorized imagination of the primitives, exploited by
the clever, preserved by a thoughtless feeling, an idea having no
practical use, but, quite the contrary, being immediately, after the
question of overpopulation and the resulting misery, the second cause of
the innumerable and horrible killings of which history gives us the
account.
To the frankly theological objections are attached those of the
metaphysicians who want to impose on humanity certain moral ideals which
satisfy their own prejudices, but not at all the legitimate aspiration
of the great mass to happiness, as it understands it.
The only serious objection is that of the situation of children outside
the so-called legal protection, and, whatever people may think who have
not submitted the matter to calculation, the objection would remain even
in a communist society, even in a moment freed from any material
concern. The answer to the objection is the same in the hypothesis of
this ideal society and in the reality of today's individualistic
society: freedom of love presupposes freedom of motherhood.
The woman must have, I do not say the right, I do not know any more what
this old abused word means, but the power and the science of not being a
mother unless she has resolved it after mature reflection.
I think I was the first to clearly affirm this unique solution at the
Feminist Congress of Paris (April 1896), and at the Second Congress for
the protection and increase of the population[3] (December 1896), the
latter organized by a society of a dozen members that its creator and
secretary modestly calls: "Alliance of Savants and Philanthropists of
all countries"![4]
I thus summarize my doctrine from the feminine point of view:
A young girl is wrong to marry, to alienate the little freedom she
possesses. May she remain as much as possible mistress of herself, may
she freely choose her compañeros and compañeras;[5] and, in order to
ensure that her freedom is respected on this point, may she take care to
respect that of others; may she be careful not to criticize the acts of
others, and may each begin with herself the reform of the so-called
"public opinion" which always meddles in what does not concern it and is
more tyrannical than the positive laws themselves.
She does not disobey any rational law by having the lovers as she
pleases, but she commits a great fault against true morality if she
randomly creates children whose education and maintenance are nothing
less than assured.
Those who really want the happiness of the young woman should not
prevent her from knowing that science provides her with the means to be
a mother only when she wants it.
The freedom of motherhood is the indispensable condition for the freedom
of love. It must have no other guides than physiological science and
sexual prudence.
If, after more or less numerous experiences, she finds a companion with
whom, in perfect accordance of culture and tastes, she thinks she can
spend a long happy life, she definitely associates with him, if it
pleases her, without worrying about the vain legal sanctions, and gives
herself the incomparable happiness of having children that she will be
sure to be able to feed and raise well; and may these children bear only
her name.
Many gynecologists teach that it is hardly good for a woman to be a
mother before the age of twenty-five, and it is very obvious that her
very natural desires for tenderness, for love, does not wait for that
age.
If the loved companion, definitively chosen, achieves the dreamed ideal,
something very rare in the current legal marriage, he will not need to
be forced by the law to concur with the mother with all his strength, in
every way, for the maintenance and education of the cherished children.
If by misfortune the lovers are mistaken, if the agreement does not
last, if there is incompatibility of mood, if they separate, love will
be followed not by hatred and horror, as today, but friendship or, at
least, esteem. And the honest man will not fail to contribute his very
suitable share to the material maintenance of the fruits of his former
loves.
If, by some impossibility, after so many precautions, a woman is united
with a scoundrel, she will separate from him, taking the children for
whom she will have sole charge and direction, very unhappy no doubt, but
not increasing her real misfortune of artificial torture added to it by
oppressive laws.
Remaining major, the sole mistress of her children, she will not have
made herself the slave of a tyrant who can molest her within very wide
limits with impunity, legally steal the fruit of her labor, her savings,
her children's bread and hers.
Degenerates with tyrannical instincts, deprived of the support of
iniquitous laws by the woman's own initiative, by her abstention from
legal marriage, would inevitably lose their brutality, would become
humanized.
Here is yet another poignant question closely related to that of free
love, in which it finds its perfect solution.
Among the innocent female babies brought into this cursed world by the
chance of a brutal rapprochement, whether legitimate or not, there are,
to speak only of the so-called civilized countries, at least one
hundredth, often more, destined to become the most debased, the most
crushed slaves and outcasts.
Prostitution is everywhere, frankly or hypocritically, transformed by
the rulers into a social institution, designed to safeguard the
unnatural and useless chastity of the girls of the bourgeoisie against
the terrible, but perfectly natural, rut of the young males.
Our atrocious customs make some poor girls victims tortured by the abuse
of pleasures of which many others are deprived. May the latter, who form
a large majority, victims also for their disobedience to the
physiological law of sexual exercise, revolt against prejudices,
reconquer the pleasures so annoyingly refused to them by laws and mores;
may they, saving themselves, save at the same time their poor martyred
sisters and destroy for ever, in the only effective way, the feminine
slavery, prostitution!
In short, may women remain the sole arbiters of their destiny; may they
expect nothing from the laws; let them know how to want; may they act.
With one blow, they will realize the most important chapter of universal
emancipation and will immediately enjoy these two goods which complement
each other: freedom of love, freedom of motherhood!
These tips are exclusively given from the feminine point of view. This
is because in a legal union and in a free union, it is the woman who
runs the greatest risks, as much by natural phenomena as by the
aggravation that the laws and customs add to them. It has quite often
been repeated with all possible proof that the laws have been made by
men in favor of their sex, to the detriment of the other. It cannot be
said too often that, still worse than the laws, the customs preserved by
prejudices, especially the prejudices of women, maintain the slavery of
the latter.
It is for the privileged women of fortune, or of intelligence, or of
both, to take in hand the cause of their sex and not to leave its burden
to those of the other sex that so many of them wrongly accuse of being
the sole cause of their ills. To succeed, they must first unite frankly
with the humble and despised, not by considering themselves as their
generous protectors, deigning to forgive their faults or their
weaknesses; but, on the contrary, well imbued with this truth that it is
up to them to make their martyr sisters forgive them for a social state
of which they themselves have reaped all the benefits. Secondly, it is
necessary that they renounce those vain words, wishes, protests,
demands, addressed to the public authorities, and that, without waiting
for the usurpers, masters of the world by our softness, to deign to
grant them every bit of successive little freedoms, they take the entire
freedom without any permission.
In England, a country of practical people, these examples have already
been frequently and usefully given. The well-known act of Edith
Lanchester has served the cause of feminine emancipation in a different
way than an endless number of vain speeches. Her example of independence
has been followed, and will be even more so when the indispensable
neo-Malthusian note is given with more vigor.
For completeness, we must also address the question of free love from
the male point of view. This is much easier, if you only consider the
material side of the problem. In our so-called monogamous society,
almost all men practice polygamy, enjoy the advantages of the freedom of
love without accepting any of its responsibilities; they are glorified
by the same act which for their partners is worth dishonor and contempt,
resulting in misery. But there are a certain number of them whose
conscience does not allow them to base their pleasures on the misfortune
of others, and for whom a commitment is all the more powerful the less
legal, and for them the freedom of love has the same importance and must
have the same corrective as for the woman.
Married or not, the honest father finds himself absolutely bound to the
mother of his children, and it is not enough for him to pay his share of
the expenses: he rightly considers himself as obliged to provide his
share of care and tenderness. The previous advice is as applicable to
him as to his partner.
The first training in love is provoked by external charms: beauty, wit,
gaiety... It is quite sufficient to exchange under the nose of public
opinion, which pretends to prohibit the pleasures that nature allows and
encourages. It is not at all any more when it is a question of taking
care in common of the education of the fruits of love. It will therefore
be in the interest of the man, as much as that of the woman, that this
love does not become fertile until a common, intimate, long enough life
has proved to both of them the perfect accordance of ideas, tastes,
mores, of the lovers wanting to become parents.
There are faults or flaws that the chain exaggerates and true freedom
attenuates: teasing, selfishness, rapacity; the weak woman, protected by
the legal bond, has even more than the man a tendency to abandon herself
to it, as if to console herself for the exclusive obligations imposed on
her by the law, a tendency that she would not have if, in order to
accept the joy of love, she had not had to renounce a very large part of
her freedom.
In addition, our educations are so different that, in a forced intimate
life, our tastes, our feelings, our tendencies collide at every moment.
This is less for people with great joys, with less active brains, than
for the delicate, the thinkers. It often happens that a man animated by
high scientific and humanitarian concerns, once the so-called honeymoon
period has passed, finds, under the more or less careful veneer of a
very superficial education, a wife with vulgar, banal tastes, without
ideal, which hinders both his actions and his thoughts, which diminishes
and even annuls his life! This is a torture very equivalent to that of
the exceptional woman refered to above.
More than any other, the young man who dreams of giving his life a
grandiose goal, of leaving his mark in the work of progress, must be at
least as cautious as a young woman, before transforming a superficial
love into an austere parental duty that he could be prevented from
fulfilling well, which would be for him an inexhaustible source of the
most intense pain.
We can estimate with a terrible English observer that not two marriages
in a thousand make the dreams of the fiancés come true. In the other
998, there is a distressing situation that ranges from silent
disagreements to frequent bitter words, to violent battle, to murders.
The latter exceed, in Paris, according to the count made by Mme.
Chéliga-Lévy, the number of days during which they are fulfilled, and,
for a victim of marriage killed entirely at once, how many dozens long
martyred, and the slow death of which official statistics will designate
a completely different cause!
The situation for adults is certainly very lamentable; but even worse is
that of the children in the hell of the large legal family. Randomly
torn by parental anger, muffled or violent, their education is the
counterpart of what it should be.
All varieties of their moral and physical misery have been described
often enough by realist novelists that I spare myself from going into
them in detail. It suffices to sum them up by saying that the child born
at random, raised by parents more than incapable, will become even worse
than them!
Mercy for him, oh blind couples! If you cannot make sure that he will be
useful later, always happy, give him, to his advantage and yours, this
incomparable proof of love: do not call him to life. Be worthy of
repeating the marmoreal verse of Sully-Prudhomme:
Oh most loved son who will never be born!
PAUL ROBIN.
[1] The French translation, 3rd edition, bears the date 1885, publisher
Alcan. (It can be found at the League of Human Regeneration [Ligue de la
Régénération Humaine], 18, rue Duperré.) [Robin’s note]
[2] The original English version of that book, by an anonymous doctor,
can be accessed here: https://books.google.pt/books?id=_z0zAQAAMAAJ
[Transtator’s note]
[3] In the French original: “II Congrès pour protéger et accroître la
population (décembre 1896)” [Translator’s note]
[4] “Alliance des Savants et des Philanthropes de tous les pays”
[Translator’s note]
[5] “ses compagnes et ses compagnons” [Translator’s note]