Mrs. Warren's Daughter: A Story of the Woman's MovementJohnston, Harry
General
Mrs. Warren's Daughter: A Story of the Woman's Movement
Johnston, Harry
Feminism -- Fiction; Mothers and daughters -- Fiction; Women's rights -- Fiction
_Mrs. Warren_: "Well she dropped _me_--_com_pletely--from the time
she married that Canon. And I respected her. She was comfortably
off, her past was dead and done with. D'yer think _I_ wanted to
bother 'er? Not I. It depends so much on the way you was born and
brought up. If Liz had been the child of a respectable married
couple that could give her a good start in life, 'probability is
she'd have run straight from the first. Dunno about me. I was always
a bit larky. And yet d'you know, I think if yer father hadn't been a
sort of young god, with his head in the skies, and no reg'lar
income, if he'd a married me and been kind to me ... I should have
been an honest woman all the rest of me life....
"What do _you_ feel about morality? You don't seem to have much
faith in religion, yet you've always taken a high line--and somehow
I'm glad you have--about things that never seemed to me to matter
much. We're given these passions and desires--and my! don't it hurt,
falling in love!--and then the clergy, though they're awful
humbugs, tells us we must deny our cravings..."
_Vivie_: "In the main the clergy are right in what they preach
though they give the wrong reasons. We must try to regulate our
passions or they will master us, stifle what is really good in us.
My solution of this problem which I am so sick of discussing.... But
let's finish with it while we are about it--my solution is that the
State and the Community should do their utmost to encourage,
subsidize, reward early marriages; and at the same time facilitate
in a reasonable degree divorce. Apply both these remedies and you
would go far to wipe out prostitution, which I think perfectly
horrible--I--I should like to penalize it. Perhaps it is the Irish
ascetic in my constitution. A good many early marriages might be
failures. Well then, at the end of ten years these should be
dissolvable, with proper provision made for the children. I think
many a couple if they knew that after a time and without scandal
their partnership could be dissolved wouldn't, when the time came,
want it. While on the other hand if you made the tie not
everlastingly binding, young people--especially if they hadn't to
trouble about means--would get married without hesitation or delay.
I should not only encourage that, but I should give every woman a
heavy bonus for bringing a living child into the world.... Now let's
talk of something else. When are you going to take me to Louvain?"
* * * * *
They went to Louvain a few days later and Vivie's newly awakened
senses for the beautiful in art revelled in the glorious
architecture, so much of which was afterwards wrecked in the War.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account