Motherhood isn't infallibility. If a woman is a wise woman she's a wise mother; if she's a foolish woman she's a foolish mother. Because you're our mother doesn't mean that you must always be right; before being a mother you're a human being, and any human being is likely to be wrong. To get down to brutal facts, we think you are _not_ right about the whole thing. We've thought so for years, but now it's come to the time when our thinking must be put into action. We're no longer children; but even as mere infants we thought these things--without having the right to express them. What I'm trying to do now is to express them not as a daughter, but quite impersonally as a human being, as a mere friend, a sister, or anyone who might come to you stating that she believed with all her soul that you were wrong, and also stating, just as impersonally, that she wouldn't think of modeling her line of conduct after that pattern which appeared to her so wrong. We _must_ face the facts; if you do that squarely it doesn't seem so bad, and you stop flinching about it. You get to the point where you're not afraid to face them boldly, and then you begin to _construct_. And this is the only way to clear up the kind of rottenness and decay that flourishes in our family life. It's in the interest of this achievement that I say the thing a girl isn't supposed to say to her mother--namely, that Betty and I will not any longer subscribe to the things you expect us to. The fact to face just as quickly as possible is this: it's the starting point. When you realize that we feel it's a question of doing this or laying a foundation for lives that are just _half_ lives--hideous perverted things which miss all the beauty that you can put into the short life given you--I think you'll see how serious we are. We're at least two intelligent human beings, if we're nothing else. And why should you ask or expect that we'll submit to a system which to us means stupidity, misery, pettiness--all those things which we've seen working out for years and which, being at least intelligent, we want to keep away from? That much settled, we can continue to live together in just one way--as three sisters or friends; the motherhood, in so far as it means authority or an attempt to mould us to _your_ way, must be eliminated. A complete new family idealism can be built on such a basis. You will say that it's an abnormal basis for any mother to accept. Of course it is; but the situation is abnormal, and the orthodox remedies aren't applicable.