ow 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 awakened in the breast of
woman. Rather would she forego forever the glory of motherhood than
bring forth life in an atmosphere that breathes only destruction and
death. And if she does become a mother, it is to give to the child the
deepest and best her being can yield. To grow with the child is her
motto; she knows that in that manner alone can she help build true
manhood and womanhood.

Ibsen must have had a vision of a free mother, when, with a master
stroke, he portrayed Mrs. Alving. She was the ideal mother because she
had outgrown marriage and all its horrors, because she had broken her
chains, and set her spirit free to soar until it returned a personality,
regenerated and strong. Alas, it was too late to rescue her life's joy,
her Oswald; but not too late to realize that love in freedom is the only
condition of a beautiful life. Tho