Samuel Smiles 2 top Essays on Feminisim Human nature asserts itself regardless of all laws, nor is there any plausible reason why nature should adapt itself to a perverted conception of morality. The popular notion about marriage and love is that they are synonymous, that they spring from the same motives, and cover the same human needs. Like most popular notions this also rests not on actual facts, but on superstition. No doubt some marriages have been the result of love. There are to-day large numbers of men and women to whom marriage is naught but a farce, but who submit to it for the sake of public opinion.
Marriage protecting the child, yet thousands of children destitute and homeless.
The child receives but a blighted memory of its father's stripes. The defenders of authority dread the advent of a free motherhood, lest it will rob them of their prey. 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.