The Crux: A Novel
PREFACE
THE CRUX
Books by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Women and Economics $1.50 Concerning Children 1.25 In This Our World (verse) 1.25 The Yellow Wallpaper (story) 0.50 The Home 1.00 Human Work 1.00 What Diantha Did (novel) 1.00 The Man-Made World; or, Our Androcentric Culture 1.00 Moving the Mountain 1.00 The Crux 1.00 Suffrage Songs 0.10The Crux
A NOVEL
BY
CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN
CHARLTON COMPANY
NEW YORK
1911
Copyright, 1911
by
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
THE CO-OPERATIVE PRESS, 15 SPRUCE STREET, NEW YORK
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This story is, first, for young women to read; second, for young men to read; after that, for anybody who wants to. Anyone who doubts its facts and figures is referred to "Social Diseases and Marriage," by Dr. Prince Morrow, or to "Hygiene and Morality," by Miss Lavinia Dock, a trained nurse of long experience.
Some will hold that the painful facts disclosed are unfit for young girls to know. Young girls are precisely the ones who must know them, in order that they may protect themselves and their children to come. The time to know of danger is before it is too late to avoid it.
If some say "Innocence is the greatest charm of young girls," the answer is, "What good does it do them?"
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CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE I. The Back Way 9 II. Bainville Effects 31 III. The Outbreak 60 IV. Transplanted 81 V. Contrasts 101 VI. New Friends and Old 126 VII. Side Lights 149 VIII. A Mixture 174 IX. Consequences 204 X. Determination 229 XI. Thereafter 256 XII. Achievements 2838
Who should know but the woman?—The young wife-to-be?
Whose whole life hangs on the choice;
To her the ruin, the misery;
To her, the deciding voice.
Whose whole life hangs on the choice;
To her the ruin, the misery;
To her, the deciding voice.
Who should know but the woman?—The mother-to-be?
Guardian, Giver, and Guide;
If she may not foreknow, forejudge and foresee,
What safety has childhood beside?
Guardian, Giver, and Guide;
If she may not foreknow, forejudge and foresee,
What safety has childhood beside?
Who should know but the woman?—The girl in her youth?
The hour of the warning is then,
That, strong in her knowledge and free in her truth,
She may build a new race of new men.
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The hour of the warning is then,
That, strong in her knowledge and free in her truth,
She may build a new race of new men.
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