“Yes,” Hattie said glumly. “She’s a successful novelist.”
Lucie’s lips thinned. “Then she’s either not a mother, or she is a hypocrite—clearly, she considers her own mental faculties so supremely important, she must write judgmental articles rather than attend to her children her every waking moment.”
“I suppose—”
“And the natural mission of womanhood?” Lucie’s eyes were sparking as though flames were about to shoot out of the side of her head. “Mothers have worked hard for their bread since forever, Hattie. And noblewomen rarely see their children at all, they have castles, if not countries, to run—are they all unnatural? Raising unnatural humans?”
“I—”
“What even is naturalness? If it’s defined as ‘it has always been this way,’ then having others care for your children is as natural as breathing. Blimey, most women in Britain work out of the house six days a week to feed their families—have generations of farmers and seamstresses and miners done it wrong all along? Also, why is Mrs. Barr deriding our concerns for shopgirls—what if a shopgirl is a mother, too? How odd that she chooses to decry women who educate themselves rather than the working conditions that keep women from having sufficient time and money for their families.”
Hattie touched her temples with her fingertips. “What you say sounds logical.”
“Because it is,” Lucie snipped. “If I didn’t have a bill to push through Parliament, Mrs. Barr would receive a letter from me.”
Hattie nodded. “The truth is, though, that I don’t have to make art with the same urgency that shopgirls have to work. I’d survive without it. I’m quite free to lavish all my time on the baby.”
“You could do that,” Lucie said, and returned the article to Hattie with pointy fingers, “if you are so inclined. Just don’t be surprised if you lose your mind. Babies are quite dull, if you must know.”
Annabelle softly cleared her throat.
“I intend no offense against any particular baby,” Lucie amended in a generous tone.
“Babies are wonderful,” Annabelle said. “Constantly caring for them without respite, however, might exhaust you. What I have observed, though, is that James doesn’t have a preference as to who cares for his needs—he knows I’m his mummy but he’s fine with Millie, too. It’s fine to lavish time on your own needs, Hattie.”
Hattie’s hunted expression returned. “I wish my needs were more regular,” she said softly. “Mine seem so indulgent.”
Something snapped inside Catriona. She felt strangely untethered, on the brink of a cold anger in which people committed foolish acts while fully aware that they were about to commit them.
“Hattie,” she said, and the emotion swelled when her friend looked at her with wet brown eyes. “Mrs. Barr writes in a terribly authoritative voice. That doesn’t make her opinion a fact. She also makes it sound as though child neglect is a direct consequence of a mother spending time on social issues, when it’s in fact the poor choice of caretaker. It just strikes me as yet another trick to direct every moment of a woman’s time toward something or someone outside of herself, and to fill her with guilt when she doesn’t.”
“I’m not surprised it has come to this,” Lucie remarked. “A lamentable development of this strange new social class . . . this . . . bizarre, modern place where a woman like Mrs. Barr is kept in the house, perfectly healthy and educated, and yet forbidden to take up most professions, but with no fun parties or proper estate management to distract her. If that happened to me, I would harness my cross as a weapon, too. My babies would teethe in the most perfect manner, they would be the best teethers of them all. If one can’t amass glory in business or politics or plant crops that feed the nation, at least we women may outcompete one another in the nursery.”
Hattie’s eyes were darting back and forth between them. “Don’t we welcome modernity, Lucie?” she said. “We have become less barbaric over time because we care more for the weak and helpless—we should be glad for it.”
“I don’t advocate for less care,” Lucie said with a hand on her temple. “I advocate for shared care and perspective.”
Annabelle raised her hands between the two. “You’re the mistress of your house, Hattie. Choose as you see fit, and your good friends will support you.”
Lucie massaged the back of her slender neck. “That’s what I said.”
“Oh, that’s what it was,” Annabelle said mildly.
“All right, I ranted,” Lucie said with a shrug. “I stand by it, though.”
Catriona still felt too icy to speak. Nothing proper would come out of her mouth.
Hattie chewed on her lower lip but her gloomy expression was giving way to tentative determination. “You are both right,” she finally said. “I am the mistress of my home. I shall find my own way.” Her eyes narrowed. “Here, snubs to you, Amelia Barr.”
She crumpled the pages into a ball and leaned forward to toss it into the cold fireplace. It would have been more satisfying to see the ball go up in flames, rather than for it to sit there, slowly unfurling again on the sooty grate, but still a sense of satisfaction filled the room.
Hattie sighed and leaned her head against Annabelle’s shoulder. “How I adore you all,” she said. “I should have spoken to you much sooner.”
She absently stroked her belly, the age-old gesture of expecting mothers everywhere. Catriona glanced away.
Later, she used the moment of goodbyes to furtively pluck the crumpled pages off the grate. She stuffed them deep into her skirt pocket, leaving smudges of ash on her hands. She read while she sat in the cab that carried her back to Cadogan Place.
GOOD AND BAD MOTHERS
BY AMELIA BARR
The world can do without learned women, but it cannot do without good wives and mothers; and when married women prefer to be the social ornaments and intellectual amateurs, they may be called philanthropists and scholars, but they are nevertheless moral failures, and bad mothers . . .
She folded the pages into a square and forced them back into her pocket.
At Cadogan House, she set the table for the luncheon food Elias had procured from the market. Her movements were precise but slow, as though she were afraid of breaking something.