Emma Goldman
...ays in ”The Traffic of Women.” These women who become prostitutes often have no home, no family, and no real comfort, and Goldman says it is not her fault. Society makes her feel like an outcast, and feels like she cannot ask for help. “The wide who married for money, compared with the prostitute,” says Havelock Ellie, who Goldman quotes in her essay, “is the true scab. She is paid less, gives much more in return in labor and care, and is absolutely bound to her master. The prostitute never signs away the right over her own person, she retains her freedom and personal rights, nor is she always compelled to submit to man’s embrace.” These two ladies almost condone prostitution simply because the women who are involved in prostitution don’t rely on men. “Marriage and Love” is a provocative essay, in which Goldman presents the idea that women (and men) don’t necessarily marry out of love. “Marriage and love have nothing in common; they are as far apart as the poles; are, in fact, antagonistic to each other.” She does state, however, that there are some marriages that are full of love, but not most. From the beginning of a young girls’ life, she is taught that marriage is her “ultimate goal,” which Goldman finds absurd. Since young girls are to learn nothing about actually performing her tasks at a wife and mother, she is especially not to learn anything of sex. At that point, after she marries, she is shocked, amazed, and annoyed by instinctual sex. “Can there be anything more outrageous than the idea that a healthy, grown woman, full of life and passion, must deny nature's demand, must subdue her most intense craving, undermine her health and break her spirit, must stunt her vision, abstain from the depth and glory of sex experience until a ‘good’ man comes along to take her unto himself as a wife?” Is that all women are good for? Man...