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Some bad Women don�t love their
children.
some more details about Allie. She has borne
two children, the last, Watson�s bastard, is the
one Eytinge has the felicity of supporting. This
child, the mother, after an affectation which would
be amusing if it were not dreary, calls �Pearl,� in
copy of the heroine of Hawthorne�s �Scarlet Letter,�
thereby intimating that she, Allie, has loved, has
suffered, is punished and all that rot. The child
is worthy of its parentage of felon and strumpet
� a beast of a child. For the other, though she
did Becky Sharpe about it, once, talking of her
being punished by it�s deprivation, she cares not a
jot; hasn�t seen it for years. Thus charac-
teristic is the strongest instance of the inherent dam-
nableness of this kind of woman; but for it, in
Thackeray�s heroine, readers might have gone
astray in admiration of her cleverness and subtle-
ty. Lotty had it and she, too, would play at
�they tore it from my arms &c.,� though, really,
she was utterly incapable of any passion but that
begotten of an egotism as frightful and merciless
as that dominant in the breast of that arch-queen
of bitches, Fanny Fern. These miserable
women are tormented by their own perversity
and falseness; they use the sentiments of love
and maternity only as a superstructure for