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[Illustration: Book Cover]




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                                        0.10




  THE 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




PREFACE


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?"




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             283




      _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._

      _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?_

      _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._




CHAPTER I

THE BACK WAY

      Along the same old garden path,
      Sweet with the same old flowers;
      Under the lilacs, darkly dense,
      The easy gate in the backyard fence--
      Those unforgotten hours!


The "Foote Girls" were bustling along Margate Street with an air of
united purpose that was unusual with them. Miss Rebecca wore her black
silk cloak, by which it might be seen that "a call" was toward. Miss
Jessie, the thin sister, and Miss Sallie, the fat one, were more
hastily attired. They were persons of less impressiveness than Miss
Rebecca, as was tacitly admitted by their more familiar nicknames, a
concession never made by the older sister.

Even Miss Rebecca was hurrying a little, for her, but the others were
swifter and more impatient.

"Do come on, Rebecca. Anybody'd think you were eighty instead of
fifty!" said Miss Sallie.

"There's Mrs. Williams going in! I wonder if she's heard already. Do
hurry!" urged Miss Josie.

But Miss Rebecca, being concerned about her dignity, would not allow
herself to be hustled, and the three proceeded in irregular order
under the high-arched elms and fence-topping syringas of the small New
England town toward the austere home of Mr. Samuel Lane.

It was a large, uncompromising, square, white house, planted starkly in
the close-cut grass. It had no porch for summer lounging, no front gate
for evening dalliance, no path-bordering beds of flowers from which to
pluck a hasty offering or more redundant tribute. The fragrance which
surrounded it came from the back yard, or over the fences of neighbors;
the trees which waved greenly about it were the trees of other people.
Mr. Lane had but two trees, one on each side of the straight and narrow
path, evenly placed between house and sidewalk--evergreens.

Mrs. Lane received them amiably; the minister's new wife, Mrs.
Williams, was proving a little difficult to entertain. She was from
Cambridge, Mass., and emanated a restrained consciousness of that
fact. Mr. Lane rose stiffly and greeted them. He did not like the
Foote girls, not having the usual American's share of the sense of
humor. He had no enjoyment of the town joke, as old as they were, that
"the three of them made a full yard;" and had frowned down as a
profane impertinent the man--a little sore under some effect of
gossip--who had amended it with "make an 'ell, I say."

Safely seated in their several rocking chairs, and severally rocking
them, the Misses Fo