What a Young Wife Ought to Know, livre ebook

Just don’t lie down and no child will come.

It’s Ottawa in the 1920s, pre-legalized birth control. Sophie, a young working-class girl, falls madly in love with and marries a stable-hand named Jonny. After two difficult childbirths, doctors tell Sophie she shouldn’t have any more children, but don’t tell her how to prevent it. When Sophie inevitably becomes pregnant again, she faces a grim dilemma.

In an unflinching look at love, sex, and fertility, and inspired by real stories of mothers during the Canadian birth-control movement of the early twentieth century, one of Canada’s most celebrated playwrights vividly recreates a couple’s struggles with reproduction.

Shift.

There’s a storm, the sound of rain.

Jonny and Sophie are kissing. Then as the sexuality escalates, Sophie disentangles herself, pushes Jonny gently away from her. Beat of them still, then:

Jonny: Where’s the baby?

Sophie: In his cot — I’m sorry, Jonny — 

Jonny: No, no?

Sophie: The doctor said . . . not to.

Jonny nods.

Beat.

Then, scuffing the floor:

Jonny: The floor’s turned to mud.

Beat.

It’ll give you pain?

Sophie nods.

It will?

Sophie: It might, but that’s not . . .

Jonny: For how long?

Sophie: I think the doctor meant a while.

Jonny: A month?

Beat.

A year?

Sophie: He told me I had insides quite exhausted and he dearly hoped I didn’t have any more children.

Beat.

He said I should not have more children, / Jonny, so . . .

Jonny: I — I — yes.

Beat. Jonny realizes.

No more?

Sophie: We have the two?

Jonny: No more . . . ? No more children . . . ? No more . . . ? No more?

Sophie: That’s what he said.

Jonny: Did you ask him . . . what that meant, how to . . . ?

Sophie: I said, “How do I prevent it?” He didn’t answer, only said it would weaken my health, and could . . . cost my life.

Jonny: He did?

Sophie: Yes, and a child would get no nourishment from my womb, he said.

Beat.

I’ll ask him again. I was nervous to . . . say what I wanted to: that it would be hard not to — to have no . . .

Beat.

I’m sorry, Jonny — ?

Jonny: No, no. We have the two.

Jonny nods to himself and gets up.

Sophie turns back to the audience.