Foreword
Even in our enlightened modern society, few people have dared to attack the sacred institution of motherhood. One of the few exceptions, Philip Wylie, created the term "Momism," and a large part of his reputation rests on the savage way he has slashed out at it in A Generation of Vipers and other books. It has to be said, however, that Wylie has gone as far in the anti-motherhood direction as most writers have in preserving the pro-motherhood bias. As in most other things, the real truth undoubtedly lies somewhere in between.
It is obvious that motherhood can be a pure and noble thing; the number of men and women who have been inspired to greatness by their mothers is so vast that if we began to cite examples we could go on for pages merely listing names. But a mother is first and foremost a human being, and the natural biological process of bearing a child does not miraculously transform her into a saint. If the woman herself has un-cured psychological problems, she can be the cause of severe psychological traumas in her children, no matter how well-meaning she may be otherwise.
A more recent hardcover bestseller perhaps carries the anti-motherhood argument to its reductio ad absurdum. In The Baby Trap, author Ellen Peck sets forth her belief that most women don't want to be mothers at all, or at best that they want to have babies for all the wrong reasons. Among these reasons, she says, are the following: to cope with feelings of feminine inadequacy, to hold straying husbands, to conform, to fulfill roles set by society and the mass media, to combat boredom and loneliness, or simply to "cop out."
The results, Ellen Peck contends, are frequently more upsetting than the causes. The blurb copy for her book is perhaps as instructive as the text itself. To quote just one paragraph: "Many couples want something. Perhaps they define that something as a child, but that may not be what is wanted at all. At least consider the option of childlessness. For the first time in history, the option is easily yours to take. Don't be cheated out of 15 years of young life and intense experiences that can never be yours again."
This may sound like a blatant vote for selfishness, but the point is that a woman may become a mother for purely selfish reasons-and many children have been victimized as a result. In The Outraged Orphan, Dansk Blue Books' author Wayne Sherman makes the same point in fictional but highly dramatic and shatteringly convincing terms.
Jennifer Lorn, Mr. Sherman's heroine, is a "nice" girl who has been raised just a shade too strictly and confined for most of her young life to a gloomy Victorian house in which her "ailing" mother has played tyrant with her illnesses-most of which were imaginary. Finally, Mrs. Lorn imagined herself into a fatal heart attack. There are those who would argue that this is medically impossible, but the fact remains that, at the beginning of the story, Mrs. Lorn is dead and Jennifer is free at last. But what can freedom mean to such a severely sheltered, totally restricted girl?
For the first time in her life (at twenty) Jennifer is free of the domineering old harridan who had inculcated into her a staggering amount of misinformation about sex-and with it an almost insurmountable distaste for men. Like any normal youngster-and Jennifer is soon to find out that she is very, very normal indeed-she wants to break loose from the austere pattern her mother's demands have made on her. She decides to use her newfound freedom as an orphan with a tidy fortune in the bank to find out the truth about life and sex. It is not surprising that she goes about doing so in exactly the wrong way.
Jennifer's first attempt to have an "affair" with a man is utterly disastrous. In Mr. Sherman's facile but sensitive style, it becomes the kind of tragedy that almost verges on comedy; it hurts so much that it will almost make you laugh. But Jennifer still has the resiliency of youth, and she decides to give life one more try before committing suicide. She joins a "swinging singles" cruise to Mexico, a cruise whose advertisements virtually guarantee a highly spiced and exotic sex life along the way. She has only vague ideas of what happens aboard a "swinging" cruise ship, and rather imagines the trip as one long floating orgy in which she can be a keen observer even if not an active participant.
The results, of course are totally unexpected. We can not reveal the outcome here, but we can say that it contains many surprises for Jennifer and for the reader. And we can also say that, although by its nature The Outraged Orphan contains many graphic and explicit sex scenes, it is also one of the most delightful love stories we have read in a long time. As publishers, we are proud to add it to the already impressive list of Dansk Blue Books.
-The Publishers