The Complete Works of Count Tolstoy/Volume 18/The Kreutzer Sonata/Chapter 14
XIV.
"I lived like just such a swine," he continued, in his former tone of voice. "The worst of it was that, living this bad life, I imagined that, because I was not attracted to other women, because I was living an honest domestic life, I was a moral man, and that I was not guilty of anything, but that our quarrels were due to her, her character.
"Of course, it was not she alone who was at fault. She was such as all, or as the majority are. She had been educated as the position of woman in our society demands, and as are brought up all the women, without exception, of our privileged classes, and as they of necessity must be brought up. They are prating of a new education for women. Empty words: the education of woman is just what it ought to be considering the existing unfeigned, true, general view held in regard to woman.
"The education of woman will always correspond to man's view of her. We all know what men think of them: 'Wein, Weib, und Gesang', and poets say so in verse. Take all poetry, all painting and sculpture, beginning with amatory poems and naked Venuses and Phrynes, and you will see that woman is an instrument of enjoyment; so she is on the Trubá and on the Grachévka,[1] and at the most refined ball. Take note of the devil's cunning: all right, let it be enjoyment and pleasure, let it, then, be known that it is enjoyment, and that woman is a dainty morsel. No, at first the knights assure us that they will worship woman (that they will, but they will not cease looking upon her as an instrument of enjoyment). Now they assure us that they respect woman. Some give their seats to them, and pick up their handkerchiefs; others acknowledge their right to occupy certain positions, to take part in the government, and so on. This they do, but the view remains the same: she is an instrument of enjoyment; her body is a means for enjoyment. And she knows it. It is just the same as with slavery.
"Slavery is nothing but the enjoyment of the forced labour of others. Consequently, in order that there should be no slavery, it would be necessary for men not to wish to make use of the forced labour of others, that they should regard this as sinful and disgraceful, whereas, in reality, they change the external form of slavery and imagine and assure themselves that there is no longer any slavery, and they do not see and do not wish to see that slavery still exists, because people still continue to love and consider good and just the enjoyment of the labours of others. As long as they regard this as good, there will always be found men who are stronger and more cunning than the rest and who will be able to accomplish it.
"Precisely the same is the case with the emancipation of woman. The enslavement of woman consists in men's desire to make use of her as an instrument of enjoyment, and in their considering this to be right. So they go and free woman, and give her all kinds of equal rights with man, but continue to look upon her as an instrument of enjoyment, and to educate her accordingly, in childhood, and in public opinion. And she remains the same humiliated and debauched slave, and man is the same debauched slave-owner.
"They free woman in the colleges and in courts, but still look upon her as an instrument of enjoyment. Teach her, as she is taught with us, to look upon herself in this manner, and she will always remain a lower being. Either, with the aid of scoundrel doctors, she will prevent conception, that is, she will be a complete prostitute, who has descended, not to the lowest animal, but to the level of a thing, or she will be what she is in the majority of cases, diseased in mind, hysterical, unhappy, without any possibility for spiritual growth.
"The gymnasia and the colleges cannot change this. This can be changed only by a changed view held by men in regard to women, and by women in regard to themselves. This will come about only when women will regard as their highest state the condition of virginity, and not, as now, look upon this highest condition of man as a shame and disgrace. As long as this does not exist, the ideal of every girl, whatever her education may be, will be to attract to herself as many men, as many males as possible, in order to have a chance to select.
"But the fact that one knows a lot of mathematics and that another can play on the harp, will not change it. A woman is happy and obtains everything she may wish for, if she fascinates a man. And thus a woman's chief problem becomes the ability to fascinate. Thus it has been, and thus it will be. Thus it is in the life of a girl of our society, and thus it remains after marriage. In the maiden state she needs it for selection, in her matrimonial state—in order to rule over her husband.
"There is but one thing which cuts it short, or at least for a time suppresses it, and that is children, provided the woman is not a monster and herself nurses them. But here the doctors come in.
"My wife, who wanted herself to suckle and did suckle the last four children, was not in good health when the first baby was born. These doctors, who cynically undressed and felt her all over, for which I had to thank them and pay them money,—these charming doctors found that she must not herself nurse, and she was, during this first time, deprived of the only means which would have saved her from coquetry. The baby was brought up by a wet-nurse, that is, we made use of the poverty, want, and ignorance of a woman, enticed her away from her own child to ours, and for this put on her a nurse's headgear with galloons. But this is another matter. The trouble was that during her period of freedom from pregnancy and lactation her former dormant feminine coquetry returned to her. And in me there appeared with unusual force the corresponding torment of jealousy, which never ceased torturing me during the whole time of my married life, just as all husbands are tortured who live with their wives as I did, that is immorally.
- ↑ Streets in Moscow.