The Complete Works of Count Tolstoy/Volume 18/The Kreutzer Sonata/Chapter 16
XVI.
"You mentioned my children. What a lot of lying they do about children! Children are God's blessing, children are a joy. This is nothing but a lie. That used to be so, but now there is no semblance of it. Children are a bother, and nothing else. The majority of mothers feel it outright, and incidentally allow themselves to say Ask the majority of mothers of our circle, well-to-do people, and they will tell you that out of fear that their children might get ill and die, they do not wish to have any children, and do not wish to nurse them after they are born, in order not to become attached to them and not to suffer. The pleasure which the child affords them by its charm,―by those little hands and feet, and by the whole body,—the pleasure afforded by the child is less than the suffering which they experience,—let alone from disease or loss of the child,—from the mere fear of possible sickness or death. Weighing both the advantages and disadvantages, it appears that it is disadvantageous and, consequently, undesirable to have children. They say this frankly and boldly, imagining that these sentiments arise from their love for children, a good and praiseworthy feeling, of which they are proud. They do not notice that by this reflection they directly refute love, and only confirm their egotism. They derive less pleasure from the charm of a child than suffering caused by anxiety, and so that child, which they might love, is not wanted. They do not sacrifice themselves for the beloved creature, but for their own sakes they sacrifice the creature who might be loved.
"It is evident that this is not love, but egotism. But not a hand is raised to condemn them, the mothers of well-to-do families, for this egotism, when you consider what it is they suffer for the sake of their children's health, thanks again to the rôle these doctors play in our upper classes. It makes me shudder even now when I recall the life and the condition of my wife during those first years, when there were three or four children, and she was all absorbed in them. We led no life at all. It was an eternal danger, an escaping from it, a new impending danger, new desperate efforts, and a new salvation,—eternally the same condition as on a sinking ship. At times I thought that it was done on purpose, that she only pretended to be so anxious about the children, in order to vanquish me. It solved so enticingly and simply all the questions in her favour. It seemed to me at times that everything she said and did in such cases was done on purpose. But no, she really was all the time in terrible agony and pain about the children, their health and sicknesses. It was a trial for her and for me, too. Nor could she help suffering. Her attachment for her children, the animal necessity of feeding, fostering, defending them, was such as it is in the majority of women, but there was not that which animals have,—an absence of imagination and reason.
"A hen is not afraid of what might happen with her chick, does not know all the diseases which might befall it, does not know all the means with which people imagine they can save from disease and death. The young ones are no torment for the hen. She does for her chicks what is natural and pleasurable for her to do,—her young ones are a joy to her. When a chick becomes ill, her cares are quite definite: she warns and feeds it. Doing this, she knows that she is doing all that is necessary. If the chick dies, she does not ask herself why it has died, whither it has gone; she cackles for awhile, then stops and continues to live as of old. But for our unfortunate women this is not the case, and it was not for my wife. Let alone the diseases, how to cure them, she heard on all sides and read endlessly varied and eternally changed rules about how to rear and educate the children: to feed them with this and that, and in such a way,—no, not with this and that, and in such a way, but like this; to dress, give them drink, bathe, put them to bed, give them outings, air,—in regard to all these things we, but more especially she, learned new rules every week. It looked as though it was but yesterday that women had begun to bear children. And if a child was not fed so or so, not properly bathed and not in time, and it grew ill,—then the conclusion was that we were at fault, that we had not done right by it.
"There was enough trouble as long as they kept well; but let them get ill, and then, of course, it was a real hell. It is supposed that a disease can be cured and that there is a science about it, and people, the doctors, who know how to cure. Not all, but the very best know how. So the child is ill, and you must strike him, that best doctor, who can save, and the child will be saved; or if you do not get him, or you do not live in the place where that doctor lives, the child will perish. This is not her exclusive belief, but the belief of all the women of her circle, and she hears it on all sides: Ekaterina Seménovna has lost two, because she did not call Iván Zakhárych in time. Iván Zakhárych has saved Márya Ivánovna's elder daughter; at the Petróvs', they, by the doctor's advice, scattered to various hotels, and they survived;—they did not scatter, and the children died; such and such a one had a weak child, and they went to the south, by the doctor's advice, and saved the child. How can she help worrying and suffering all her life when the lives of her children, to whom she is animally attached, depend upon her finding out in time what Iván Zakhárych may say about it? But what Iván Zakhárych will say, nobody knows, least of all he himself, because he knows full well that he knows nothing and is unable to be of any use, and continues making haphazard guesses, in order that people should not lose faith in his knowledge. If she were all animal, she would not worry so much; if she were all man, she would have faith in God, and she would say and think as believers say: 'God hath given, God hath taken, you cannot go away from God.'
"The whole life with the children had been for my wife, consequently also for me, not a pleasure, but a torment. How could this have been avoided? She was in eternal worry. We would calm down from some scene of jealousy or simply from a quarrel, and we would try to live in peace, to read and think, or we would take up some work, when the sudden news would be brought to us that Vásya was vomiting, or Másha was having a bleeding spell, or Andryúsha had an eruption,—well, there was an end to peace. Now the question was: 'Where must one gallop? for what doctors? how shall the children be isolated?' And there would begin clysters, temperatures, mixtures, and doctors. No sooner would one thing be finished, than another began. There was no regular, settled domestic life. There was only, as I have told you, an eternal anxiety on account of imaginary or real dangers. It is so now in the majority of families. In my family this was very pronounced. My wife was fond of her children and credulous.
"Thus the presence of children did not improve our life; it only poisoned it. Besides, the children were a new cause for dissensions. The children themselves were the means and objects of dissensions from the moment they existed, and the older they grew, the more frequently was this so. The children were not only the objects of our dissensions, but also the weapons of our battles,—we used our children, as it were, to fight each other with. Each of us had a favourite child, the weapon of the fight. I fought mainly by means of Vásya, the elder, and she by means of Líza. Besides, when the children grew up and their characters defined themselves, we attracted them to our sides. The poor things suffered dreadfully from it, but we, in our constant state of war, had no time to consider them. A little girl was my partisan, whereas the elder boy, who resembled her, her favourite, was frequently the object of my hatred.