VIII
‘WELL, and now it so chanced that everything combined – my condition, her becoming dress, and the satisfactory boating. It had failed twenty times but now it succeeded. Just like a trap! I am not joking. You see nowadays marriages are arranged that way – like traps. What is the natural way? The lass is ripe, she must be given in marriage. It seems very simple if the girl is not a fright and there are men wanting to marry. That is how it was done in olden times. The lass was grown up and her parents arranged the marriage.32 So it was done, and is done, among all mankind – Chinese, Hindus, Mohammedans, and among our own working classes; so it is done among at least ninety-nine per cent. of the human race. Only among one per cent. or less, among us libertines, has it been discovered that that is not right, and something new has been invented. And what is this novelty? It is that the maidens sit round and the men walk about, as at a bazaar, choosing. And the maidens wait and think, but dare not say: “Me, please!” “No, me!” “Not her, but me!” “Look what shoulders and other things I have!” And we men stroll around and look,33 and are very pleased. “Yes, I know! I won’t be caught!” They stroll about and look, and are very pleased that everything is arranged like that for them. And then in an unguarded moment – snap! He is caught!’
‘Then how ought it to be done?’ I asked. ‘Should the woman propose?’
‘Oh, I don’t know how; only if there’s to be equality, let it be equality. If they have discovered that pre-arranged matches are degrading, why this is a thousand times worse! Then the rights and chances were equal, but here the woman is a slave in a bazaar34 or the bait in a trap. Tell any mother, or the girl herself, the truth, that she is only occupied in catching a husband … oh dear! what an insult! Yet they all do it and have nothing else to do. What is so terrible is to see sometimes quite innocent poor young girls engaged on it. And again, if it were but done openly – but it is always done deceitfully. “Ah, the origin of species, how interesting!” “Oh, Lily takes such an interest in painting! And will you be going to the exhibition? How instructive!” And the troyka-drives, and shows, and symphonies! “Oh! how remarkable! My Lily is mad on music.” “And why don’t you share these convictions?” And boating … But their one thought is: “Take me, take me!” “Take my Lily!” “Or try – at least!” Oh, what an abomination! What falsehood!’ he concluded, finishing his tea and beginning to put away the tea-things.
IX
‘YOU know,’ he began while packing the tea and sugar into his bag. ‘The domination of women from which the world suffers all arises from this.’
‘What “domination of women”?’ I asked. ‘35The rights, the legal privileges, are on the man’s side.’
‘Yes, yes! That’s just it,’ he interrupted me. ‘That’s just what I want to say. It explains the extraordinary phenomenon that on the one hand woman is reduced to the lowest stage of humiliation, while on the other she dominates. Just like the Jews: as they pay us back for their oppression by a financial domination, so it is with women. “Ah, you want us to be traders only, – all right, as traders we will dominate you!” say the Jews. “Ah, you want us to be merely objects of sensuality – all right, as objects of sensuality we will enslave you,” say the women. Woman’s lack of rights arises not from the fact that she must not vote or be a judge – to be occupied with such affairs is no privilege – but from the fact that she is not man’s equal in sexual intercourse and has not the right to use a man or abstain from him as she likes – is not allowed to choose a man at her pleasure instead of being chosen by him. You say that is monstrous. Very well! Then a man must not have those rights either. As it is at present, a woman is deprived of that right while a man has it. And to make up for that right she acts on man’s sensuality, and through his sensuality subdues him so that he only chooses formally, while in reality it is she who chooses. And once she has obtained these means she abuses them and acquires a terrible power over people.’
‘But where is this special power?’ I inquired.
‘Where is it? Why everywhere, in everything! Go round the shops in any big town. There are goods worth millions and you cannot estimate the human labour expended on them, and look whether in nine-tenths of these shops there is anything for the use of men. All the luxuries of life are demanded and maintained by women.
‘Count all the factories. An enormous proportion of them produce useless ornaments, carriages, furniture, and trinkets, for women. Millions of people, generations of slaves, perish at hard labour in factories merely to satisfy woman’s caprice. Women, like queens, keep nine-tenths of mankind in bondage to heavy labour. And all because they have been abased and deprived of equal rights with men. And they revenge themselves by acting on our sensuality and catch us in their nets. Yes, it all comes of that.
‘Women have made of themselves such an instrument for acting upon our sensuality that a man cannot quietly consort with a woman.36 As soon as a man approaches a woman he succumbs to her stupefying influence and becomes intoxicated and crazy. I used formerly to feel uncomfortable and uneasy when I saw a lady dressed up for a ball, but now I am simply frightened and plainly see her as something dangerous and illicit. I want to call a policeman and ask for protection from the peril, and demand that the dangerous object be removed and put away.
‘Ah, you are laughing!’ he shouted at me, ‘but it is not at all a joke. I am sure a time will come, and perhaps very soon, when people will understand this and will wonder how a society could exist in which actions were permitted which so disturb social tranquillity as those adornments of the body directly evoking sensuality, which we tolerate for women in our society. Why, it’s like setting all sorts of traps along the paths and promenades – it is even worse! Why is gambling forbidden while women in costumes which evoke sensuality are not forbidden? They are a thousand times more dangerous!
X
‘WELL, you see, I was caught that way. I was what is called in love. I not only imagined her to be the height of perfection, but during the time of our engagement I regarded myself also as the height of perfection. You know there is no rascal who cannot, if he tries, find rascals in some respects worse than himself, and who consequently cannot find reasons for pride and self-satisfaction. So it was with me: I was not marrying for money – covetousness had nothing to do with it – unlike the majority of my acquaintances who married for money or connexions – I was rich, she was poor. That was one thing. Another thing I prided myself on was that while others married intending to continue in future the same polygamous life they had lived before marriage, I was firmly resolved to be monogamous after marriage, and there was no limit to my pride on that score. Yes, I was a dreadful pig and imagined myself to be an angel.
‘Our engagement did not last long. I cannot now think of that time without shame! What nastiness! Love is supposed to be spiritual and not sensual. Well, if the love is spiritual, a spiritual communion, then that spiritual communion should find expression in words, in conversations, in discourse. There was nothing of the kind. It used to be dreadfully difficult to talk when we were left alone. It was the labour of Sisyphus. As soon as we thought of something to say and said it, we had again to be silent, devising something else. There was nothing to talk about. All that could be said about the life that awaited us, our arrangements and plans, had been said, and what was there more? Now if we had been animals we should have known that speech was unnecessary; but here on the contrary it was necessary to speak, and there was nothing to say, because we were not occupied with what finds vent in speech. And moreover there was that ridiculous custom of giving sweets, of coarse gormandizing on sweets, and all those abominable preparations for the wedding: remarks about the house, the bedroom, beds, wraps, dressing-gowns, underclothing, costumes. You must remember that if one married according to the injunctions of Domostróy, as that old fellow was saying, then the feather-beds, the trousseau, and the bedstead – are all but details appropriate to the sacrament. But among us, when of ten who marry there are certainly nine who not only do not believe in the sacrament,37 but do not even believe that what they are doing entails certain obligations – where scarcely one man out of a hundred has not been married before, and of fifty scarcely one is not preparing in advance to be unfaithful to his wife at every convenient opportunity – when the majority regard the going to church as only a special condition for obtaining possession of a certain woman – think what a dreadful significance all these details acquire. They show that the whole business is only that; they show that it is a kind of sale. An innocent girl is sold to a profligate, and the sale is accompanied by certain formalities.