Tolstoy, Leo graf, 1828-1910. The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories [a machine-readable transcription]
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CHAPTER XIV.


    "Yes, much worse than the animal is man
when he does not live as a man. Thus was I.

    The horrible part is that I believed, inasmuch as
I did not allow myself to be seduced by other
women that I was leading an honest family life,
that I was a very mortal being, and that if we



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had quarrels, the fault was in my wife, and in
her character.

    "But it is evident that the fault was not in her.

    She was like everybody else, like the majority.

    She was brought up according to the principles
exacted by the situation of our society, -- that is,
as all the young girls of our wealthy classes,
without exception, are brought up, and as they
cannot fail to be brought up. How many times
we hear or read of reflections upon the ab-
normal condition of women, and upon what they
ought to be. But these are only vain words.

    The education of women results from the real
and not imaginary view which the world enter-
tains of women's vocation. According to this
view, the condition of women consists in pro-
curing pleasure and it is to that end that her
education is directed. From her infancy she is
taught only those things that are calculated to
increase her charm. Every young girl is accus-
tomed to think only of that.

    "As the serfs were brought up solely to please
their masters, so woman is brought up to attract
men. It cannot be otherwise. But you will say,
perhaps, that that applies only to young girls



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who are badly brought up, but that there is an-
other education, an education that is serious, in
the schools, an education in the dead languages,
an education in the institutions of midwifery, an
education in medical courses, and in other
courses. It is false.

    "Every sort of feminine education has for its
sole object the attraction of men.

    "Some attract by music or curly hair, others
by science or by civic virtue. The object is the
same, and cannot be otherwise (since no other
object exists), -- to seduce man in order to pos-
sess him. Imagine courses of instruction for
women and feminine science without men, -- that
is, learned women, and men not
knowing
them
as learned. Oh, no! No education, no instruc-
tion can change woman as long as her highest
ideal shall be marriage and not virginity, free-
dom from sensuality. Until that time she will
remain a serf. One need only imagine, forget-
ting the universality of the case, the conditions
in which our young girls are brought up, to
avoid astonishment at the debauchery of the
women of our upper classes. It is the opposite
that would cause astonishment.




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    "Follow my reasoning. From infancy gar-
ments, ornaments, cleanliness, grace, dances,
music, reading of poetry, novels, singing, the
theatre, the concert, for use within and without,
according as women listen, or practice them-
selves. With that, complete physical idleness,
an excessive care of the body, a vast consump-
tion of sweetmeats; and God knows how the
poor maidens suffer from their own sensuality,
excited by all these things. Nine out of ten are
tortured intolerably during the first period of
maturity, and afterward provided they do not
marry at the age of twenty. That is what we
are unwilling to see, but those who have eyes see
it all the same. And even the majority of these
unfortunate creatures are so excited by a hidden
sensuality (and it is lucky if it is hidden) that
they are fit for nothing. They become animated
only in the presence of men. Their whole life is
spent in preparations for coquetry, or in co-
quetry itself. In the presence of men they be-
come too animated; they begin to live by sen-
sual energy. But the moment the man goes
away, the life stops.

    "And that, not in the presence of a certain



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man, but in the presence of any man, provided
he is not utterly hideous. You will say that this
is an exception. No, it is a rule. Only in some
it is made very evident, in other less so. But
no one lives by her own life; they are all depend-
ent upon man. They cannot be otherwise, since
to them the attraction of the greatest number of
men is the ideal of life (young girls and married
women), and it is for this reason that they have
no feeling stronger than that of the animal need
of every female who tries to attract the largest
number of males in order to increase the oppor-
tunities for choice. So it is in the life of young
girls, and so it continues during marriage. In
the life of young girls it is necessary in order to
selection, and in marriage it is necessary in
order to rule the husband. Only one thing sup-
presses or interrupts these tendencies for a time,
-- namely, children, -- and then only when the
woman is not a monster, -- that is, when she
nurses her own children. Here again the doc-
tor interferes.

    "With my wife, who desired to nurse her own
children, and who did nurse six of them, it hap-
pened that the first child was sickly. The doc-



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tors, who cynically undressed her and felt of her
everywhere, and whom I had to thank and pay
for these acts, -- these dear doctors decided that
she ought not to nurse her child, and she was
temporarily deprived of the only remedy for
coquetry. A nurse finished the nursing of this
first-born, -- that is to say, we profited by the
poverty and ignorance of a woman to steal her
from her own little one in favor of ours, and for
that purpose we dressed her in a
kakoschnik

trimmed with gold lace. Nevertheless, that is
not the question; but there was again awakened
in my wife that coquetry which had been sleep-
ing during the nursing period. Thanks to that,
she reawakened in me the torments of jealousy
which I had formerly known, though in a much
slighter degree.