Bab Bab 17 · Chapter XVII

. Chapter XVII

“We lived at first in the country, then in the city, and, if the final

misfortune had not happened, I should have lived thus until my old age

and should then have believed that I had had a good life,—not too good,

but, on the other hand, not bad,—an existence such as other people

lead. I should not have understood the abyss of misfortune and ignoble

falsehood in which I floundered about, feeling that something was not

right. I felt, in the first place, that I, a man, who, according to my

ideas, ought to be the master, wore the petticoats, and that I could

not get rid of them. The principal cause of my subjection was the

children. I should have liked to free myself, but I could not. Bringing

up the children, and resting upon them, my wife ruled. I did not then

realize that she could not help ruling, especially because, in

marrying, she was morally superior to me, as every young girl is

incomparably superior to the man, since she is incomparably purer.

Strange thing! The ordinary wife in our society is a very commonplace

person or worse, selfish, gossiping, whimsical, whereas the ordinary

young girl, until the age of twenty, is a charming being, ready for

everything that is beautiful and lofty. Why is this so? Evidently

because husbands pervert them, and lower them to their own level.

“In truth, if boys and girls are born equal, the little girls find

themselves in a better situation. In the first place, the young girl is

not subjected to the perverting conditions to which we are subjected.

She has neither cigarettes, nor wine, nor cards, nor comrades, nor

public houses, nor public functions. And then the chief thing is that

she is physically pure, and that is why, in marrying, she is superior

to her husband. She is superior to man as a young girl, and when she

becomes a wife in our society, where there is no need to work in order

to live, she becomes superior, also, by the gravity of the acts of

generation, birth, and nursing.

“Woman, in bringing a child into the world, and giving it her bosom,

sees clearly that her affair is more serious than the affair of man,

who sits in the Zemstvo, in the court. She knows that in these

functions the main thing is money, and money can be made in different

ways, and for that very reason money is not inevitably necessary, like

nursing a child. Consequently woman is necessarily superior to man, and

must rule. But man, in our society, not only does not recognize this,

but, on the contrary, always looks upon her from the height of his

grandeur, despising what she does.

“Thus my wife despised me for my work at the Zemstvo, because she gave

birth to children and nursed them. I, in turn, thought that woman’s

labor was most contemptible, which one might and should laugh at.

“Apart from the other motives, we were also separated by a mutual

contempt. Our relations grew ever more hostile, and we arrived at that

period when, not only did dissent provoke hostility, but hostility

provoked dissent. Whatever she might say, I was sure in advance to hold

a contrary opinion; and she the same. Toward the fourth year of our

marriage it was tacitly decided between us that no intellectual

community was possible, and we made no further attempts at it. As to

the simplest objects, we each held obstinately to our own opinions.

With strangers we talked upon the most varied and most intimate

matters, but not with each other. Sometimes, in listening to my wife

talk with others in my presence, I said to myself: ‘What a woman!

Everything that she says is a lie!’ And I was astonished that the

person with whom she was conversing did not see that she was lying.

When we were together; we were condemned to silence, or to

conversations which, I am sure, might have been carried on by animals.

“‘What time is it? It is bed-time. What is there for dinner to-day?

Where shall we go? What is there in the newspaper? The doctor must be

sent for, Lise has a sore throat.’

“Unless we kept within the extremely narrow limits of such

conversation, irritation was sure to ensue. The presence of a third

person relieved us, for through an intermediary we could still

communicate. She probably believed that she was always right. As for

me, in my own eyes, I was a saint beside her.

“The periods of what we call love arrived as often as formerly. They

were more brutal, without refinement, without ornament; but they were

short, and generally followed by periods of irritation without cause,

irritation fed by the most trivial pretexts. We had spats about the

coffee, the table-cloth, the carriage, games of cards,—trifles, in

short, which could not be of the least importance to either of us. As

for me, a terrible execration was continually boiling up within me. I

watched her pour the tea, swing her foot, lift her spoon to her mouth,

and blow upon hot liquids or sip them, and I detested her as if these

had been so many crimes.

“I did not notice that these periods of irritation depended very

regularly upon the periods of love. Each of the latter was followed by

one of the former. A period of intense love was followed by a long

period of anger; a period of mild love induced a mild irritation. We

did not understand that this love and this hatred were two opposite

faces of the same animal feeling. To live thus would be terrible, if

one understood the philosophy of it. But we did not perceive this, we

did not analyze it. It is at once the torture and the relief of man

that, when he lives irregularly, he can cherish illusions as to the

miseries of his situation. So did we. She tried to forget herself in

sudden and absorbing occupations, in household duties, the care of the

furniture, her dress and that of her children, in the education of the

latter, and in looking after their health. These were occupations that

did not arise from any immediate necessity, but she accomplished them

as if her life and that of her children depended on whether the pastry

was allowed to burn, whether a curtain was hanging properly, whether a

dress was a success, whether a lesson was well learned, or whether a

medicine was swallowed.

“I saw clearly that to her all this was, more than anything else, a

means of forgetting, an intoxication, just as hunting, card-playing,

and my functions at the Zemstvo served the same purpose for me. It is

true that in addition I had an intoxication literally

speaking,—tobacco, which I smoked in large quantities, and wine, upon

which I did not get drunk, but of which I took too much. Vodka before

meals, and during meals two glasses of wine, so that a perpetual mist

concealed the turmoil of existence.

“These new theories of hypnotism, of mental maladies, of hysteria are

not simple stupidities, but dangerous or evil stupidities. Charcot, I

am sure, would have said that my wife was hysterical, and of me he

would have said that I was an abnormal being, and he would have wanted

to treat me. But in us there was nothing requiring treatment. All this

mental malady was the simple result of the fact that we were living

immorally. Thanks to this immoral life, we suffered, and, to stifle our

sufferings, we tried abnormal means, which the doctors call the

‘symptoms’ of a mental malady,—_hysteria_.

“There was no occasion in all this to apply for treatment to Charcot or

to anybody else. Neither suggestion nor bromide would have been

effective in working our cure. The needful thing was an examination of

the origin of the evil. It is as when one is sitting on a nail; if you

see the nail, you see that which is irregular in your life, and you

avoid it. Then the pain stops, without any necessity of stifling it.

Our pain arose from the irregularity of our life, and also my jealousy,

my irritability, and the necessity of keeping myself in a state of

perpetual semi-intoxication by hunting, card-playing, and, above all,

the use of wine and tobacco. It was because of this irregularity that

my wife so passionately pursued her occupations. The sudden changes of

her disposition, from extreme sadness to extreme gayety, and her

babble, arose from the need of forgetting herself, of forgetting her

life, in the continual intoxication of varied and very brief

occupations.

“Thus we lived in a perpetual fog, in which we did not distinguish our

condition. We were like two galley-slaves fastened to the same ball,

cursing each other, poisoning each other’s existence, and trying to

shake each other off. I was still unaware that ninety-nine families out

of every hundred live in the same hell, and that it cannot be

otherwise. I had not learned this fact from others or from myself. The

coincidences that are met in regular, and even in irregular life, are

surprising. At the very period when the life of parents becomes

impossible, it becomes indispensable that they go to the city to live,

in order to educate their children. That is what we did.”

Posdnicheff became silent, and twice there escaped him, in the

half-darkness, sighs, which at that moment seemed to me like suppressed

sobs. Then he continued.