Collected Shorter Fiction, Volume 2

by Leo Tolstoy

  5 In place of the two preceding lines, read: said the lady, evidently encouraged by the general attention and approval.

  6 The old man here replies: ‘Men are a different matter.’ And the lady says: ‘Then to a man, in your opinion, everything is permitted.’

  7 Add: ‘Or if some stupid man cannot control his wife – it serves him right. But all the same one must not create a scandal about it. Love or don’t love, but don’t break up the home. Every husband can keep his wife in order, he has the right to do it. Only a fool can’t manage it.’

  8 In place of this paragraph read: ‘But you yourself may go on the spree with the girls at Kunávin,’ said the lawyer with a smile.

  9 Add: a vein on his forehead stood out,

  10 The lithograph here reads differently, and the words that follow are: ‘How do you mean “what kind of love”?’ said the lady. ‘The ordinary love of married couples.’

  ‘But how can ordinary love sanctify marriage?’ continued the nervous gentleman. He was as agitated as though he were angry and wished to speak unpleasantly to the lady. She felt this and was also agitated.

  ‘How? Very simply,’ said she. The nervous gentleman at once seized on the word.

  ‘No, not simply!’

  11 Add: and least of all for his wife. That is what the proverb says, and it is a true one. “Another’s wife is a swan, but one’s own is bitter wormwood.”

  12 Read: Even if one admits that Menelaus might prefer Helen for his whole lifetime, Helen would prefer Paris.

  13 Add: … of Helen with Menelaus or vice versa. The only difference is that with one it comes sooner and with another later. It is only written in stupid novels that they loved one another all their lives, and only children can believe that.

  14 Add: ‘This identity of ideals does not occur among old people, but always between handsome and young ones. And I assert that love, real love, does not sanctify marriage as we are accustomed to suppose for one’s whole life, but on the contrary destroys it.’

  15 Add: And we feel this, and to avoid it we preach “love”. In reality the preaching of free love is only a call to return to the mingling of the sexes – excuse me,’ said he, turning to the lady, ‘to fornication. The old basis has worn out, and we must find a new one, but not preach depravity!’ He had become so excited that we all remained silent and looked at him.

  ‘And at present the transition stage is terrible. People feel that it will not do to allow adultery, and that sexual relations must in some way be defined; but bases for this are lacking, except the old ones in which no one any longer believes. And people go on getting married in the old way without believing in what they are doing, and the result is either deception or coercion.

  16 Add: and do not themselves know why or what for,

  17 Add: In the course of his story he did not once stop after that, and not even the entry of fresh passengers interrupted him. During his narration his face completely changed several times so that nothing resembling the former face remained: his eyes, his mouth, his moustache and even his beard were all different – it was a beautiful, touching, new face. These changes occurred suddenly in the dim light, and for some five minutes there was one face and it was impossible to see the former face, and then, one did not know how, another face appeared and again it was impossible to see it otherwise.

  18 Add: … my life and all my terrible story. Terrible, really terrible. The whole story is more terrible than the end.

  19 Add: In the first place let me tell you who I am. I am the son of a rich landowner in the steppes, and I took a degree in law at the university. I married when I was rather over thirty, but before telling of my marriage I must say how I lived previously and how I regarded family life.

  20 Add: This – the fact that I considered myself moral – came about because in our family there was not any of that particular specialized vice which was so common in our landowning class, and therefore, being brought up in a family where neither my father nor my mother was unfaithful, I nursed the dream of a most elevated and poetic family life from my early years. My wife had to be the height of perfection. Our mutual love had to be most elevated. The purity of our family life was to be dovelike. So I thought, and I praised myself all the time for having such elevated thoughts. And at the same time, for ten years, I lived as an adult, in no haste to get married, and led what I called a respectable, reasonable, bachelor life.

  21 Add: and I was naively confident that I was quite a moral man. The women I was intimate with were not mine, and I had nothing to do with them except for the pleasure they afforded me. And I saw nothing disgraceful in this.

  22 Add: … in regard to the real woman-question …’

  ‘That is to say … what do you understand to be the real woman-question?’

  ‘The question of what this organic creature that is distinct from man is, and how she herself and men also should regard her.

  23 For this paragraph read: ‘Yes, for ten years I lived in most disgraceful debauchery, dreaming of a pure, elevated love—and even in the name of that love. Yes, I want to tell of how I killed my wife, and to tell that I must tell how I became depraved.

  ‘I killed her before I met her; I killed a woman the first time I knew one without loving her, and it was already then that I killed my wife.

  24 Read: Who deprave youths? They do! Who deprave women by devising means for them and teaching them not to bear children? Who treat syphilis with enthusiasm? They.’

  ‘But why not treat syphilis?’

  ‘Because to cure syphilis is the same as to safeguard vice; it is the same as the Foundlings Hospital for discarded babies.’

  ‘No, not the same … Then omit to end of paragraph.

  25 Insert here: To tell the truth without false shame, I was trapped and caught. Her mamma – her papa was dead – arranged all sorts of traps and one of them – namely boating – succeeded.

  26 Insert: No, say what you will, we live up to our ears in such a swamp of lies that unless we have our heads bumped, as I did, we cannot come to our senses.

  27 Add: How fortunate that would have been for us!

  28 Add: If we only reject the conventional explanations of why and for what reason these things are done, if we …

  29 Add: There is no difference. Strictly defining the matter, one must say that prostitutes for short terms are usually despised, while prostitutes for long terms are respected.

  30 Add: The men of our circle are kept and fed like breeding stallions. It is only necessary, you know, to close the safety-valve – that is, for a vicious young man to live a continent life for a little while – and immediately a terrible restlessness and excitement is caused, which passing through the prism of the artificial conditions of our social life shows itself in the guise of falling in love. Our love affairs and marriages, for the most part, are conditioned by our food. You are surprised: one ought to be surprised that we have not noticed it sooner.

  31 Read: through the prism of novels, stories, verses, music – through the idle, luxurious setting of our life – and there will be amorousness of the purest water.

  32 Read: … her parents, knowing more of life and not distracted by a momentary infatuation, but yet loving her not less than they loved themselves – arranged the marriage.

  33 Instead of the following lines, read: and we talk of woman’s rights, of “freedom” which is somehow obtainable at university lectures.’

  34 Add: and as she cannot consent to be a slave and cannot herself propose, there begins that other abominable lie which is sometimes called “coming out into society”, and sometimes “amusing themselves”, and which is nothing but husband-hunting.

  35 Add: ‘They all complain that they are deprived of rights and are oppressed.

  36 Add: Look at the people’s fětes, and at our balls and parties. Woman knows how she acts, you can see that by her triumphant smile.

  37 Add: whether they believe in that or not – is unimportant.

  38 Add:
My sister, when very young, married a man twice her age and a debauchee. I remember how astonished we were the night of the wedding, when she ran out of her bedroom in tears and, shaking all over, said that she could on no account, on no account, even tell us what he had wanted to do to her.

  39 Add: A pure girl only wants children. Children, – yes, but not a husband.’

  ‘How then,’ I said with astonishment, ‘how is the human race to be continued?’

  ‘And why should it be continued?’ was his unexpected rejoinder.

  40 Add: You know that Schopenhauer, Hartmann, and all the Buddhists too, declare that it is a blessing not to live. And they are so far right that welfare for humanity coincides with self-annihilation, only they have not expressed themselves rightly: they say that the human race should destroy itself to escape from suffering – that its aim should be self-destruction. That is wrong. The aim of humanity cannot be to escape from suffering by self-destruction, because sufferings are the result of activity, and the aim of an activity cannot be to destroy its consequences. The aim both of men and of humanity is blessedness. For the attainment of blessedness a law has been given to humanity which it should fulfil. The law is that of the union of mankind.

  41 In the lithographed version there are a number of small differences in the last paragraphs of Chapter XI, and Chapter XII commences with the words: ‘It is a strange story,’ said I.

  ‘What is there strange about it? According to all Church teaching the end of the world is coming, and according to all that science teaches the same thing is inevitable. So what is there strange in the fact that moral teaching reaches the same result? “He that is able to receive it, let him receive it,” said Christ. And I understand that just as he said it. For morality to exist between people in sexual relations it is necessary that the aim they set themselves should be complete chastity. In striving towards chastity, man falls; he falls, and the result is a moral marriage; but if, as in our society, man aims directly at physical love, then though it may clothe itself in the pseudo-moral form of marriage, that will merely be permitted debauchery with one woman – and will none the less be an immoral life, such as that in which I perished and destroyed her, and such as among us is called moral family life. Note what a perverse conception exists among us, when the happiest position for a man – that of freedom, celibacy – is considered pitiable and ridiculous. And the highest ideal, the best position, for a woman – that of being pure, a vestal, a virgin – is a thing to be afraid of and a subject for ridicule in our society. How many and many young girls have offered up their purity to that Moloch of opinion by marrying good-for-nothing fellows, merely to avoid remaining virgin, which is the highest state. For fear that she may remain in that highest state she ruins herself! But I did not then understand that the words in the Gospel – that he who looks upon a woman with desire has already committed adultery with her in his heart – refer not to other wives only, but specially and chiefly to one’s own. I did not understand that, and thought that this honeymoon and my behaviour on this honeymoon were most excellent, and that to satisfy desire with my own wife was a perfectly right thing. Then follow in the lithographed version the words: You know those wedding tours, &c.

  42 Read: As happens with mirthful young people who, unable to devise funny things to laugh at quickly enough, laugh at their own laughter, so we had not time to devise excuses for our hatred.

  43 Read: ‘We all – men and women – are brought up to a kind of veneration for that feeling which we are accustomed to call love. From childhood I prepared to fall in love, and I fell in love; all my youth I was in love and was glad to be so. It was instilled into me that there was no nobler and more exalted business in the world than to be in love. Well at last the expected feeling comes, and a man devotes himself to it. But that is where the deception appears. In theory love is something ideal …

  44 Add: I would order them – those wizards – to perform the office of those women who, in their opinion, are necessary to men – and then let them talk!

  45 Add: According to the view existing in our society a woman’s vocation is to afford pleasure to man, and the education given her corresponds with this view. From childhood she learns only how to be more attractive. Girls are all taught to think entirely of that. As serfs were brought up to satisfy their masters and it could not be otherwise, so also all our women arc educated to attract men and this too cannot be otherwise. But you will perhaps say that this is true only of badly brought-up girls – those who among us are contemptuously called “young ladies” – you will say there is another, a serious education, supplied in high-schools – even classical ones – in midwifery, and in medical and university courses. That is not true. All female education of whatever kind has in view only the capture of men. Some girls captivate men by music and curls; others by learning and by political services. But the aim is always the same and cannot be other, because there is no other than that of charming a man so as to capture him. Can you imagine courses for women, and scholarship for women, without men: that is to say, that they should be educated but that men should not know about it? I cannot! No bringing up, no education, can alter this as long as woman’s highest ideal remains marriage, and not virginity and freedom from sensuality. Till then she will be a slave. You know one need only think – forgetting how customary they are – of the conditions in which our young ladies are brought up, and we shall be surprised not at the vice which rules among the women of our propertied classes, but on the contrary that there is so little vice. Only think of the finery from early childhood, the adorning of herself, the cleanliness, the grace, the music, the reading of verses and novels, the songs and theatres and concerts for external and internal application, that is those they hear and those in which they perform. And with it all their complete physical idleness and the food they eat, with so much sweetness and so much fat in it. You see, it is only because it is all wrapped up and concealed that we do not know what those unfortunate girls suffer from the excitation of their sensuality: nine out of ten suffer and are unendurably tormented at the period of adolescence and later, if they do not get married by twenty. You know it is only that we do not want to see it, but anyone who has eyes sees that the majority of these unfortunates are so excited by this concealed sensuality (it is well if it is concealed) that they can do nothing, they only begin to live in the presence of a man. Their whole life is passed in preparations for coquetry and in coquetting. In the presence of men they overflow with life and become animated with sensual energy, but as soon as the man goes away their energy all droops and they cease to live. And this is not with some particular man but with any man, if only he is not quite repulsive. You will say, that is exceptional. No, this is the rule. Only it shows itself more strongly in some girls and less in others; none of them however lives a full life of her own, but only in dependence on man. When he is absent they are all alike and cannot help being alike, because for them all to attract to themselves as many men as possible is the highest ideal both of their girlhood and of their married life. And from this arises a feeling stronger than that one which I will not call their feminine vanity – the animal need of every female animal to attract to herself as many males as possible in order to have a chance of choosing. So it is in their girlhood and so it continues to be after marriage.

  46 Insert: You must understand that in our world an opinion exists, shared by everyone, that woman is there to afford man enjoyment (and vice versa probably, but I don’t know about that, I know my own part).

  47 Add: from Pushkin’s lines about “little feet”.

  48 Read: ‘The emancipation of woman lies not in universities and law-courts but in the bedroom. Yes, and the struggle against prostitution lies not in the brothels but in the families.’

  The arrangement of this chapter differs in the two versions, and the following passage occurs in the lithographed but is omitted in the printed version:

  ‘But why so?’ I asked.

  ‘That is what is su
rprising – that no one wishes to know what is so clear and evident, and what the doctors ought to know and to preach, but about which they are silent. Man desires the law of nature – children; but the coming of children presents an obstacle to continuous enjoyment, and people who only desire continuous enjoyment have to devise means to evade that obstacle. And they have devised three such means. One is, by the receipt the rascals give, to cripple the woman by making her barren – which has always been, and must be, a misfortune for a woman – then man can quietly and constantly enjoy himself; the second way is polygamy, not honourable polygamy as among the Mohammedans but our base European polygamy, replete with falsehood and hypocrisy; and there is the third evasion – which is not even an evasion, but a simple, coarse, direct infringement of the laws of nature, and which is committed by all the husbands among the peasants and by most husbands in our so-called honourable families. I too lived in that way. We have not even reached the level of Europe, of Paris, of the Zwei Kinder System, or of the Mohammedans, and we have devised nothing of our own because we have not thought at all about the matter. We feel that there is something nasty in the one plan and in the other, and we wish to have families, but our barbarous view of woman remains the same and the result is yet worse. A woman with us must at one and the same time be pregnant and be her husband’s mistress – must be a nursing mother and his mistress. But her strength cannot stand it.’

  49 The lithographed version of Chapter XV begins with a long section on jealousy, omitted in the printed version:

  ‘Yes, jealousy is one of the secrets of marriage that are known to all and hidden from everybody. Besides the general reason for married couples’ hatred of one another – which is their co-operation in defiling a human being – mutual jealousy is continually gnawing at them. But by mutual agreement it is generally decided to conceal this from everyone, and it is so concealed. Knowing that this is so, each assumes that it is an unhappy peculiarity of his own and not the common lot. So it was with me. So it must be. Jealousy must exist between married couples who live immorally with one another. If they are both unable to sacrifice their own pleasure for the welfare of their child, each rightly concludes that the other will certainly not sacrifice pleasure – I will not say for welfare or tranquillity (for one may sin so as not to be found out), but – merely for conscience’s sake. Each knows that no strong moral obstacle to unfaithfulness exists in the other. They know this because they infringe the demands of morality with one another, and therefore they distrust and watch each other. Oh, what an awful feeling jealousy is! I am not speaking of that real jealousy which at any rate has some basis. That real jealousy is tormenting but it has, and promises, a result; but I am speaking of the unconscious jealousy which inevitably accompanies every immoral marriage, and which, having no definite cause, has also no end. The other is an abscess on a tooth, but this is a tooth aching with its bone – unchanging pain day and night, and again day and night, and unendingly. This jealousy is dreadful, really dreadful! It is like this: a young man is pleasantly talking to my wife and looking at her, as it seems to me, examining her body. How dare he think about her, or dream of a romance with her! But she not merely tolerates it, she is apparently quite pleased. I even see that she is behaving in the same way to him as he is doing to her. And in my soul there arises such a hatred of her that every word of hers and every gesture becomes repulsive. She notices this, and does not know what she is to do, and she puts on an air of animated indifference. “Ah! I suffer and she finds it amusing, she is well satisfied!” And the hatred increases tenfold but I dare not give it vent, for in the depth of my soul I know that there is no real ground for it. And I sit, pretending to be indifferent, and put on an air of special regard and politeness towards him. Then I become angry with myself and wish to get out of the room and leave them alone, and I really go out. But as soon as I am out I am seized with horror at what is going on in my absence. I go back – inventing some excuse for doing so; or sometimes I do not re-enter the room but stop at the door and listen. How can she humiliate herself and me, putting me – me – in such a mean position of suspicion and eaves-dropping! What meanness! Oh, the nasty beast! And he, he! What about him? He is what all men are, what I was when a bachelor. For him it is a pleasure. He even smiles when he looks at me as though saying: “What can you say about it? It is my turn now!” Oh, that feeling is terrible! The sting of that feeling is terrible: I had only to let loose that feeling on anyone if but once – it was enough if once I suspected a man of having designs on my wife – and that man was for ever spoilt for me, as if vitriol had been poured over him. It was enough for me to be jealous of a man once and I could never afterwards renew simple human relations with him. For ever after that, our eyes flashed when we looked at one another. As for my wife, whom I deluged with quantities of this vitriol of jealous hatred, I entirely disfigured her. During this period of unfounded hatred, I quite dethroned and shamed her in my imagination. I imagined the most impossible tricks on her part. I suspected her, I am ashamed to say, of behaving like the queen in the Arabian Nights: being unfaithful to me with a slave almost before my very eyes, and then laughing at me. So that with each fresh access of jealousy (I am still speaking of groundless jealousy) I fell into an already prepared rut of filthy suspicions about her and I made the rut deeper and deeper. She did the same. If I had reasons for jealousy, she, knowing my past, had a thousand times more. And she was even more jealous of me. And the sufferings I experienced from her jealousy were quite different and were also very severe. They occurred like this: we are living more or less quietly; I am even merry and tranquil, when we happen to begin a most ordinary conversation and all at once she does not agree with things she had always agreed with. More than that, I notice that she is becoming irritable without a cause. I think she is upset or that what we are saying is really unpleasant to her. But we turn to something else and the same thing happens, she again attacks me and is again irritable. I am astonished and seek the cause of this. What is it all about? She becomes silent, replies in monosyllables, or when she speaks is evidently hinting at something. I begin to guess that the reason of it is that I have taken a walk in the garden with her cousin, with whom I never even thought of anything wrong, or there is some cause of that kind. I begin to guess at it but cannot mention it. Were I to do so I should confirm her suspicions. I begin to investigate and to interrogate her. She does not reply but guesses that I have understood what it is, and she feels still more strongly confirmed in her suspicions. “What is the matter with you?” I ask. “Nothing, I am the same as usual,” she says; but like a lunatic she utters meaningless, inexplicable, and bitter words. Sometimes I endure it, but sometimes I burst out and become irritable myself, and then a flood of abuse pours forth and I am convicted of some imaginary offence. And all this is carried to an extreme with sobs and tears, and she rushes out of the house to most unusual places. I begin to search for her. I am uneasy as to what the servants and children will think but there is nothing for it. She is in such a state that I feel she may do anything. I run after her and look for her. I spend tormenting nights. And finally, with exhausted nerves, after most cruel words and accusations, we both become tranquillized again.