“Woman, as a Christian, has a right to equality. Woman, as member of the modern and perfectly pagan family, must not struggle for an impossible equality. The modern family is like a tiny little boat sailing in a storm on the vast ocean. It can keep afloat if it is ruled by one will. But when those in the boat begin struggling, the boat is upset, and the result is what we see now in most families. The man, however bad, is in the majority of cases the more sensible of the two. Woman is nearly always in opposition to any progress. When man wants to break with the old life and to go ahead, he nearly always meets with energetic resistance from the woman. The wife catches hold of his coat-tails and will not allow him. In woman a great evil is terribly highly developed—family egotism. It is a dreadful egotism, for it commits the greatest cruelties in the name of love; as if to say, let the whole world perish so that my Serge may be happy!...”
Then L. N. recalled scenes which he had observed in Moscow:
“There issues from Minangua’s a gentleman in a beaver coat, with a sad face, and after him his lady, and the porter carries boxes and helps the lady into the sledge.
“I love at times to stand near the colonnade by the great theatre and watch the ladies driving up to stop at Meriliz’s. I only know of two similar sights: (1) when peasant women go to Zaseka to pick up nuts the watchmen catch them, so that sometimes they give birth out of fright, and yet they go on doing it; and (2) so it is with ladies shopping at sales.
“And their coachmen wait in the bitter cold and talk among themselves: ‘My lady must have spent five thousand to-day!’
“I shall one day write about women. When I am quite old, and my digestion is completely out of order, and I am still looking out into the world through one eye, then I shall pop my head out and tell them: That’s what you are! and disappear completely, or they would peck me to death.” ...
Doctor E. N. Maliutin was in Yasnaya. L. N. said to him:
“I can’t understand the usual attitude that a doctor always serves a good cause. There is no profession that is good in itself. One may be a cobbler and be better and nicer than a doctor. Why is restoring some one to health good? At times it is quite the opposite. Man’s deeds are good, not in themselves, but because of the feelings which inspire him. That’s why I do not understand the desire of women to be doctors, trained nurses, midwives, as though by becoming a midwife everything is settled for the best.”
On some occasion L. N. said: