Anna Karenina полностью

‘But if women can, as a rare exception, occupy these positions, it seems to me that you have used the term “rights” incorrectly. It would be more correct to say “obligations”. Everyone will agree that in doing the job of a juror, a councillor, a telegraph clerk, we feel that we are fulfilling an obligation. And therefore it would be more correct to say that women are seeking obligations, and quite legitimately. And one can only sympathize with this desire of theirs to help in men’s common task.’

‘Perfectly true,’ Alexei Alexandrovich agreed. ‘The question, I suppose, consists only in whether they are capable of such obligations.’

‘They’ll most likely be very capable,’ Stepan Arkadyich put in, ‘once education spreads among them. We can see that...’

‘Remember the proverb?’ said the old prince, who had long been listening to the conversation, his mocking little eyes twinkling. ‘I can say it in front of my daughters: long hair, short...’¹²

‘Exactly the same was thought of the negroes before the emancipation!’ Pestsov said angrily.

‘I merely find it strange that women should seek new obligations,’ said Sergei Ivanovich, ‘while unfortunately, as we see, men usually avoid them.’

‘Obligations are coupled with rights. Power, money, honours - that’s what women are seeking,’ said Pestsov.

‘The same as if I should seek the right to be a wet nurse and get offended that women are paid for it while I’m refused,’ the old prince said.

Turovtsyn burst into loud laughter, and Sergei Ivanovich was sorry he had not said it himself. Even Alexei Alexandrovich smiled.

‘Yes, but a man can’t nurse,’ said Pestsov, ‘while a woman ...’

‘No, there was an Englishman who nursed his baby on a ship,’ said the old prince, allowing himself this liberty in a conversation before his daughters.

‘There will be as many women officials as there are such Englishmen,’ Sergei Ivanovich said this time.

‘Yes, but what will a girl do if she has no family?’ Stepan Arkadyich interceded, remembering Chibisova, whom he had had in mind all the while he was sympathizing with Pestsov and supporting him.

‘If you look into the girl’s story properly, you’ll find that she left her own family, or her sister’s, where she could have had a woman’s work,’ Darya Alexandrovna said irritably, unexpectedly entering the conversation, probably guessing what girl Stepan Arkadyich had in mind.

‘But we stand for a principle, an ideal!’ Pestsov objected in a sonorous bass. ‘Women want the right to be independent, educated. They are cramped and oppressed by their awareness that it is impossible.’

‘And I’m cramped and oppressed that I can’t get hired as a wet nurse in an orphanage,’ the old prince said again, to the great joy of Turovtsyn, who laughed so much that he dropped the thick end of his asparagus into the sauce.

XI

Everybody took part in the general conversation except Kitty and Levin. At first, when the subject was the influence of one nation on another, Levin involuntarily began to consider what he had to say about it; but these thoughts, very important for him once, flashed through his head as in a dream and now had not the slightest interest for him. It even seemed strange to him that they should try so hard to talk about something that was of no use to anyone. In the same way, it would seem that what they were saying about the rights and education of women ought to have interested Kitty. How often she had thought of it, remembering Varenka, her friend abroad, and her painful dependence, how often she had wondered what would happen to her if she did not get married, and how many times she had argued about it with her sister! But now it did not interest her in the least. She and Levin were carrying on their own conversation, or not a conversation but some mysterious communication that bound them more closely together with every minute and produced in both of them a feeling of joyful fear before the unknown into which they were entering.

First, in response to Kitty’s question of how he could have seen her in a carriage last year, Levin told her how he had met her on the high road as he was walking home from the mowing.

‘It was very early in the morning. You must have just woken up. Your maman was asleep in her corner. It was a wonderful morning. I was walking along and thinking: Who is that in the coach-and-four? A fine four with little bells, and for an instant you flashed by, and I saw in the window - you were sitting like this, holding the ribbons of your bonnet with both hands and thinking terribly hard about something,’ he said, smiling. ‘How I longed to know what you were thinking about! Was it something important?’

‘Wasn’t I all dishevelled?’ she thought. But seeing the rapturous smile that the recollection of these details evoked in him, she felt that, on the contrary, the impression she had made had been very good. She blushed and laughed joyfully.

‘I really don’t remember.’

‘How nicely Turovtsyn laughs!’ said Levin, admiring his moist eyes and shaking body.