_From Márya Alexándrovna to Alexyéi Petróvitch_
VILLAGE OF ... NO, May 20, 1840.
I have received your letter, Alexyéi Petróvitch, and do you know what
feeling it aroused in me?--Indignation ... yes, indignation ... and I
will immediately explain to you why it aroused precisely that feeling in
me. One thing is a pity: I am not a mistress of the pen--I rarely write.
I do not know how to express my thoughts accurately and in a few words;
but you will, I hope, come to my aid. You yourself will try to
understand me: if only for the sake of knowing why I am angry with you.
Tell me--you are a clever man--have you ever asked yourself what sort of
a creature a Russian woman is? What is her fate, her position in the
world--in short, what her life is like? I do not know whether you have
ever had time to put that question to yourself; I cannot imagine how you
would answer it.... I might, in conversation be able to communicate to
you my ideas on that subject, but I shall hardly manage it on paper.
However, it makes no difference. This is the point: you surely will
agree with me that we women--at all events, those of us who are not
satisfied with the ordinary cares of domestic life--receive our final
education, all the same, from you--from the men: you have a great and
powerful influence on us. Look, now, at what you do with us. I shall
speak of the young girls, especially of those who, like myself, dwell in
the dull places, and there are many such in Russia. Moreover, I do not
know others, and cannot judge with regard to them. Figure to yourself
such a young girl. Here, now, her education is finished; she is
beginning to live, to amuse herself. But amusement alone is not enough
for her. She demands a great deal from life; she reads, dreams ... of
love:--“Always of love alone!” you will say.... Let us assume that that
word means a great deal to her. I will say again that I am not talking
of the sort of girl who finds it burdensome and tiresome to think....
She looks about her, waits for the coming of him for whom her soul
pines.... At last he makes his appearance: she is carried away; she is
like soft wax in his hands. Everything--happiness, and love, and
thought--everything has invaded her together with him, all at once; all
her tremors are soothed, all her doubts are solved by him; truth itself
seems to speak by his mouth; she worships him, she is ashamed of her
happiness, she learns, she loves. Great is his power over her at this
period!... If he were a hero, he would kindle her to flame, he would
teach her to sacrifice herself, and all sacrifices would be easy to
her! But there are no heroes in our day.... Nevertheless, he guides her
whithersoever he will; she devotes herself to that which interests him,
his every word sinks into her soul: at that time, she does not know, as
yet, how insignificant and empty and false that word may be, how little
it costs him who utters it, and how little faith it merits! These first
moments of bliss and hope are followed, generally--according to
circumstances--(circumstances are always to blame)--are followed by
parting. It is said that there have been cases where two kindred souls,
on recognising each other, have immediately united indissolubly; I have
heard, also, that they are not always comfortable as a result.... But I
will not speak of that which I have not myself beheld--but that the very
pettiest sort of calculation, the most woful prudence, may dwell in a
young heart side by side with the most passionate rapture,--that is a
fact which, unhappily, I know by my own experience. So, then, parting
comes.... Happy is that young girl who instantly recognises that the end
of all has come, who does not comfort herself with expectation! But you
brave, just men, in the majority of cases, have neither the courage nor
the desire to tell us the truth ... you find it more easy to deceive
us.... I am ready to believe, however, that you deceive yourselves along
with us.... Parting! It is both difficult and easy to endure parting.
If only faith in him whom one loves were intact and unassailed, the soul
would conquer the pain of parting.... I will say more: only when she is
left alone does she learn the sweetness of solitude, not sterile but
filled with memories and thoughts. Only then will she learn to know
herself--will she come to herself, will she grow strong.... In the
letters of the distant friend she will find a support for herself; in
her own she will, perhaps, for the first time, express her mind
fully.... But as two persons who have started from the source of a river
along its different banks can, at first, clasp hands, then hold
communication only with the voice, but ultimately lose sight of each
other: so also two beings are ultimately disjoined by separation. “What
of that?” you will say: “evidently they were not fated to go
together....” But here comes in the difference between a man and a
woman. It signifies nothing to a man to begin a new life, to shake far
from him the past; a woman cannot do that. No, she cannot cast aside her
past, she cannot tear herself away from her roots--no, a thousand times
no! And so, a pitiful and ridiculous spectacle presents itself....
Gradually losing hope and faith in herself,--you can form no idea of how
painful that is,--she will pine away and fade alone, obstinately
clinging to her memories, and turning away from everything which life
around her offers.... And he?... Seek him! Where is he? And is it worth
while for him to pause? What time has he for looking back? All this is a
thing of the past for him, you see.
Or here is another thing which happens: it sometimes happens that he
will suddenly conceive a desire to meet the former object of his
affections, he will even deliberately go to her.... But, my God! from
what a motive of petty vain-glory he does it! In his polite compassion,
in his counsels which are intended to be friendly, in his condescending
explanations of the past, there is audible such a consciousness of his
own superiority! It is so agreeable and cheerful a thing for him to let
himself feel every minute how sensible and kind he is! And how little he
understands what he is doing! How well he manages not even to guess at
what is going on in the woman’s heart, and how insultingly he pities
her, if he does guess it!...
Tell me, please, whence are we to get the strength to endure all this?
Remember this, too: in the majority of cases, a girl who, to her
misfortune, has an idea beginning to stir in her head, when she begins
to love, and falls under the influence of a man, involuntarily separates
herself from her family, from her acquaintances. Even previously she has
not been satisfied with their life, yet she has walked on by their side,
preserving in her soul all her intimate secrets.... But the breach
speedily makes itself visible.... They cease to understand her, they are
ready to suspect every movement of hers.... At first she pays no heed
to this, but afterward, afterward ... when she is left alone, when that
toward which she has been striving and for which she has sacrificed
everything escapes her grasp, when she has not attained to heaven, but
when every near thing, every possible thing, has retreated far from
her--what shall uphold her? Sneers, hints, the vulgar triumph of coarse
common sense she can still bear, after a fashion ... but what is she to
do, to what is she to have recourse, when the inward voice begins to
whisper to her that all those people were right, and that she has been
mistaken; that life, of whatever sort it may be, is better than dreams,
as health is better than disease ... when her favourite occupations, her
favourite books, disgust her, the books from which one cannot extract
happiness,--what, say you,--what shall uphold her? How is she to help
succumbing in such a struggle? How is she to live and to go on living in
such a wilderness? Confess herself vanquished, and extend her hand like
a beggar to indifferent people? Will not they give her at least some of
that happiness with which the proud heart once imagined that it could
dispense--all that is nothing as yet! But to feel one’s self ridiculous
at the very moment when one is shedding bitter, bitter tears ... akh!
God forbid that you should go through that experience!...
My hands are trembling, and I am in a fever all over.... My face is
burning hot. It is time for me to stop.... I shall send off this letter
as speedily as possible, while I am not ashamed of my weakness. But, for
God’s sake, not a word in your reply--do you hear me?--not a word of
pity, or I will never write to you again. Understand me: I should not
like to have you take this letter as the outpouring of a misunderstood
soul which is making complaint.... Akh! it is all a matter of
indifference to me! Farewell.