VILLAGE OF X----,_May_ 1840.
I have received your letter, Alexey Petrovitch, and do you know what
feeling t aroused in me?--indignation ... yes, indignation ... and I
will explain to you at once why it aroused just that feeling in me.
It's only a pity I'm not a great hand with my pen; I rarely write, and
am not good at expressing my thoughts precisely and in few words. But
you will, I hope, come to my aid. You must try, on your side, to
understand me, if only to find out why I am indignant with you.
Tell me--you have brains--have you ever asked yourself what sort of
creature a Russian woman is? what is her destiny? her position in the
world--in short, what is her life? I don't know if you have had time to
put this question to yourself; I can't picture to myself how you would
answer it.... I should, perhaps, in conversation be capable of giving
you my ideas on the subject, but on paper I am scarcely equal to it. No
matter, though. This is the point: you will certainly agree with me
that we women, those of us at least who are not satisfied with the
common interests of domestic life, receive our final education, in any
case, from you men: you have a great and powerful influence on us. Now,
consider what you do to us. I am talking about young girls, especially
those who, like me, live in the wilds, and there are very many such in
Russia. Besides, I don't know anything of others and cannot judge of
them. Picture to yourself such a girl. Her education, suppose, is
finished; she begins to live, to enjoy herself. But enjoyment alone is
not much to her. She demands much from life, she reads, and dreams ...
of love. Always nothing but love! you will say.... Suppose so; but that
word means a great deal to her. I repeat that I am not speaking of a
girl to whom thinking is tiresome and boring.... She looks round her,
is waiting for the time when he will come for whom her soul yearns....
At last he makes his appearance--she is captivated; she is wax in his
hands. All--happiness and love and thought--all have come with a rush
together with him; all her tremors are soothed, all her doubts solved
by him. Truth itself seems speaking by his lips. She venerates him, is
over-awed at her own happiness, learns, loves. Great is his power over
her at that time!... If he were a hero, he would fire her, would teach
her to sacrifice herself, and all sacrifices would be easy to her! But
there are no heroes in our times.... Anyway, he directs her as he
pleases. She devotes herself to whatever interests him, every word of
his sinks into her soul. She has not yet learned how worthless and
empty and false a word may be, how little it costs him who utters it,
and how little it deserves belief! After these first moments of bliss
and hope there usually comes--through circumstances--(circumstances
are always to blame)--there comes a parting. They say there have been
instances of two kindred souls, on getting to know one another,
becoming at once inseparably united; I have heard it said, too, that
things did not always go smoothly with them in consequence ... but of
what I have not seen myself I will not speak,--and that the pettiest
calculation, the most pitiful prudence, can exist in a youthful heart,
side by side with the most passionate enthusiasm--of that I have to my
sorrow had practical experience. And so, the parting comes.... Happy
the girl who realises at once that it is the end of everything, who
does not beguile herself with expectations! But you, valorous, just
men, for the most part, have not the pluck, nor even the desire, to
tell us the truth.... It is less disturbing for you to deceive us....
However, I am ready to believe that you deceive yourselves together
with us.... Parting! To bear separation is both hard and easy. If only
there be perfect, untouched faith in him whom one loves, the soul can
master the anguish of parting.... I will say more. It is only then,
when she is left alone, that she finds out the sweetness of
solitude--not fruitless, but filled with memories and ideas. It is only
then that she finds out herself, comes to her true self, grows
strong.... In the letters of her friend far away she finds a support
for herself; in her own, she, very likely for the first time, finds
full self-expression.... But as two people who start from a stream's
source, along opposite banks, at first can touch hands, then only
communicate by voice, and finally lose sight of each other altogether;
so two natures grow apart at last by separation. Well, what then? you
will say; it's clear they were not destined to be together.... But
herein the difference between a man and a woman comes out. For a man it
means nothing to begin a new life, to shake off all his past; a woman
cannot do this. No, she cannot fling off her past, she cannot break
away from her roots--no, a thousand times no! And now begins a pitiful
and ludicrous spectacle.... Gradually losing hope and faith in
herself--and how bitter that is you cannot even imagine!--she pines and
wears herself out alone, obstinately clinging to her memories and
turning away from everything that the life around offers her.... But
he? Look for him! where is he? And is it worth his while to stand
still? When has he time to look round? Why, it's all a thing of the
past for him. Or else this is what happens: it happens that he feels a
sudden inclination to meet the former object of his feelings, that he
even makes an excursion with that aim.... But, mercy on us! the pitiful
conceit that leads him into doing that! In his gracious sympathy, in
his would-be friendly advice, in his indulgent explanation of the past,
such consciousness of his superiority is manifest! It is so agreeable
and cheering for him to let himself feel every instant--what a clever
person he is, and how kind! And how little he understands what he has
done! How clever he is at not even guessing what is passing in a
woman's heart, and how offensive is his compassion if he does guess
it!... Tell me, please, where is she to get strength to bear all this?
Recollect this, too: for the most part, a girl in whose brain--to her
misfortune--thought has begun to stir, such a girl, when she begins to
love, and falls under a man's influence, inevitably grows apart from
her family, her circle of friends. She was not, even before then,
satisfied with their life, though she moved in step with them, while
she treasured all her secret dreams in her soul.... But the discrepancy
soon becomes apparent.... They cease to comprehend her, and are ready
to look askance at everything she does.... At first this is nothing to
her, but afterwards, afterwards ... when she is left alone, when what
she was striving towards, for which she had sacrificed everything--when
heaven is not gained while everything near, everything possible, is
lost--what is there to support her? Jeers, sly hints, the vulgar
triumph of coarse commonsense, she could still endure somehow ... but
what is she to do, what is to be her refuge, when an inner voice begins
to whisper to her that all of them are right and she was wrong, that
life, whatever it may be, is better than dreams, as health is better
than sickness ... when her favourite pursuits, her favourite books,
grow hateful to her, books out of which there is no reading
happiness--what, tell me, is to be her support? Must she not inevitably
succumb in such a struggle? how is she to live and to go on living in
such a desert? To know oneself beaten and to hold out one's hand, like
a beggar, to persons quite indifferent, for them to bestow the sympathy
which the proud heart had once fancied it could well dispense with--all
that would be nothing! But to feel yourself ludicrous at the very
instant when you are shedding bitter, bitter tears ... O God, spare
such suffering!...
My hands are trembling, and I am quite in a fever.... My face burns. It
is time to stop.... I'll send off this letter quickly, before I'm
ashamed of its feebleness. But for God's sake, in your answer not a
word--do you hear?--not a word of sympathy, or I'll never write to you
again. Understand me: I should not like you to take this letter as the
outpouring of a misunderstood soul, complaining.... Ah! I don't
care!--Good-bye.