iety is a very commonplace person or worse, selfish,
gossiping, whimsical, whereas the ordinary young girl, until the age of
twenty, is a charming being, ready for everything that is beautiful
and lofty. Why is this so? Evidently because husbands pervert them, and
lower them to their own level.

"In truth, if boys and girls are born equal, the little girls find
themselves in a better situation. In the first place, the young girl is
not subjected to the perverting conditions to which we are subjected.
She has neither cigarettes, nor wine, nor cards, nor comrades, nor
public houses, nor public functions. And then the chief thing is that
she is physically pure, and that is why, in marrying, she is superior
to her husband. She is superior to man as a young girl, and when she
becomes a wife in our society, where there is no need to work in order
to live, she becomes superior, also, by the gravity of the acts of
generation, birth, and nursing.

"Woman, in bringing a child into the world, and giving it her bosom,
sees clearly that her affair is more serious than the affair of man, who
sits in the Zemstvo, in the court. She knows that in these functions the
main thing is money, and money can be made in different ways, and for
that very reason money is not inevitably necessary, like nursing a
child. Consequently woman is necessarily superior to man, and must rule.
But man, in our society, not only does not recognize this, but, on
the contrary, always looks upon her from the height of his grandeur,
despising what she does.

"Thus my wife despised me for my work at the Zemstvo, because she gave
birth to children and nursed them. I, in turn, thought that woman's
labor was most contemptible, which one might and should laugh at.

"Apart from the other motives, we were also separated by a mutual
contempt. Our relations grew ever more hostile, and we arrived at that
period when, not only did dissent provoke hostility, but hostility
provoked dissent. Whatever she might say, I was sure in advance to hold
a contrary opinion; and she the same. Toward the fourth year of
our marriage it was tacitly decided between us that no intellectual
community was possible, and we made no further attempts at it. As to
the simplest objects, we each held obstinately to our own opinions. With
strangers we talked upon the most varied and most intimate matters, but
not with each other. Sometimes, in listening to my wife talk with others
in my presence, I