, to take possession of me--how can
one talk of their rights? Oh, don't you believe them; they are very,
very cunning! We men make a great stir about their emancipation,
but they don't care about their emancipation at all, they only
pretend to care about it; they are horribly cunning things, horribly
cunning!"

I began to feel sleepy and weary of discussion. I turned over with
my face to the wall.

"Yes," I heard as I fell asleep--"yes, and it's our education
that's at fault, sir. In our towns, the whole education and bringing
up of women in its essence tends to develop her into the human beast
--that is, to make her attractive to the male and able to vanquish
him. Yes, indeed"--Shamohiri sighed--"little girls ought to be
taught and brought up with boys, so that they might be always
together. A woman ought to be trained so that she may be able, like
a man, to recognise when she's wrong, or she always thinks she's
in the right. Instil into a little girl from her cradle that a man
is not first of all a cavalier or a possible lover, but her neighbour,
her equal in everything. Train her to think logically, to generalise,
and do not assure her that her brain weighs less than a man's and
that therefore she can be indifferent to the sciences, to the arts,
to the tasks of culture in general. The apprentice to the shoemaker
or the house painter has a brain of smaller size than the grown-up
man too, yet he works, suffers, takes his part in the general
struggle for existence. We must give up our attitude to the
physiological aspect, too--to pregnancy and childbirth, seeing
that in the first place women don't have babies every month; secondly,
not all women have babies; and, thirdly, a normal countrywoman works
in the fields up to the day of her confinement and it does her no
harm. Then there ought to be absolute equality in everyday life.
If a man gives a lady his chair or picks up the handkerchief she
has dropped, let her repay him in the same way. I have no objection
if a girl of good family helps me to put on my coat or hands me a
glass of water--"

I heard no more, for I fell asleep.

Next morning when we were approaching Sevastopol, it was damp,
unpleasant weather; the ship rocked. Shamohin sat on deck with me,
brooding and silent. When the bell rang for tea, men with their
coat-collars turned up and ladies with pale, sleepy faces began
going below; a young and very beautiful lady, the one who had been
so angry with th