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“when education has become general among them. We see this...”
“How about the proverb?” said the prince, who had a long while
been intent on the conversation, his little comical eyes twinkling. “I can
say it before my daughter: her hair is long, because her wit is...”
“Just what they thought of the negroes before their emancipation!”
said Pestsov angrily.
“What seems strange to me is that women should seek fresh du-
ties,” said Sergey Ivanovitch, “while we see, unhappily, that men usu-
ally try to avoid them.”
“Duties are bound up with rights—power, money, honor; those are
what women are seeking,” said Pestsov.
“Just as though I should seek the right to be a wet-nurse and feel
injured because women are paid for the work, while no one will take
me,” said the old prince.
Turovtsin exploded in a loud roar of laughter and Sergey Ivanovitch
regretted that he had not made this comparison. Even Alexey
Alexandrovitch smiled.
“Yes, but a man can’t nurse a baby,” said Pestsov, “while a woman...”
“No, there was an Englishman who did suckle his baby on board
ship,” said the old prince, feeling this freedom in conversation permis-
sible before his own daughters.
“There are as many such Englishmen as there would be women
officials,” said Sergey Ivanovitch.
“Yes, but what is a girl to do who has no family?” put in Stepan
Arkadyevitch, thinking of Masha Tchibisova, whom he had had in his
mind all along, in sympathizing with Pestsov and supporting him.
“If the story of such a girl were thoroughly sifted, you would find
she had abandoned a family—her own or a sister’s, where she might
have found a woman’s duties,” Darya Alexandrovna broke in unex-
pectedly in a tone of exasperation, probably suspecting what sort of girl
Stepan Arkadyevitch was thinking of.
“But we take our stand on principle as the ideal,” replied Pestsov in
his mellow bass. “Woman desires to have rights, to be independent,
educated. She is oppressed, humiliated by the consciousness of her
disabilities.”
“And I’m oppressed and humiliated that they won’t engage me at
the Foundling,” the old prince said again, to the huge delight of
Turovtsin, who in his mirth dropped his asparagus with the thick end
in the sauce.