Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/357



you know," he began, putting the tea and sugar in a bag, "it is the domination of women from which the world suffers. All this comes from it.

"How do you mean the domination of women?" I said. "The rights, the privileges, are on the side of men."

"Precisely," he interrupted me. "It is exactly what I wanted to tell you. It explains that unusual phenomenon that, on the one hand, it is quite true that woman has been brought to the lowest degree of humiliation, while, on the other, she dominates. The women dominate in the same way that the Jews, with their monetary power, pay us back for their oppression. 'Ah, you want us to be traders only,—very well, we Jews will take possession of you,' say the Jews. 'Ah, you want us to be nothing but objects of sensuality,—very well, we, as objects of sensuality, will enslave you,' say the women. Woman is deprived of rights not because she cannot vote or be a judge,—there is no special privilege in being occupied with these affairs,—but because in sexual intercourse she is not man's equal, has not the right to use a man or abstain from him according to her wish, to select a man according to her wish, instead of being selected. You say this is abominable,—very well: then let men be deprived of the same rights. At the present time woman is deprived of the right which man enjoys. So, in order to avenge herself on him for this right, she acts on man's sensuality, through this sensuality subdues him so that he selects only formally, for in reality it is she who makes the selection. Having once possessed