The Complete Works of Count Tolstoy/Volume 18/The Kreutzer Sonata/Chapter 6
VI.
"No, after all, it is better this way, it is better!" he exclaimed. "It served me right! But this is another matter. I wanted to say that the only ones who are deceived are these unfortunate maidens.
"The mothers know it, especially the mothers who have been educated by their husbands know it well. Pretending to believe in the purity of men, they, in fact, act quite differently. They know with what line to catch men for themselves and for their daughters.
"We men do not know it, and we do not know it because we do not want to know it, but the women know very well that the most elevated, the poetical love, as we call it, depends not on moral qualities, but on physical nearness, and besides on the dressing of the hair, and the colour and cut of the dress. Ask an expert coquette, who has undertaken to entice a certain man, what she would prefer to risk to be accused, in presence of him whom she is endeavouring to charm, of lying, cruelty, and even debauchery, or to appear before him in a badly made and homely dress,—and you will find that she will always prefer the first. She knows that we men are ranting about high sentiments, but that we mean only her body, and that we, therefore, will forgive her all her nastiness, but that we will not forgive an ugly, inartistic, tasteless costume.
"The coquette knows this consciously, and every innocent girl knows it unconsciously, just as animals know it.
"This accounts for those nasty jerseys, bustles, these bare shoulders, arms, and almost breasts. Women, especially those who have passed the male school, know full well that all the talk about elevated subjects is only talk, and that man wants only the body and all that which presents it in the most deceptive, but at the same time in the most enticing, light,—and it is this which actually is done. Cast aside this familiarity with all this unseemliness, which has become our second nature, and take a look at the life of our higher classes, just as it is, with all its shamelessness, and you will find that it is through and through nothing but a house of prostitution. You do not agree with me? Permit me to prove it to you," he said, interrupting me. "You say that the women of our society have other interests than those in the houses of prostitution, but I say no, and I will prove it to you. If people differ in the aims of their lives, in the inner contents of their lives, this difference must necessarily be reflected in their externals, and their externals must be different. But look at those unfortunate and despised creatures, and at the ladies of higher society: you will find the same costumes, the same fashions, the same perfumes, the same baring of arms, shoulders, and breasts, and the same accentuation of the prominent bustle,—the same passion for stones and expensive baubles, the same entertainments, dances, music, and singing. As those use all means with which to entice men, so do these.