it’s not altogether personal..... until it is understood and admitted, there is a darkness everywhere. the life of every man in existence, who does not understand and admit it, is perfectly senseless. until they know they are all living in vain.
“what on earth did you mean?” she said as soon as the omnibus had started.
he turned a startled musing face. he had forgotten.
“what have i said?”
“kindly think.”
“really i am at a loss.”
“when that woman collided with me, crossing the road.”
“ah, ah, i remember. well?”
“you pronounced an opinion.”
“it is not my opinion. it is a matter of ascertained fact.”
“facts are invented by people who start with their conclusions arranged beforehand.”
“perhaps so.”
“ah well; that is an admission.”
“the conclusion is amply verified.”
“where?”
“i speak only of women in the mass. there are of course exceptions.”
“go on, go on.”
“i see you are annoyed. let us leave this matter.”
“kindly go on.”
“there is nothing more to say.” he laughed. he was not even being aware that it was a matter of life and death. he could go on serenely living in an idea, that turned life into a nightmare.
“oh if it amuses you.” he was silent. the moments went beating on. she turned from him and sat averted. she would go now onward and onward till she could get away over the edge of the world. there was nothing else to do. there were no thoughts or words in which her conviction could take shape. even looking for them was a degradation. besides, argument, if she could steady herself to face the pain of it, would not, whatever he might say, even dislodge his satisfied unconcern. he was uneasy; but only about herself, and would accept reassurance from her, without a single backward glance. but what did their personal fate matter beside a question so all-embracing? what future could they have in unacknowledged disagreement over central truth? and if it were acknowledged, what peace?
the long corridor of london imprisoned her. far away beneath her tumult it was making its appeal, renewing the immortal compact. the irregular fa?ades, dull greys absorbing the light, bright buffs throwing it brilliantly out, dadoed below with a patchwork of shops, and overhead the criss-cross of telephone wires, shut her away from the low-hung soft grey sky. but far away, unfailing,
retreating as the long corridor telescoped towards them, an obliterating saffron haze filled the vista, holding her in her place.
the end of the journey brought them to grey streets and winding alleys where the masts and rigging that had loomed suddenly in the distance, robbing the expedition of its promise of ending in some strange remoteness with their suggestion of blind busy worlds beyond london, were lost to sight.
“this must be the docks,” she said politely.
with the curt permission of a sentinel policeman they went through a gateway appearing suddenly before them in a high grey wall. miriam hurried forward to meet the open scene for one moment alone and found herself on a little quay surrounding a square basin of motionless grey water shut in by wooden galleries, stacked with mouldering casks. but the air was the air that moves softly on still days over wide waters and in the shadowed light of the enclosure, the fringe of green where the water touched the grey stone of the quay gleamed brilliantly in the stillness. she breathed in, in spite of herself, the charm of the scene; an ordered completeness, left to itself in beauty; its lonely beauty to be gathered only by the chance passer-by.
“this is a strange romantic place,” said mr. shatov conversationally by her side.
“there is nothing,” said miriam unwillingly, feeling her theme weaken as she looked away from it to voice well-known words, “nothing that reveals more completely the spiritual,” her voice gave over the word which broke into meaninglessness upon
the air, “the status of a man as his estimate of women.”
“i entirely agree. i was a feminist in my college days. i am still a feminist.”
miriam pondered. the word was new to her. but how could anyone be a feminist and still think women most certainly inferior beings?
“ah,” she cried “you are one of the huxleys.”
“i don’t follow you.”
“oh well. he, impertinent schoolboy, graciously suggested that women should be given every possible kind of advantage, educational and otherwise; saying almost in the same breath that they could never reach the highest places in civilisation; that nature’s salic law would never be repealed.”
“well, how is it to be repealed?”
“i don’t know i’m sure. i’m not wise enough to give instruction in repealing a law that has never existed. but who is huxley, that he should take upon himself to say what are the highest places in civilisation?”
“miriam” he said, coming round to stand before her. “we are not going to quarrel over this matter.” she refused to meet his eyes.
“it is not a question of quarrelling, or even discussion. you have told me all i want to know. i see exactly where you stand; and for my part it decides, many things. i don’t say this to amuse myself or because i want to, but because it is the only thing i can possibly do.”
“miriam. in this spirit nothing can be said at all. let us rather go and have tea.”
poor little man, perhaps he was weary; troubled
in this strange grey corner of a country not his own, isolated with an unexpected anger. they had tea in a small dark room behind a little shop. it was close packed with an odorous dampness. miriam sat frozen, appalled by the presence of a negro. he sat near by, huge, bent snorting and devouring, with a huge black bottle at his side. mr. shatov’s presence was shorn of its alien quality. he was an englishman in the fact that he and she could not sit eating in the neighbourhood of this marshy jungle. but they were, they had. they would have. once away from this awful place she would never think of it again. yet the man had hands and needs and feelings. perhaps he could sing. he was at a disadvantage, an outcast. there was something that ought to be said to him. she could not think what it was. in his oppressive presence it was impossible to think at all. every time she sipped her bitter tea it seemed that before she should have replaced her cup, vengeance would have sprung from the dark corner. everything hurried so. there was no time to shake off the sense of contamination. it was contamination. the man’s presence was an outrage on something of which he was not aware. it would be possible to make him aware. when his fearful face, which she sadly knew she could not bring herself to regard a second time, was out of sight, the outline of his head was desolate, like the contemplated head of any man alive. men ought not to have faces. their real selves abode in the expressions of their heads and brows. below, their faces were moulded by deceit......
while she had pursued her thoughts, advantage
had fallen to the black form in the corner. it was as if the black face grinned, crushing her thread of thought.
“you see, miriam, if instead of beating me, you will tell me your thoughts, it is quite possible that mine may be modified. there is at least nothing of the bigot in me.”
“it is not what people may be made to see for a few minutes in conversations that counts. it is the conclusions they come to, instinctively, by themselves.” he wanted to try and think as she did ...... “chose attendrissante; il me ressemblaient” ..... life .. was different, to everybody, even to intellectual male vain-boasters, from everybody’s descriptions; there was nothing to point to anywhere that exactly corresponded to spoken opinions. but the relieving truth of this was only realised privately. the things went on being said. men did not admit their private discoveries in public. it was not enough to see and force the admittance of the holes in a theory privately, and leave the form of words going on and on in the world perpetually parroted, infecting the sky. “wise women know better and go their way without listening,” is not enough. it is not only the insult to women; a contempt for men is a bulwark against that, but introduces sourness into one’s own life....... it is the impossibility of witnessing the pouring on of a vast, repeating public life that is missing the significance of everything.
yet what a support, she thought with a sideways glance, was his own gentleness ... gentilesse ... and humanity, to his own theory. he was serene
and open in the presence of this central bitterness. if she could summon, in words, convincing evidence of the inferiority of man, he would cheerfully accept it and go on unmaimed. but a private reconstruction of standards in agreement with one person would not bring healing. it was history, literature, the way of stating records, reports, stories, the whole method of statement of things from the beginning that was on a false foundation.
if only one could speak as quickly as one’s thoughts flashed, and several thoughts together, all with a separate life of their own and yet belonging, everybody would be understood. as it was, even in the most favourable circumstances, people could hardly communicate with each other at all.
“i have nothing to say. it is not a thing that can be argued out. those women’s rights people are the worst of all. because they think women have been “subject” in the past. women never have been subject. never can be. the proof of this is the way men have always been puzzled and everlastingly trying fresh theories; founded on the very small experience of women any man is capable of having. disabilities, imposed by law, are a stupid insult to women, but have never touched them as individuals. in the long run they injure only men. for they keep back the civilisation of the outside world, which is the only thing men can make. it is not everything. it is a sort of result, poor and shaky because the real inside civilisation of women, the one thing that has been in them from the first and is not in the natural man, not made by “things,” is kept out of it. women do not need civilisation.
it is apt to bore them. but it can never rise above their level. they keep it back. that does not matter, to themselves. but it matters to men. and if they want their old civilisation to be anything but a dreary-weary puzzle, they must leave off imagining themselves a race of gods fighting against chaos, and thinking of women as part of the chaos they have to civilise. there isn’t any “chaos.” never has been. it’s the principal masculine illusion. it is not a truth to say that women must be civilised. feminists are not only an insult to womanhood. they are a libel on the universe.” in the awful presence she had spoken herself out, found and recited her best most liberating words. the little unseen room shone, its shining speaking up to her from small things immediately under her eyes. light, pouring from her speech, sent a radiance about the thick black head and its monstrous bronze face. he might have his thoughts, might even look them, from the utmost abyss of crude male life, but he had helped her, and his blind unconscious outlines shared the unknown glory. but she doubted if she would remember that thoughts flowed more easily, with surprising ease, as if given, waiting, ready to be scanned and stated, when one’s eyes ceased to look outwards. if she could remember it, it might prove to be the solution of social life.
“these things are all matters of opinion. whereas it is a matter of indisputable fact that in the past women have been subject.”
“if you believe that it is impossible for us to associate. because we are living in two utterly different worlds.”
“on the contrary. this difference is a most excellent basis for association.”
“you think i can cheerfully regard myself as an emancipated slave, with traditions of slavery for memory and the form of a slave as an everlasting heritage?”
“remember that heredity is cross-wise. you are probably more the daughter of your father ...”
“that won’t help you, thank you. if anything i am my mother’s son.”
“ah—ah, what is this, you are a son. do you see?”
“that’s a piece of english feudalism.”
“the demands of feudalism do not explain a woman’s desire for sons.”
“that is another question. she hopes they will give her the understanding she never had from their father. in that i am my mother’s son for ever. if there’s a future life, all i care for is to meet her. if i could have her back for ten minutes i would gladly give up the rest of my life..... is heredity really criss-cross? is it proved?”
“substantially.”
“oh yes. of course. i know. to prevent civilisation going ahead too fast! i’ve seen that somewhere. very flattering to men. but it proves there’s no separate race of men and women.”
“exactly.”
“then how have men the face to go on with their generalisations about women?”
“you yourself have a generalisation about women.”
“that’s different. it’s not about brains and
attainments. i can’t make you see. i suppose it’s christianity.”
“what is christianity? you think christianity is favourable to women? on the contrary. it is the christian countries that have produced the prostitute and the most vile estimations of women in the world. it is only in christian countries that i find the detestable spectacle of men who will go straight from association with loose women into the society of innocent girls. that i find unthinkable...... with jews womanhood has always been sacred. and there can be no doubt that we owe our persistence as a race largely to our laws of protection for women; all women. moreover in the older hebrew civilisation women stood very high. you may read this. to-day there is a very significant jewish wit which says that women make the best wives and mothers in the world.”
“there you are. no englishman would make a joke like that.”
“because he is a hypocrite.”
“no. he may, as you say, think one thing and say another; but long long ago he had a jog. it was christianity. something happened. christ was the first man to see women as individuals.”
“you speak easily of christianity. there is no christianity in the world. it has never been imagined, save in the brain of a tolstoy. and he has shown that if the principles of christianity were applied, civilisation as we know it would at once come to an end.”
“there may not be much christianity. but christianity has made a difference. it has not given
things to women that were not there before. nothing can do that. but it has shed a light on them which the best women run away from. never imagine i am speaking of myself. i’m as much a man as a woman. that’s why i can’t help seeing things. but i’m not really interested. not inside myself. now look here. you prefer englishwomen to jewesses. i can’t bear jewesses, not because they are not really like other women, but because they reflect the limitations of the jewish male. they talk and think the jewish man’s idea of them. it has nothing to do with them as individuals. but they are waiting for the light to go up.”
“i speak always of these assimilated and half-assimilated english jewesses. certainly to me they are most inimical.”
“more so than the germans?”
“in a different way. they have here less social disabilities. but they are most absolutely terre-à-terre.”
“why are russian jewesses different?”
“many of them are idealist. many live altogether by one or two ideas of tolstoy.”
“why do you smile condescendingly?”
“these ideas can lead only to revolution. i am not a revolutionary. while i admire everywhere those who suffer for their ideals.”
“you admit that tolstoy has influenced russian jewesses. he got his ideas from christ. so you say. i did not know he was religious.”
“it is a later development. but you remember levin. but tell me, do you not consider that wife and mother is the highest position of woman?”
“it is neither high nor low. it may be anything. if you define life for women, as husbands and children, it means that you have no consciousness at all where women are concerned.”
“there is the evidence of women themselves. the majority find their whole life in these things.”
“that is a description, from outside, by men. when women use it they do not know what they say.”
