To Women / Leo Tolstoy

As stated in the Bible, a law was given to the man and the woman,--to

the man, the law of labor; to the woman, the law of bearing children.

Although we, with our science, avons change tout ca, the law for the

man, as for woman, remains as unalterable as the liver in its place,

and departure from it is equally punished with inevitable death. The

only difference lies in this, that departure from the law, in the

case of the man, is punished so immediately in the future, that it

may be designated as present punishment; but departure from the law,

in the case of the woman, receives its chastisement in a more distant

future.

The general departure of all men from the law exterminates people

immediately; the departure from it of all women annihilates it in the

succeeding generation. But the evasion by some men and some women

does not exterminate the human race, and only deprives those who

evade it of the rational nature of man. The departure of men from

this law began long ago, among those classes who were in a position

to subject others, and, constantly spreading, it has continued down

to our own times; and in our own day it has reached folly, the ideal

consisting in evasion of the law,--the ideal expressed by Prince

Blokhin, and shared in by Renan and by the whole cultivated world:

"Machines will work, and people will be bundles of nerves devoted to

enjoyment."

There was hardly any departure from the law in the part of women, it

was expressed only in prostitution, and in the refusal to bear

children--in private cases. The women belonging to the wealthy

classes fulfilled their law, while the men did not comply with

theirs; and therefore the women became stronger, and continued to

rule, and must rule, over men who have evaded the law, and who have,

therefore, lost their senses. It is generally stated that woman (the

woman of Paris in particular is childless) has become so bewitching,

through making use of all the means of civilization, that she has

gained the upper hand over man by this fascination of hers. This is

not only unjust, but precisely the reverse of the truth. It is not

the childless woman who has conquered man, but the mother, that woman

who has fulfilled her law, while the man has not fulfilled his. That

woman who deliberately remains childless, and who entrances man with

her shoulders and her locks, is not the woman who rules over men, but

the one who has been corrupted by man, who has descended to his

level,--to the level of the vicious man,--who has evaded the law

equally with himself, and who has lost, in company with him, every

rational idea of life.

From this error springs that remarkable piece of stupidity which is

called the rights of women. The formula of these rights of women is

as follows: "Here! you man," says the woman, "you have departed from

your law of real labor, and you want us to bear the burden of our

real labor. No, if this is to be so, we understand, as well as you

do, how to perform those semblances of labor which you exercise in

banks, ministries, universities, and academies; we desire, like

yourselves, under the pretext of the division of labor, to make use

of the labor of others, and to live for the gratification of our

caprices alone." They say this, and prove by their action that they

understand no worse, if not better, than men, how to exercise this

semblance of labor.

This so-called woman question has come up, and could only come up,

among men who have departed from the law of actual labor. All that

is required is, to return to that, and this question cannot exist.

Woman, having her own inevitable task, will never demand the right to

share the toil of men in the mines and in the fields. She could only

demand to share in the fictitious labors of the men of the wealthy

classes.

The woman of our circle has been, and still is, stronger than the

man, not by virtue of her fascinations, not through her cleverness in

performing the same pharisaical semblance of work as man, but because

she has not stepped out from under the law that she should undergo

that real labor, with danger to her life, with exertion to the last

degree, from which the man of the wealthy classes has excused

herself.

But, within my memory, a departure from this law on the part of

woman, that is to say, her fall, has begun; and, within my memory, it

has become more and more the case. Woman, having lost the law, has

acquired the belief that her strength lies in the witchery of her

charms, or in her skill in pharisaical pretences at intellectual

work. And both things are bad for the children. And, within my

memory, women of the wealthy classes have come to refuse to bear

children. And so mothers who hold the power in their hands let it

escape them, in order to make way for the dissolute women, and to put

themselves on a level with them. The evil is already wide-spread,

and is extending farther and farther every day; and soon it will lay

hold on all the women of the wealthy classes, and then they will

compare themselves with men: and in company with them, they will

lose the rational meaning of life. But there is still time.

If women would but comprehend their destiny, their power, and use it

for the salvation of their husbands, brothers, and children,--for the

salvation of all men!

Women of the wealthy classes who are mothers, the salvation of the

men of our world from the evils from which they are suffering, lies

in your hands.

Not those women who are occupied with their dainty figures, with

their bustles, their hair-dressing, and their attraction for men, and

who bear children against their will, with despair, and hand them

over to nurses; nor those who attend various courses of lectures, and

discourse of psychometric centres and differentiation, and who also

endeavor to escape bearing children, in order that it may not

interfere with their folly which they call culture: but those women

and mothers, who, possessing the power to refuse to bear children,

consciously and in a straightforward way submit to this eternal,

unchangeable law, knowing that the burden and the difficulty of such

submission is their appointed lot in life,--these are the women and

mothers of our wealthy classes, in whose hands, more than in those of

any one else, lies the salvation of the men of our sphere in society

from the miseries that oppress them.

Ye women and mothers who deliberately submit yourselves to the law of

God, you alone in our wretched, deformed circle, which has lost the

semblance of humanity, you alone know the whole of the real meaning

of life, according to the law of God; and you alone, by your example,

can demonstrate to people that happiness in life, in submission to

the will of God, of which they are depriving themselves. You alone

know those raptures and those joys which invade the whole being, that

bliss which is appointed for the man who does not depart from the law

of God. You know the happiness of love for your husbands,--a

happiness which does not come to an end, which does not break off

short, like all other forms of happiness, and which constitutes the

beginning of a new happiness,--of love for your child. You alone,

when you are simple and obedient to the will of God, know not that

farcical pretence of labor which the men of our circle call work, and

know that the labor imposed by God on men, and know its true rewards,

the bliss which it confers. You know this, when, after the raptures

of love, you await with emotion, fear, and terror that torturing

state of pregnancy which renders you ailing for nine months, which

brings you to the verge of death, and to intolerable suffering and

pain. You know the conditions of true labor, when, with joy, you

await the approach and the increase of the most terrible torture,

after which to you alone comes the bliss which you well know. You

know this, when, immediately after this torture, without respite,

without a break, you undertake another series of toils and

sufferings,--nursing,--in which process you at one and the same time

deny yourselves, and subdue to your feelings the very strongest human

need, that of sleep, which, as the proverb says, is dearer than

father or mother; and for months and years you never get a single

sound, unbroken might's rest, and sometimes, nay, often, you do not

sleep at all for a period of several nights in succession, but with

failing arms you walk alone, punishing the sick child who is breaking

your heart. And when you do all this, applauded by no one, and

expecting no praises for it from any one, nor any reward,--when you

do this, not as an heroic deed, but like the laborer in the Gospel

when he came from the field, considering that you have done only that

which was your duty, then you know what the false, pretentious labor

of men performed for glory really is, and that true labor is

fulfilling the will of God, whose command you feel in your heart.

You know that if you are a true mother it makes no difference that no

one has seen your toil, that no one has praised you for it, but that

it has only been looked upon as what must needs be so, and that even

those for whom your have labored not only do not thank you, but often

torture and reproach you. And with the next child you do the same:

again you suffer, again you undergo the fearful, invisible labor; and

again you expect no reward from any one, and yet you feel the sane

satisfaction.

If you are like this, you will not say after two children, or after

twenty, that you have done enough, just as the laboring man fifty

years of age will not say that he has worked enough, while he still

continues to eat and to sleep, and while his muscles still demand

work; if you are like this, your will not cast the task of nursing

and care-taking upon some other mother, just as a laboring man will

not give another man the work which he has begun, and almost

completed, to finish: because into this work you will throw your

life. And therefore the more there is of this work, the fuller and

the happier is your life.

And when you are like this, for the good fortune of men, you will

apply that law of fulfilling God's will, by which you guide your

life, to the lives of your husband, of your children, and of those

most nearly connected with you. If your are like this, and know from

your own experience, that only self-sacrificing, unseen, unrewarded

labor, accompanied with danger to life and to the extreme bounds of

endurance, for the lives of others, is the appointed lot of man,

which affords him satisfaction, then you will announce these demands

to others; you will urge your husband to the same toil; and you will

measure and value the dignity of men acceding to this toil; and for

this toil you will also prepare your children.

Only that mother who looks upon children as a disagreeable accident,

and upon love, the comforts of life, costume, and society, as the

object of life, will rear her children in such a manner that they

shall have as much enjoyment as possible out of life, and that they

shall make the greatest possible use of it; only she will feed them

luxuriously, deck them out, amuse them artificially; only she will

teach them, not that which will fit them for self-sacrificing

masculine or feminine labor with danger of their lives, and to the

last limits of endurance, but that which will deliver them from this

labor. Only such a woman, who has lost the meaning of her life, will

sympathize with that delusive and false male labor, by means of which

her husband, having rid himself of the obligations of a man, is

enabled to enjoy, in her company, the work of others. Only such a

woman will choose a similar man for the husband of her daughter, and

will estimate men, not by what they are personally, but by that which

is connected with them,--position, money, or their ability to take

advantage of the labor of others.

But the true mother, who actually knows the will of God, will fit her

children to fulfil it also. For such a mother, to see her child

overfed, enervated, decked out, will mean suffering; for all this, as

she well knows, will render difficult for him the fulfilment of the

law of God in which she has instructed him. Such a mother will

teach, not that which will enable her son and her daughter to rid

themselves of labor, but that which will help them to endure the

toils of life. She will have no need to inquire what she shall teach

her children, for what she shall prepare them. Such a woman will not

only not encourage her husband to false and delusive labor, which has

but one object, that of using the labors of others; but she will bear

herself with disgust and horror towards such an employment, which

serves as a double temptation to her children. Such a woman will not

choose a husband for her daughter on account of the whiteness of his

hands and the refinement of manner; but, well aware that labor and

deceit will exist always and everywhere, she will, beginning with her

husband, respect and value in men, and will require from them, real

labor, with expenditure and risk of life, and she will despise that

deceptive labor which has for its object the ridding one's self of

all true toil.

Such a mother, who brings forth children and nurses them, and will

herself, rather than any other, feed her offspring and prepare their

food, and sew, and wash, and teach her children, and sleep and talk

with them, because in this she grounds the business of her life,--

only such a mother will not seek for her children external guaranties

in the form of her husband's money, and the children's diplomas; but

she will rear them to that same capacity for the self-sacrificing

fulfilment of the will of God which she is conscious of herself

possessing,--a capacity for enduring toil with expenditure and risk

of life,--because she knows that in this lies the sole guaranty, and

the only well-being in life. Such a mother will not ask other people

what she ought to do; she will know every thing, and will fear

nothing.

If there can exist any doubt for the man and for the childless woman,

as to the path in which the fulfilment of the will of God lies, this

path is firmly and clearly defined for the woman who is a mother; and

if she has complied with it in submissiveness and in simplicity of

spirit, she, standing on that loftiest height of bliss which the

human being is permitted to attain, will become a guiding-star for

all men who are seeking good. Only the mother can calmly say before

her death, to Him who sent her into this world, and to Him whom she

has served by bearing and rearing children more dear than herself,--

only she can say calmly, having served Him who has imposed this

service upon her: "Now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace."

And this is the highest perfection, towards which, as towards the

highest bliss, men are striving.

Such are the women, who, having fulfilled their destiny, reign over

powerful men; such are the women who prepare the new generations of

people, and fix public opinion: and, therefore, in the hands of

these women lies the highest power of saving men from the prevailing

and threatening evils of our times.

Yes, ye women and mothers, in your hands, more than in those of all

others, lies the salvation of the world!

Footnotes:

{1}  In English in the text.

{2}  An excellent translation of Kriloff's Fables, by Mr. W. R. S.

Ralston, is published in London.

{3}  Burlak, pl. burlaki, is a boatman on the River Volga.