a way to stop the tipsy-and-type, the sloshed-and-send, but not the drink-and-dial yet.
![Chekhov musing on the devotion and martyrdom of women…
Listen! There now exist in society two ways of regarding women. Some men measure the female skull and prove in that way that woman is the inferior of man; they seek out her defects in order to deride her, in order to appear original in her eyes, in order to justify their own bestiality. Others try with all their might to raise woman to their own level; they oblige her to count the three thousand five hundred species and to speak and write the same folly that they speak and write themselves. [..] But I tell you that woman always has been and always will be the slave of man. She is a soft and terder wax out of which man has always been able to fashion whatever he had a mind to. Good God! For a man’s penny passion she will cut off her hair, desert her family, and die in exile. There is not one feminine principle among all those for which she has sacrificed herself. She is a defenceless, devoted slave. I have measured no skulls, but I say this from grievous, bitter experience. The proudest, the most independent of women, if I can but succeed in communicating my passion to her, will follow me unreasoningly, unquestioningly, doing all I desire. [..] It is a noble, an exalted bondage! In that bondage lies the loftiest significance of woman’s existence. [..] This - this magnanimous toleration, this faithfulness unto death, their poetry of heart - The meaning of life lies in the uncomplaining martyrdom, in this all-pardoning love that brings light and warmth into the chaos of life - — Likariev speaking to Ilovaiskaya in ‘On the Way’, Anton Chekhov, 1886](http://24.media.tumblr.com/0lr6H2UdPeuuorkbS8iqyJxTo1_400.jpg)
Chekhov musing on the devotion and martyrdom of women…
Listen! There now exist in society two ways of regarding women. Some men measure the female skull and prove in that way that woman is the inferior of man; they seek out her defects in order to deride her, in order to appear original in her eyes, in order to justify their own bestiality. Others try with all their might to raise woman to their own level; they oblige her to count the three thousand five hundred species and to speak and write the same folly that they speak and write themselves. [..] But I tell you that woman always has been and always will be the slave of man. She is a soft and terder wax out of which man has always been able to fashion whatever he had a mind to. Good God! For a man’s penny passion she will cut off her hair, desert her family, and die in exile. There is not one feminine principle among all those for which she has sacrificed herself. She is a defenceless, devoted slave. I have measured no skulls, but I say this from grievous, bitter experience. The proudest, the most independent of women, if I can but succeed in communicating my passion to her, will follow me unreasoningly, unquestioningly, doing all I desire. [..] It is a noble, an exalted bondage! In that bondage lies the loftiest significance of woman’s existence. [..] This - this magnanimous toleration, this faithfulness unto death, their poetry of heart - The meaning of life lies in the uncomplaining martyrdom, in this all-pardoning love that brings light and warmth into the chaos of life -
— Likariev speaking to Ilovaiskaya in ‘On the Way’, Anton Chekhov, 1886
