Page 850 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

‘But if women, as a rare exception, can occupy such
positions, it seems to me you are wrong in using the
expression ‘rights.’ It would be more correct to say duties.
Every man will agree that in doing the duty of a juryman,

a witness, a telegraph clerk, we feel we are performing
duties. And therefore it would be correct to say that
women are seeking duties, and quite legitimately. And one
can but sympathize with this desire to assist in the general
labor of man.’
‘Quite so,’ Alexey Alexandrovitch assented. ‘The
question, I imagine, is simply whether they are fitted for
such duties.’
‘They will most likely be perfectly fitted,’ said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, ‘when education has become general
among them. We see this..’
‘How about the proverb?’ said the prince, who had a
long while been intent on the conversation, his little
comical eyes twinkling. ‘I can say it before my daughter:
her hair is long, because her wit is..’
‘Just what they thought of the negroes before their
emancipation!’ said Pestsov angrily.
‘What seems strange to me is that women should seek
fresh duties,’ said Sergey Ivanovitch, ‘while we see,
unhappily, that men usually try to avoid them.’

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