Page 851 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

‘Duties are bound up with rights—power, money,
honor; those are what women are seeking,’ said Pestsov.
‘Just as though I should seek the right to be a wet-nurse
and feel injured because women are paid for the work,

while no one will take me,’ said the old prince.
Turovtsin exploded in a loud roar of laughter and
Sergey Ivanovitch regretted that he had not made this
comparison. Even Alexey Alexandrovitch smiled.
‘Yes, but a man can’t nurse a baby,’ said Pestsov, ‘while
a woman..’
‘No, there was an Englishman who did suckle his baby
on board ship,’ said the old prince, feeling this freedom in
conversation permissible before his own daughters.
‘There are as many such Englishmen as there would be
women officials,’ said Sergey Ivanovitch.
‘Yes, but what is a girl to do who has no family?’ put in
Stepan Arkadyevitch, thinking of Masha Tchibisova,
whom he had had in his mind all along, in sympathizing
with Pestsov and supporting him.
‘If the story of such a girl were thoroughly sifted, you
would find she had abandoned a family—her own or a
sister’s, where she might have found a woman’s duties,’
Darya Alexandrovna broke in unexpectedly in a tone of

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