Ostracism

“ Combined with the straits of that land-famine, the over-increase of population became such an unqualified evil that the common sense of the peasants originated a system of ostracism, attaching infamy and social excommunication to the preliminaries as well as to the results of marriage before a specified age. ”

“ You cannot change the conclusion of the brain by torture; nor by social ostracism. But I will tell you what you can do by these, and what you have done. You can make hypocrites by the million. ”

“ It does so at the cost of a considerable amount of physical and moral deterioration, much of which is undoubtedly due to the action of society in completing the degradation of the prostitute by persistent ostracism. ”

“ If social ostracism is to be attempted in this business, I confess a feeling of revolt would master me completely. My people have lived here for generations. I have been born and brought up here. I never have done a mean, dishonorable or cowardly thing in my life, so far as I know. ”

“ I wish the shadow of the gaol to extend no further than the road whereon it lies. Henceforth, we are acquaintances with a common interest at heart. Isn't it monstrous that a state-fixed degree of misconduct should earn a man social ostracism? Parents are generally inclined to rule extra tenderness towards a child whose peccadilloes have brought him a whipping. ”

“ LYUBÍM KÁRPYCH. You'd better bow down to Lyubím Tortsóv's feet, just because he has put you to shame.
PELAGÉYA EGÓROVNA. That's it, dear Lyubím! We ought to bow down to your feet; that's just it! You have taken a great sin from our souls; all our prayers could never have freed us from this sin.
GORDÉY KÁRPYCH. What, am I a monster to my own family?
PELAGÉYA EGÓROVNA. You're no monster, but you would have ruined your daughter through your own folly; I tell you this straight out! They marry girls to old men who are a lot better than Afrikán Savvich, and even so they live miserable lives. ”

“ POTÁPYCH. What's that to me? I, by the mistress's kindness, in her employ....I shall carry out all her orders.... What business is it of mine? I don't want to know anything that isn't my business.
VASILÍSA PEREGRÍNOVNA. But did you see how Nádya and Líza—the hussies!—looked at me? Did you see how the snakes looked? Ha! I must look after them, I must! [POTÁPYCH, with a wave of his hand, goes out] Bah! you! you old blockhead! What people! What people! There's no one to whom I can talk, and relieve my heart. ”

“ GLASHA. Who's to tell the rights and wrongs of it with you begging pilgrims, you all speak ill of one another. Why can't you live and let live? I should have thought you wandering women get plenty in our house all of you, and yet you must always be quarrelling and nagging at each other. Aren't you afraid of such sin?
FEKLUSHA. One can't be without sin, my good girl; we live in the world. I'll tell you what, my dear; you, simple folk, are tempted of one devil, but we pilgrim folk are beset, one with six, another with twelve devils; and here we have to struggle against all at once. ”

“ If I had, indeed, I shouldn't be talking to you like this, my dear. (Sighs) Ah, sin is a heavy burden! Sin is never far off! Something said goes to the heart, and there, one sins, one gets angry. No, my son, say what you like about me, there's no forbidding anyone to talk; if they don't dare before one's face, they'll do it behind one's back.
KABANOV. May my tongue wither up and...
MME. KABANOVA. Hush, hush, don't swear! It's a sin! I've seen plain enough for a long time past that your wife's dearer to you than your mother. ”

“ The Professor paused.
“Conceive you this folly, Ossipon? The weak! The source of all evil on this earth!” he continued with his grim assurance. “I told him that I dreamt of a world like shambles, where the weak would be taken in hand for utter extermination.”
“Do you understand, Ossipon? The source of all evil! They are our sinister masters—the weak, the flabby, the silly, the cowardly, the faint of heart, and the slavish of mind. They have power. They are the multitude. Theirs is the kingdom of the earth. Exterminate, exterminate! That is the only way of progress. It is! Follow me, Ossipon. ”

“ MME. KABANOVA. You've no one over you, and so you think you can do as you like.
DIKOY. No, you hold your tongue! Listen to me! I'll tell you the sort of troubles that happen to me. I had fasted and all ready for sacrament in Lent, and then the evil one thrusts a wretched peasant under my nose. He had come for money,—for wood he had supplied us. And for my sins he must needs show himself at a time like that! ”

“ RAZLYULYÁYEV. [Goes to MÍTYA and slaps him on the shoulder] Mítya! For a friend I give up everything! I loved her myself, but for you—I give her up. Give me your hand. [Clasps his hand] That's all—take her; I give her up to you! For a friend I don't regret anything! That's the way we do it when it comes to the point! [Wipes away his tears with the lappet of his coat and kisses MÍTYA] He told the truth then; drunkenness is no crime—well, I mean—poverty is no crime. I always make slips!
PELAGÉYA EGÓROVNA. Oh, yes, here they all are! [To the girls] Now, then, girls, a jolly song! ”

“ We have a just law, but they, my dear, an unjust law. Everything that is one way in our land is the very opposite in theirs. And all the judges with them, in their countries, are unjust too, so that, do you know, my girl, they even write in their petitions: "judge me, unjust judge!" And there is a country too where all the men have the heads of dogs.
GLASHA. How do they come to have dogs' heads?
FEKLUSHA. For their infidelity. I am going off on my rounds among the merchant gentry, my dear, to see if there won't be some alms for poverty. ”

“ My brother is marrying his daughter to him! Ha, ha, ha! [Laughs tragically]
KÓRSHUNOV. [Jumps up] Don't believe him; he lies! He says this out of spite to me. He's drunk!
LYUBÍM KÁRPYCH. How out of spite? I pardoned you long ago. I'm a man of small account, a crawling worm, the lowest of the low! But don't you do evil to others.
GORDÉY KÁRPYCH. [To the servants] Take him away!
LYUBÍM KÁRPYCH. [Holding up one finger] Sh, don't touch me! It's an easy life in this world for a man whose eyes are shameless! Oh, men, men! Lyubím Tortsóv is a drunkard, but he's better than you! ”

“ Brother, she's getting ready! She's leaving, brother!
KRASNÓV. [Pushing him aside] Stand aside! A woman leaves her husband only for the grave, for nowhere else! [Goes out. The cry of TATYÁNA is heard: "Let me go!" He comes back] Bind me! I've killed her.
AFÓNYA. Serves her right.
ULYÁNA. Ah, my dear! What will happen to you now?
ARKHÍP. Where is he? Where is he? [AFÓNYA leads him] What have you done? Who gave you the right? Is she guilty only towards you? First of all, she is guilty before God; and you, a proud and willful man, have taken it upon yourself to judge? ”

“ KRASNÓV. What wrongs! All wrongs aren't the same. For some wrongs strangling would be mild.
ARKHÍP. What makes you so fierce? Nowadays, they don't hang a man even for highway robbery.
KRASNÓV. I can't even eat my food.
ARKHÍP. You have a terrible temper! I began to talk about your wife; that wasn't just for the sake of saying something. She came to her senses before you did. [KRASNÓV listens] "Grandfather Arkhíp," says she, "put in a word for me to my husband! I love him," says she, "but I'm afraid of his temper. He seems to think me bad without any reason. ”

“ Then Herold, driven to mechanical action, as it seemed to him afterward, by a compelling force, dragged John to an inquiry into the evil woman’s life. It was Mrs. Oscraft, the full-blown, blowzy bookmaker’s wife, the woman’s intimate associate for many years, who gave the necessary clue. Horrified by the discovery of the identity of her friend and by the revelation of further iniquities, she lost her head when the men sternly questioned her. She had used her intimacy with Mrs. Risca to cover from her own husband an intrigue of many years’ standing. ”

“ RISPOLÓZHENSKY. On the contrary, they spared me. You see, my dear Agraféna Kondrátyevna, they wanted to try me for that very thing—I went immediately to our general, and flopped at his feet! "Your Excellency!" I said. "Don't ruin me! I've a wife," I said, "and little children!" "Well," he said, "deuce take you; they won't strike a man when he's down: tender your resignation, so I shan't see you here." So he spared me. What now! God bless him! He doesn't forget me even now; sometimes I run in to see him on a holiday: "Well," says he, "how are you, Sysóy Psoich?" ”

“ My experience here, Judge Ostrander. With every day I pass under this roof, I realise more and more the mistake I made in supposing that any change in circumstances would make a union between our two children proper or feasible. Headstrong as I am by nature, I have still some sense of the fitness of things, and it is that sense awakened by a better knowledge of what the Ostrander name stands for, which has outweighed my hopes and mad intentions. ”

“ Sometimes ostriches, with that equal disregard of their own health and of their possessor's pocket for which they are famous, help themselves to prickly pears, acquire a morbid taste for them, and go on indulging in them, reckless of the long, stiff spikes on the leaves, with which their poor heads and necks soon become so covered as to look like pin-cushions stuck full of pins; and of the still more cruel, almost invisible fruit-thorns which at last line the interior of their throats, besides so injuring their eyes that they become perfectly blind, and are unable to feed themselves. ”

“ In the relatively moral circles of society, our description would no doubt be taxed with exaggeration, because natures a little more refined have the habit of acting like the ostrich who hides his head in the sand, that is to say of turning their eyes away from the pornographic swamp with disgust so as not to see it, and thus avoid it instinctively. ”

“ It is easy to ignore troubles of this kind; but this sort of ostrich-philosophy, which buries its head in the sand and refuses to look at what is before its eyes, is not natural or by any means the best for the bodily organism. Ignoring symptoms does not cure them. What such persons fail to take into account is this: that any unpleasant symptom which may have arisen must be due to some cause—sickness and disease do not arise de novo and without just cause. ”

“ This devotion deeply moved her—and the adamantine face lost the stern rigidity of its terror. Comrade Ossipon gazed at it as no lover ever gazed at his mistress’s face. Alexander Ossipon, anarchist, nicknamed the Doctor, author of a medical (and improper) pamphlet, late lecturer on the social aspects of hygiene to working men’s clubs, was free from the trammels of conventional morality—but he submitted to the rule of science. ”

“ The Ostriches in the Gardens of the Zoological Society would be truly a noble pair, were it not for an unnatural curve in the neck of the male, in consequence, it is said, of its having formerly swallowed something more than usually bulky and hard of digestion. ”

“ A characteristic trait of the ostriches is their extreme curiosity. In the Indian villages, where they live in a tamed state, it is of frequent occurrence to see them stalking through groups of talkers, and regarding them with fixed attention. In the plain this curiosity is often fatal to them, for it leads them to look unhesitatingly at everything that seems strange or unusual to them. ”

“ Give me two kopeks more, that will be just right. [MÍTYA gives them] That's enough. You have a good heart, Mítya! [Lies down] My brother doesn't know how to appreciate you. Yes, I'll play a joke on him! For fools riches are an evil! Give money to a sensible man, and he'll do something with it. I walked about Moscow, I saw everything, everything!—I've been through a long course of study! You'd better not give money to a fool; he'll only go smash! Foh, foh, foh, brr! just like brother and like me, the brute! [In a voice half asleep] Mítya, I will come and spend the night with you. ”

“ It would seem almost that she slept until her face was seen and then the distorted swollen features, the staring eyes and blackened, protruding tongue revealed the hideous truth no less surely than the blue scarf which had been knotted so ruthlessly about her slender throat as to seem almost embedded in the flesh. ”

“ At the first mention of the word small-pox, Bibot had stepped hastily backwards, and when the old hag spoke of the plague, he retreated from her as fast as he could.
"Curse you!" he muttered, whilst the whole crowd hastily avoided the cart, leaving it standing all alone in the midst of the place.
The old hag laughed.
"Curse you, citoyen, for being a coward," she said. "Bah! what a man to be afraid of sickness." ”

“ Here's all there is to it; a man lives, and lives, and all at once he dies and he turns to dust. Oh, Lord, oh, Lord!
[He yawns and looks into the corners.
SCENE II AGRAFÉNA KONDRÁTYEVNA comes in with LÍPOCHKA, who is very much dressed up.
AGRAFÉNA KONDRÁTYEVNA. Get along, get along, my darling; don't catch yourself on the sides of the doorway. Just look, Samsón Sílych, my dear lord and master, and admire how I've rigged up our daughter! Phew! go away! What a peony-rose she is now! [To her] Ah, you little angel, you princess, you little cherub, you! ”

“ The doctor smiled, but there was no answer in the smile and she went vehemently on: “Such threats, Oswald, are futile. No one less sensitive than you would heed them for a moment. You are above any one’s aspersion, even on an old charge like that.”
“Men will believe anything,” he muttered. ”

“ I’ve been looking them up a little, myself.”
“The devil you have!” The inspector stared. “Keeping up with the commissioner’s latest innovations, eh? Did you know that the Parsons have been contrasted by these same students of heredity with another family that’s supposed to be the worst on record?”
“I’ve no way of getting at things like those psycho-analysts,” McCarty responded apologetically. “What about this other family?” ”