Demystification of Women

Female characters have always been included in literature; this is a fact that cannot be argued. However, the extent to which they were explored and scrutinized has certainly not been constant. For centuries, women were merely mentioned briefly as wives, mothers, or beautiful objects to be owned. While male characters were always investigated from many angles, the females were not considered complex or interesting enough to be worthy of analysis. When women were mentioned in literature, they often had a domestic role. Their lives consisted of taking care of the house, raising the children, cooking, and cleaning. This is perfectly demonstrated in Monet's painting, Camille Monet and a Child in the Artist's Garden (1875). In this work, Monet depicts his wife sitting in their garden, sewing beside their child. This was a typical for women, being that she was performing a simple domestic task and watching her child. Monet's wife looks expressionless in the painting, leading the observer to wonder what she is actually feeling and thinking. There is definitely some mystery about her and a question as to what is really going on inside of her head.

Before they were married, the sole task of the woman was to find a suitable husband. Often, pre-nineteenth century literature focused on young girls and their quest to find a husband to support them. Women were portrayed as being completely dependent on males. They were considered to be so basic in nature that their emotions and opinions were never discussed in depth. It was automatically assumed that women were content with their role in life and wanted nothing more. Authors never explored any other possibilities or dared to venture into the true essence of women. Basically, women were a mystery. It would not be until the nineteenth century that women would be demystified by authors. At this time, authors successfully portrayed females much more realistically and in depth. The true nature of women was made clear. They were described as being strong, proud, jealous, and sometimes even manipulative and controlling. Even though they were still on a different level than males, the female characters were finally represented as having complex personalities worth delving into.

Goethe, the author of Faust, was a nineteenth century author who included a mystified female character in his work. However, he effectively explained her as the plot went on and allowed her to develop into a more complicated character. Gretchen starts off as a simple, modest girl who takes care of the house as her sole duty in life. Goethe wrote about her,

"I seem to see my little darling stand

As she, round-cheeked, with joys of Christmas thrilling,

Devoutly kissed her grandsire's withered hand.

I sense, dear girl, your very spirit

Of plentitude and order all about,

Seeing the tablecloth all tidily spread out,

Even the sanded floor in patters fine.

Oh dearest hand! So near divine!

Through you this cabin turns into a shrine."[1]

This was a typical description of women in pre-nineteenth century literature. Gretchen is credited with nothing more than making her cabin look cute and pretty. She is illustrated as being little and gentle, leading the reader to see her as weak and unable to handle any task requiring strength. Nothing besides her physical appearance and her ability to handle domestic tasks is mentioned. She clearly has no access to knowledge and has seen nothing of the world. Her place in life is completely stifling and she provides a clear example of the female role of confinement.

Gretchen does, however, progress into a deeper female character. She becomes deceptive when she hides the jewelry from her mother. Instead of obeying her as she had always done before, Gretchen decides to do something different than what she is told and take a risk. By having Gretchen rebel in this fashion and be immediately seduced by Faust, Goethe showed that women were just as bored and restless as men were at the time. Goethe also successfully proved that women also have inner desires. Gretchen gives into Faust, abandoning all of her beliefs and morals. As a result, she loses herself. She transforms from a faithful, modest, moral girl into a mother who kills her own baby. Eventually, though, Gretchen is again mystified to some extent as she turns away from Faust. At this point, she is somewhat redeemed as she realizes that she was wrong to trust him so much and give into him so completely. She again turns to her faith as she calls to God for help when she cries out,

"Father! Rescue me!

Ye heavenly host of angels, sally

To be my refuge, about me rally!

Heinrich! I shrink from thee!"[2]

Even in her maddened state, Gretchen is aware of what she has done and can do nothing but beg for forgiveness. The character of Gretchen was explored more than most female characters were and Faust correctly allowed her to be much more than a quaint little housekeeper.

Another character who is described as being domestic first and foremost is Felicite from Flaubert's A Simple Heart. Flaubert described her in the second paragraph of the story,

"In return for a hundred francs a year she did all the cooking and the housework, the sewing, the washing, and the ironing. She could bridle a horse, fatten poultry, and churn butter, and she remained faithful to her mistress, who was by no means an easy person to get on with."[3]

Once again, this first description of a female character was representative of the time. Felicite is acknowledged and commended for taking care of the house and performing all the domestic deeds while at the same time obeying her mistress who was not pleasant. She does not rebel or try to obtain a better occupation; she simply accepts her fate. She is extremely naïve and is completely unable to see blackness in others. When Theodore begins buying her things, she is unable to see what he is really after. She falls in love easily, and sadly, she loses everything she loves. However, this constant loss does not make her stop loving. Throughout the story, Felicite remains genuine and simple-minded. She does act neurotic at times, but this is to be expected with all the loss she is forced to suffer through. Flaubert never makes her into something else; she remains the same real person with both strengths and weaknesses. Her character demonstrates how women can show genuine qualities if allowed to escape the mystifying illusions given to them. Flaubert seems to praise her for her ability to remain down to earth.

On the other hand, Mme. Aubain, the other central character in A Simple Heart, is demystified and shown to be the exact opposite of her maid Felicite. She is not sincere at all and cares only about herself. Instead of fitting into the bourgeois mystification of women and being gentle, loving, and motherly, Mme. Aubain is narrow-minded, self-absorbed, and petty. When Felicite tells her mistress about not hearing from her nephew in over six months, Mme. Aubain replies, "I wasn't thinking of him - and indeed, why should I? Who cares about a young, good-for-nothing cabin-boy? Whereas my daughter - why just think!"[4] Mme, Aubain is unable to concern herself with anything or anyone that does not directly relate to her. Flaubert effectively demystifies middle-class woman-hood through the character of Mme. Aubain. She is just as greedy and repulsive as some men of the same class. Overall, Flaubert, father of the realist movement, proves to be an important part of demystification. He looked at human reality more objectively rather than depending on the illusions and mystifications that were previously accepted. By doing so, he uncovered the truth about women of the time.

Like Flaubert and Goethe, Dostoevsky was also able to reveal women in their true sense. The female characters in The Brothers Karamazov completely shatter the image of women being simple, domestic creatures. Dostoevsky describes them as having an enormous amount of control over their lives and the lives of others. While women previously simply went along with what men told them to do, these characters were rebellious and sometimes even manipulative. In their own ways, Katya, Grusha, and Aleaida all prove that women were much powerful and intelligent than most people at the time thought.

Katya starts off as a proud daughter of a military captain. She is a prime example of a western-style upper class woman. She ignored Dimitry when she first met him, even though she noticed him immediately. Despite her initial haughty behavior towards him, Dimitry saw at once that there was much more to Katya than a spoiled girl with a pretty face. He told Alyosha, "And I was also instinctively aware that this little Katya was no innocent schoolgirl but a person with a strong character, a truly honorable young lady, and, above all, someone with both a good education and an acute intelligence, whereas, I had neither."[5] Here, Dostoevsky has the character of Dimitry point out to the reader that this female character has the potential to be as interesting and influential as the male characters.

Katya finally does pay attention to Dimitry when he attempts to trick her into sleeping with him by offering her money to pay off her father's debt. She selflessly agrees to sell her body to help her father. Luckily for her though, she is not reduced to this because Dimitry is becomes filled with self-disgust and decides to just give Katya the money without seducing her. Later, when Katya inherits money from a relative, she offers to marry Dimitry. This was a bold move for a woman at the time to make, being that she was the one who suggested marriage and she was more financially secure than the man.

She begins to re-mystify herself, though, in the letter where she suggests the marriage to Dimitry. She wrote, "Don't be afraid - I won't interfere with you in any way. I'll be like a piece of your furniture, the rug under your feet..."[6] This seems to be a huge step backwards for Katya. She has sufficient funds to support herself and is an intelligent girl, but she chooses to place herself in a submissive role. She seems to strive to fit into a mystifying scheme for some reason. Even when it becomes clear that Dimitry does not love her, she remains loyal to him. Even though she loves Ivan and he loves her in return, she denies herself happiness. She appears to have a masochistic need to punish herself and live in misery when she has obvious paths to happiness staring her in the face.

Finally, however, Katya allows herself to experience joy and happiness. At the conclusion of the novel, Katya brings Ivan back to her home with her to allow him to recover from his illness there. She and Dimitry forgive each other and Katya is finally able to live without futile suffering. Katya proves to be an extremely complex character in The Brothers Karamazov. She comes off as strong and independent in the beginning, but then submits herself to others and forces herself to be miserable. Perhaps she does this in a controlling way to make others feel guilty or maybe she is just attempting to fit the mold of a typical woman of the time. Either way, she was demystified to some extent and the reader does experience her on many levels.

Grusha, the other main female character in The Brothers Karamazov, is also quite fascinating. Grusha comes to the town after being betrayed by a former lover, a Polish officer. She was very young and innocent when the officer seduced her, and his betrayal hardened her to an extent. She is placed in the care of a widow who pays no attention to her, allowing Grusha to make clever investments on her own. She successfully turns her investments into a small fortune for herself, confirming her considerable intelligence and ability to be independent. Previously, it was a given that women either inherited their money or were supported by the men in their lives. Grusha showed that this was not necessary though. Dostoevsky described her,

"And so, in four years the brooding, sensitive, abandoned girl had grown into a blooming, rosy-cheeked, full bodied Russian beauty, a woman with a strong and determined character, proud, arrogant, with a sharp eye for business, acquisitive, avaricious, and cunning, who by fair means or foul had succeeded, it was rumored, in accumulating a tidy sum for herself."[7]

Even though this description starts off with the view of Grusha as a pretty, quiet girl, the remainder of the quotation shows that Grusha was in fact much different than the other female characters before her. She clearly does not fall into their mystique.

Throughout the novel, Grusha continues to show the power that she has over others. She is the source of a heated rivalry between father and son. She goes back to her former lover without any concern for Dimitry or his father. When she decides that it is actually Dimitry that she loves after all, she returns to him and he takes her back with no questions asked. She does whatever she wants and people accept her actions and decisions.

Grusha does not remain a hard, controlling woman, however. Towards the end of the novel, Alyosha brings out the love and gentleness in Grusha once again. By talking with Alyosha, Grusha becomes more spiritual and comes to know the goodness inside of her. Like Katya, Grusha also starts off with a mystique, sheds it, and then regains it once again to a lesser extent.

The last example of female demystification in The Brothers Karamazov is through the character of Adelaida, Father Karamazov's first wife. Adelaida came from a wealthy family and had a considerable dowry to offer a man. Despite this, she chose to marry Fyodor Karamazov, a completely worthless, unrespectable man. Adelaida must have been extremely bored with her life to do such a thing. She rebelled against her family and society and did so with strength and courage. Once she was married, she remained in control as Dostoevsky described,

"People knew that husband and wife often came to actual blows and rumor had it that it was she who beat him, rather than her. Indeed, Adelaida was a hot-tempered, bold, dark, and impatient lady endowed with remarkable physical strength."[8]

Obviously, this is the extreme opposite of the traditional domestic female character of the time. Adelaida went so far as to appropriate masculine traits in order to survive.

Another blunt demystification of women comes from Lermontov. In A Hero of our Time, the women are portrayed as being illogical and easy to manipulate. Pechorin describes Vera and other women when he says,

"As for Vera, I'm in the happy state of having made her jealous of Princess Mary. What won't a woman do to hurt a rival! I remember one woman who loved me simply because I was in love with someone else. There's nothing more paradoxical than the female mind, and you can never convince a woman of anything-you have to arrange matters so that they convince themselves. The chain of reasoning they employ to overcome their own prejudices is extremely original, and if you want to master their dialectic, you have to turn all the textbook rules of logic upside down."[9]

Vera, a married woman, is still in love with Pechorin even though he toys with her emotions and makes her jealous on purpose. Pechorin even continues tormenting her after he becomes aware that she is seriously ill. He clearly has no respect whatsoever for women, especially Vera. He questions his relations with women when he says, "It's always puzzled me that I've never been a slave to the women I've loved. In fact, I've always mastered them, heart and soul, without even trying."[10] As opposed to Grusha and Aleaida, Vera and Princess Mary have absolutely no control over the men in their lives. Vera is so weak that she never even has a chance with Pechorin, but Princess Mary comes across as being a bit more assertive. She too, though was overcome by Pechorin. While it was Pechorin's plan all along to control Princess Mary, he seemed to be slightly disappointed when she lost her edge. He commented, "What's become of her vivacity, her coquetry and capricious ways? Where was the haughty look, the disdainful smile, the detached expression?"[11] Pechorin does not really seem sure of what he wants, a pushover or a woman who takes control.

Based upon Pechorin's interactions and relationships with women, it is apparent that Lermontov saw women as being depraved and overly instinctual while appearing to be otherwise. Unlike other authors who credited female characters of the nineteenth century with intelligence and strength, Lermontov labeled them as irrational and unreasonable. Although he had a more negative view of women, Lermontov still made the effort to deconstruct their former mystique and explore their personalities and actions in an attempt to understand them on a deeper level.

Like Lermontov, Stendhal also explored the mystique of women. Contrary to Lermontov though, Stendhal paid tribute to women through his female characters in The Red and the Black. Together, they show two different sides of the modern woman. Julien has relations with both Mathilde and Mme. de Renal and in them he finds women who are autonomous and are not afraid to follow their true passions.

Mme. de Renal, the first woman with whom Julien has relations, is quietly one of the first contemporary women. While she appears to be conventional, she actually is a true free spirit. She is a married woman with children, yet she is not totally satisfied. Instead of accepting her fate and moving on, she takes action. She is seduced by Julien and allows herself to fall in love with him. When she was not with him, he filled her mind, "Mme. de Renal was dying to be alone with Julien; she wanted to ask him if he still loved her. Despite the unfailing sweetness of her character, she was several times on the point of letting her lady friend know what a bother she was."[12] Mme. de Renal comes across as a sweet woman who is happily married with children who she takes care of, but inside she is bored with her life and unfulfilled. To others around her, she remains full of mystique, but she is true to herself and to Julien.

Mathilde, the other woman who falls for Julien, is similar to Mme. de Renal in some ways, but quite different than her in others. Like Mme. de Renal, Mathilde finds her life and Parisian society to be extremely boring. She too, chooses to take action instead of remaining unhappy. She rebels and pursues relations with Julien despite his lower social class. She creates a new mystique for herself, full of freedom, action, and autonomy. She also has a wild imagination and envisions that Julien is actually Boniface de la Mole, her dead ancestor that she so admires. Mathilde pretends that she is Boniface's wife, Queen Margot. By doing this, she hopes her life will become as exciting as theirs was. Just like it is scandalous that a high-class woman is involved with lowly Julien, it was controversial for Boniface and Margot, a Protestant and a Catholic, to be married. Mathilde loves all the drama involved with pretending to be Queen Margot and cannot get enough. After a night where Julien climbs to her window with weapons in tow, she says, "He is worthy of being my master, since he was on the verge of killing me."[13] Even though Julien never even contemplated killing or hurting Mathilde, with her wild imagination she really thinks she was in danger. This intrigues her and keeps her from being bored, so she embraces Julien and uses their class difference for additional dramatic flair. Lermontov makes Mathilde an endearing character with her spirit and crazy imagination. She may not be as sincere with her love as Mme. de Renal is, but she, too, actively removes the boredom from her life and becomes a true modern woman.

Joseph Conrad, author of Heart of Darkness takes yet another approach to the demystification of women in the nineteenth century. Conrad aims at the joint hypocrisy of European men and women. The constant comparisons between the Europeans and the Africans demonstrate how Europeans are corrupt and full of mystique, while the natives are straightforward and real. This can directly be seen through the two women who influence Kurtz the most. His European Intended, who inflates his pride, and the African woman who aids in bringing him back to reality.

Kutz's Intended is a symbol of the European woman and all that is "wrong" with her. She lives in a bubble that protects her from the harsh realities of the world. She believes that her husband is perfect and ideal instead of realizing his greediness and selfish nature. She has the utmost faith in him, completely unaware of who he really is. Never in her wildest dreams would she imagine him having an affair with a native woman. When Marlow meets her after the death of Kurtz, he can only praise her for her "mature capacity for fidelity, for belief, for suffering."[14] The only positive traits in European women, therefore, were passive. Marlow's aunt, another white European woman, was also naïve and unaware of the "darkness" of the world and her nephew's mission. Even after Marlow admitted his trip was for profit, she defended him and continued to believe he would be aiding the natives in becoming better people. After meeting with her, Marlow commented,

"It's queer how out of touch with truth women are. They live in a world of their own, and there has never been anything like it, and can never be. It is too beautiful altogether, and if they were to set it up it would go to pieces before the first sunset."[15]

The Intended, along with Marlow's aunt, is totally exterior, helpless, and unable to say anything meaningful.

Conrad demystifies this image of women through the character of the native woman. Since she is not exposed to the corruption of Europe, she is all interior. She represents the passionate reality of the Black culture. Unlike the Intended who sees everything positively, the native woman is able to see the "darkness" of situations. She longs for things to go back to the way they were before her land was invaded. She is described as being, "savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent."[16] She is intelligent and completely aware of the world around her. Conrad praises her for her ability to see reality and for being so unlike the foolish, shallow European woman.

Conrad summarizes the ironic contrast between the women of A Heart of Darkness through the painting that Kurtz left behind at Central Station. The picture was of "a woman, draped and blindfolded, carrying a lighted torch. The background was somber - almost black. The movement of the woman was stately, and the effect of the torchlight on the face was sinister."[17] The blindfolded woman is Kurtz's Intended, who cannot see in the dark. This represents the Intended's inability to see the reality of her fiancé and the world in general. Once she is in Africa, her light will go out and she will be completely blind. The native woman, however, is able to see without a torch and can always see the truth of the situation. Conrad shows the true nature of women by having the character of the native woman be intelligent, and influential over both the Europeans and the natives. The Russian trader points her out as someone to fear and even though she never speaks, she demonstrates strength by her ability to handle the "darkness" of the world, unlike the other women described in the book.

As revealed, Goethe, Dostoevsky, Lermontov, Stendhal and Conrad all criticized certain ways in which women had been mystified. They demonstrated their disapproval by creating women who have their own, unique mystiques. When Karl Marx wrote The Communist Manifesto, he supported these authors and their female characters. Marx believed in equality of all, and he was bitterly opposed to the mystique in which women were trapped. He attributed much of this inferior role to the bourgeois prejudices. He wrote, "Law, morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests."[18] Marx was conveying his belief that the proletarians were to an extent, corrupted by the bourgeoisie and led to believe that everything they were doing, including treating women as inferiors, was acceptable and even admirable. However, Marx is disgusted with this and even goes so far as to say, "Bourgeois marriage is in reality a system of wives in common."[19] He is horrified by the way bourgeois men treat their wives as objects to be shared. He was also appalled by what the bourgeois men saw their wives useful for and commented,

"The bourgeois sees in his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears that the instruments of production are to be exploited in common, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion then that the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women."[20]

To Marx, women were more than just a means to produce offspring. He refused to accept that women were only good for procreation and for sharing with multiple men of the town. Marx's harsh criticisms of bourgeois behavior towards women were shared completely by some authors of the nineteenth century who gave their female characters new roles and made them more equal to their male characters in strength and intelligence.

Some authors of the nineteenth century, however, were opposed to this demystification of women. For instance, Charles Baudelaire, in his essay entitled In Praise of Makeup, sought to re-mystify women. He thought that women were, in fact, only useful for looking pretty and performing simple tasks. He wrote,

"Woman is certainly within her rights, and she even performs kind of a duty when she endeavors to appear magical and supernatural; she should dazzle men, and charm them; she is an idol, who should be covered with gold in order to be worshipped.[21]

Baudelaire went so far as to claim it was a woman's duty to appear beautiful and full of mystery. He praises the use of make-up to aid them in preserving and bringing out their beauty. As opposed to authors who demystified women and would say that make-up was strictly a means to enhance exterior beauty, Baudelaire thought that the outside appearance of women was what made them worthy individuals. He completely disagreed with authors like Marx who wanted women's liberation. Baudelaire had a narrow view of the role of women in life, and refused to believe they were anything more than beautiful objects to be admired.

Darwin also supported the traditional mystification of women as domestic, fragile, beautiful creatures. He viewed them as intellectually inferior. Like the doctor in Lermontov, Darwin saw women very physiologically. Thus, he did demystify them in a physiological way, but once he did this he concluded that the original mystification of them was correct. Darwin taught that human sex differences were due partly to sexual selection, specifically because men must prove themselves physically and intellectually superior to other men in the competition for women, whereas women must be superior primarily in sexual attraction. Darwin also described the differences between men and women,

"Both sexes have intelligence and morality, but there are marked sexual differences in mental disposition. Women predominate in morality, whereas men have stronger intellects. Female superiority in sympathy for the plight of others, the key measure of the Darwinian moral sense, is the extension of the maternal instinct, which produces a 'greater tenderness and less selfishness" toward her infants than flows "towards her fellow creatures.' But man 'is the rival of other men; he delights in competition, and this leads to ambition which passes too easily into selfishness.' Male rivalry, the very factor that limits male moral capacity, drives his intellectual superiority."[22]

Basically, Darwin attributed the inferiority of women to evolution. Since women have been associated with domestic, menial tasks since primitive times, they have not been subject to as many selection pressures. Men, on the other hand, though, have always been the ones to go hunting and bring home the food to survive. Thus, selection pressures affect them more and they evolve to a greater degree than women. This is how Darwin explained why males were superior to females. So, although Darwin did demystify women in a physiological sense, his results led him to conclude that the traditional mystique of women as being weaker and more suitable for domestic tasks was in fact correct.

Nietzsche agreed with Darwin that women were naturally inferior to men. He is well known for his misogynist views of women. His various generalizations portray women as weak, superficial, self-compromising creatures who are driven, by their very nature, to lives of self-surrender. Nietzsche's view is that the defining characteristic of woman is her natural willingness, her lack of resistance, her submissiveness. He wrote of them, "Comparing man and woman in general one may say: woman would not have the genius for finery if she did not have the instinct for the secondary role."[23] Nietzsche does not think that this behavior is the result of social conditioning, but rather that it is an expression of the nature of women; to him, women were naturally driven to compromise themselves. Nietzsche wholeheartedly accepts the herd notion that women are intrinsically inferior to men in many respects. One of his most bewildering statements was, "When a woman has scholarly inclinations there is usually something wrong with her sexuality. Unfruitfulness itself disposes one to a certain masculinity of taste; for man is, if I may be allowed to say so, 'the unfruitful animal.'"[24] His implication here is that a woman cannot really be intelligent unless she happens to be masculine. Nietzsche never fully supports or explains these arguments and thus, many believe that he just never really understood women or perhaps was just very frightened of them. Either way, Nietzsche does not support the demystification of women and instead argues that the traditional mystique given to women is in fact fitting for them and completely natural.

Freud is another author of the nineteenth century known for his views of women. In Civilization and Its Discontents he wrote, "Women represent the interests of the family and of sexual life. The work of civilization has become increasingly the business of men, it confronts them with ever more difficult tasks and compels them to carry out instinctual sublimations of which women are little capable."[25] He goes on to say that women have the domestic role that they do because men are too busy taking care of important matters that women cannot handle to worry about their wives or children. He even went so far as to say that families were formed because men wanted to keep his sexual object near him.[26] According to Freud, this was man's only motive for keeping a female. So, Freud, along with Darwin and Nietzsche, found that women deserved the mystique given to them and truly were the inferior sex.

Despite their different views of women, all of these nineteenth century authors explored women in some way. Some investigated the roles of women, while others delved into their psychology and/or physiology. Most concluded that there was really much more to women than previously thought. In reality, they were not weak creatures that only desired to marry a man and have a family. As shown through the characters of Gretchen, Mathilde, Katya, and Grusha, women of the nineteenth century were bored and longed for excitement and adventure. They were not satisfied with their lives, but felt that there was not much they could do to change their fate. However, once they rebelled against their mystifications and acted as they wished, they proved that they actually had all the same emotions and desires that men did and were capable of just as much. Marx, in support of the demystification of women, blamed the bourgeois for confining and belittling women. He suggested that if liberated, women would shed their mystiques and prove to be intelligent, independent, and interesting beings.

Still, there were some authors who fought to preserve the mystique of women, even attempting to re-mystify them. Authors like Baudelaire, Freud, and Darwin refused to accept that women were not simple-minded, gentle creatures. However, once women were demystified, there was no turning back. After the nineteenth century, women were never looked at in the same light. From then on, female characters in literature were much deeper and more realistic. Authors finally learned the true nature of women and began the process of relieving them of their false mystique and mystery.

Works Cited:

[1] Goethe, Johann W. Faust. New York: Norton & Company, 2001.p. 73

2 Goethe, p. 133

3 Flaubert, Gustave. Three Tales. New York: Penguin Books, 1961. p.17

4 Flaubert, p. 35

5 Dostoevsky, Fyodor. The Brothers Karamazov. New York: Batam Books, 1970. p. 131

6 Dostoevsky, p. 137

7 Dostoevsky, p. 415-16

8 Dostoevsky, p. 9

9 Lermontov, Mikhail. A Hero Of Our Time. New York: Penguin Books, 1966. p. 141-142

10 Lermontov, p. 111

11 Lermontov, p. 133

12 Stendhal. The Red and the Black. New York: Penguin Putnam Inc., 1970. p. 98

13 Stendhal, p. 350

14 Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. New York: Random House, 1999. p. 92

15 Conrad, p. 14

16 Conrad, p. 74

17 Conrad, p. 29-30

18 Marx, Karl. Communist Manifesto. New York: Penguin Putnam, Inc., 1998. p. 63

19 Marx, p. 72

20 Marx, p. 72

21 Baudelaire, Charles. Flowers of Evil and Other Works. New York: Bantam Books, Inc., 1964. p. 203

22 Darwin, Charles. On Evolution. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1996. p. 258

23 Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil. New York: Penguin Group, 1990. p. 102

24Nietzsche, p. 101

25 Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and Its Discontents. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1961. p, 59

26 Freud, p. 53