Understanding Social Double Standards
After the ladies leave, Pestsov tells Karenin that law and opinion punish a wife's infidelity more harshly than a husband's. Karenin calls the inequality natural. Turovtsin blurts a story of a husband who called a man out and shot him. The table can discuss the rule. Anna has to live under it.
Key Insight
Tolstoy puts the theory in a dining room of men with cigars. The rule is not hidden. It is explained as nature while Stiva sits there, already forgiven by the form of the evening.
“The inequality in marriage, in his opinion, lay in the fact that the infidelity of the wife and the infidelity of the husband are punished unequally”Explore full theme analysis
