The Emancipated Woman's Salon — Fathers and Sons

The villa is the usual Moscow pattern, on a street the town burns down every five years. A bell-handle hangs over a cracked visiting-card, and the woman in the hall is not quite a maid and not quite a companion. Both are there to prove the hostess progressive. A shrill voice tells Victor to come in. Never mind that he is not alone. The room looks like a workshop: uncut magazines, cigarette ends on the floor, and Evdoksia Kukshin lolling in a soiled silk gown, a lace mantilla over flaxen hair. She rises, throws on a velvet tippet with faded ermine, and says she has met Bazarov before. He frowns. The plain face does not exactly repel. It makes you want to ask whether she is hungry, or bored, or afraid, and what it is she wants. She conceives herself simple and good-hearted. Everything she does looks done on purpose.

Sitnikov orders luncheon and champagne and says a love of comfort need not stop a man being a Liberal. She says it does, then orders both. Bazarov will not take her side. From the chemical point of view a piece of meat is better than a piece of bread. She has invented a liniment for unbreakable dolls and pipe-bowls, and still has her Liebig to finish. She asks Arkady's line and does not wait for the answer. He gives his name and says his line is doing nothing at all. She is furious that Sitnikov still defends Georges Sand, a played-out woman who has never heard of embryology, and she is dreadfully afraid of Bazarov, she says, because near him she starts to talk like a lady-landowner. She is one. The town is petty. She has spent the year preparing to go to Heidelberg, because Herr Bunsen lives there. Bazarov can think of nothing to say.

After a third glass he asks whether the town has any good-looking ladies. Madame Odintsov is not bad-looking, Evdoksia says, and nothing is against her except a doubtful reputation, which is nothing, and a complete lack of freedom. Sitnikov adds that the only thing to do with women is to hold them in contempt. Bazarov says the smart women of the day scarcely need this talk conveyed to them. He agrees with no man's opinions. He has some of his own. Sitnikov shouts down authorities, and then pauses, because he does not reject the rights of women. She swears to defend those rights to the last drop of her blood. They have reached the last drop, Bazarov says. Of champagne, not of her blood. She wants to talk of love, and poses an arm on the cushions. There is a sudden silence. What is there to say of love? Who is Madame Odintsov? A clever rich widow, Sitnikov squeaks, not sufficiently developed. A second bottle follows, then a third, then a fourth. She plays with flat nails and a hoarse voice. Sitnikov puts a scarf over his head and joins a burning kiss. Arkady says this is sheer Bedlam. Bazarov yawns, and the two leave without a word of farewell. In the road Sitnikov calls her a moral phenomenon. Bazarov points at a tavern they are passing. Is that also a moral phenomenon?