On Russian Men and Women

I managed to get my hands on Dostoyevsky's 'The Brothers Karamazov'...and I have been absolutely enthralled by the sinuous but intriguing plot and the moral questions the book raises...I've taken a fancy towards Russian literature ever since Tolstoy's Anna Karenina...Somehow, Russian writers have the most sublime ways to convey the bleakness of the human condition that Dickens, at his greatest, was still unable to achieve.

Russian men in the novels are almost always drunkards or wife-beaters...those who already have liver cancer (and hence can't drink) or have no wife (and thus can't beat their wife) , are either insane or delirious...Oh, there is also the occasional decadent and hedonistic aristocrat who is plunging straight into perdition but is unaware (rather blithely) of his morbid fate...Great Russian writers seem to have an uncanny penchant towards imbuing the male characters with physical deformaties or emotional scars...For instance, the archetypal old discharged soldier, who has witnessed the violent demise of his comrades and is now either half-blind or suffering from Typhus...

It's also noteworthy that Russian men fall into two dichotymous social extremities: Dirt-poor serf or filthy rich nobleman/industrialist...Usually, the dirt poor serf foments ideas of social revolution and sees the bourgouise and the ruling classes as parasites that live off the hard work of the ever-suffering peasants...The serfs tend to be easily deceived and beguiled by glib-tongued Union leaders or Party cadres with dubious motives...they tend to be seduced by the promise of freedom and liberation from their tyrannical masters....As for the rich landowners...slaves are...well, just slaves...they prefer not to think so much, because they have more important things to tend to.Fox-hunting, for instance.haha

Fortunately, the Russian woman is given a less harsh treatment in most Russian works...She is often portrayed as the long-suffering victim of spousal abuse...the patient but somewhat weak lioness of the den. On many occasions, female characters are shown protecting their children from some horrid form of abuse by their drunk and temperamental husbands...Alas, most of their efforts tend to be futile and meaningless, as the Man Of The House often succeeds in giving everyone an A-class Ass-whooping...Where the women succeed in protecting the children, some drastic event usually takes place...for instance, they may accidentally kill their husband.haha

It is interesting to note that the Russian woman in the books I have read are always suffering from some malaise...Typhoid, Dysentry, Cholera, Syphillis , leprosy, alcoholism, blindness, Goitre, Lyphus, Depression...and the writers' favourite-Schizophrenia...the list is non-exhaustive! I guess this explains why there are no insurance companies in old Russia...all of them would just go bust.

Russian women often have to mop up the mess that their husbands, fathers and brothers leave...for instance, they may have to sell their bodies to pay the sod's debts...or maybe they have to be the foster-mothers of their husband's illegitimate children...all this time, the man is usually galivanting somewhere amongst harlots and pimps...No wonder the women are always in a bad mood...and are almost always attempting suicide

Ah...how fascinating to learn about the people of other cultures!