Classics, nihilism, and women's rights

Over the soup Pestsov reopens the argument: what does higher development consist of, when the Rhine has been Frenchified though the Germans stand no lower? Karenin holds that influence belongs to the truly educated and that classical study benefits spiritual development, while natural science carries the dangerous false teachings that are the bane of the age. Koznyshev waits, then delivers his grain of Attic salt — the real argument for the classics is their anti-nihilistic virtue, and we hand out the pills boldly; but supposing they have not that virtue after all? Everyone laughs, Turovtsyn loudest. Pestsov at once raises the education of women. Koznyshev proposes that women are seeking not rights but duties; the old Prince offers the proverb about long hair and short wits, and then his own grievance that the Foundlings' Hospital will not engage him as a wet-nurse. Oblonsky defends the girl with no home, thinking of Chibisova; Dolly, guessing which girl, answers sharply that she left a family where woman's work was waiting.

A drawing-room debate on women's rights conducted by five men and interrupted once, devastatingly, by the only woman in the novel who has had to live on the terms under discussion. Tolstoy lets the old Prince's wet-nurse joke win the room and be no answer at all. Oblonsky argues the liberal side with a dancer in his mind, which is the chapter's demonstration of where principles come from.