Troy University Ramabai Married Life and Legal Rights Discussion To Read: Ramabai, “Married Life” and “Legal Rights” p. 505-516 (Vol. E) Tolstoy, The Death

Troy University Ramabai Married Life and Legal Rights Discussion To Read: Ramabai, “Married Life” and “Legal Rights” p. 505-516 (Vol. E) Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich p. 678-721 (Vol. E)While the works by Ramabai and Tolstoy are very different this week, they both address ideas regarding opportunity. At times, these can be opportunities that are taken advantage of or desired. At other times, the situation might focus on a missed opportunity. Using at least one specific example from each author, focusing on the texts assigned for this week, what opportunity or missed opportunity did you notice as you read the texts? How was that opportunity presented or expressed within the text? Are there any parallels between those opportunities or missed opportunities and opportunities that are available to us today?Keep in mind that your initial post needs to be at least 350 words in length.The discussion instructions state that these responses are to be your own original responses to the readings and are not to use any outside sources. English 2206 – Kosiba
Notes for Week #4
Keep in mind throughout this course that the notes I provide for each of the readings are
intended as a supplement and guide to the reading itself and should never be used solely as a
substitute for reading the story.
Ramabai–“Married Life” and “Legal Rights” p. 505-516 (Vol. E)
Ramabai’s writing is indicative of the strong feminist voices that developed in the 19th century,
and her voice particularly elaborates on the attitudes and ideas that shaped the lives of women
in India. She began her life heavily focused on religious teachings and eventually expanded her
perspectives into learning other languages and focusing on other areas of study. Her intellect
provided her with opportunities unusual for women of her place and time, and she used those
opportunities to advocate for more rights and a better quality of life for women throughout
India and the rest of the world.
“Married Life”
This reading is Chapter 3 of Ramabai’s book The High-Caste Hindu Woman (1887). She wrote
the book while visiting the United States.
Most of this chapter focuses on how marriage affects women. As Ramabai describes, in many
parts of India at the time she is writing, girls are married off quite young, almost always in
arranged marriages. This often has a harsh impact on the development of that girl’s life, as she
then moves away from her family and the remainder of her development is guided by her new
in-laws.
Of particular note in this chapter is the idea of women as property, which Ramabai returns to
again and again in various ways. The marriage contracts she discusses almost always puts
women subservient to men and leaves them with few rights and little independence. While she
doesn’t discuss it much in this chapter, the introductory materials regarding Ramabai mention
how she advocated for widows in India. The lives of widowed women in India could be
particularly dire, as their lives were essentially over if anything happened to their husbands.
They would be outcasts of society. While there are clearly positive exceptions, Ramabai’s
descriptions are often advocating a consideration of current customs with the intent to make
things more compassionate and allowing women greater representation.
“Legal Rights”
This excerpt provides an interesting contrast to the previous section in our textbook. While
may be easy for American readers to look at the descriptions in “Married Life” and feel that the
customs are foreign or even a little barbaric, life for women in the United States in the 19th
English 2206 – Week #4 2
century wasn’t always better. Ramabai’s first line in this excerpt really calls attention to the
contrast between cultures like her own and the conditions in the United States at the time: “It
is both surprising and regrettable that for all the progress in the United States, women have
been granted very few legal rights” (514). As Ramabai accurately notes, throughout the
nineteenth century (and before), American women often had no rights or limited rights to own
property, they had no legal recourse in terms of keeping custody of their children, and they had
limited rights concerning divorce or separation. Women in the United States wouldn’t officially
gain the right to vote until 1920 with the 19th Amendment to the Constitution.
Ramabai’s text shows that as progressive as the United States may have been comparatively to
social and industrial development in India, there were still social customs and laws in such a
“progressive” country that were rather restrictive and antiquated as well.
Tolstoy – The Death of Ivan Ilyich p. 678-721 (Vol. E)
Tolstoy’s story is characterized by an emphasis on realism. With this story we see a move
further away from an emphasis on imagination and toward a sense of unvarnished truth. I wish
we had time to read more Russian writers in this course, as they really do interesting things
with realism and emotion.
Tolstoy continues an emphasis on nature, as we have seen in some previous writers,
particularly in the idea that individuals should be closer to nature (closer to the essential
elements of life).
He also emphasizes that many of society’s problems are due to an emphasis on materialism.
Materialism takes individuals further away from truth and from nature.
These ideas are exhibited in many ways through the characters of Ivan Ilyich, as we see many
egotists and hypocrites among the characters and yet good individuals, like Gerasim (Gerasim
escapes some of those other problems due to his youth—youth brings him closer to nature—
reminiscent of Wordsworth).
Chapter 1—
We start, in essence, with the end, as we enter the story with the news that Ivan Ilyich has died.
In reading, focus on the reactions of his colleagues. Where we would generally expect to see
sadness or a sense of regret at the news of someone’s death, here we see selfishness. For
example, on page 683, we are told that “on hearing of Ivan Ilyich’s death the first through of
each of the gentlemen meeting in the room was of the significance the death might have for
the transfer or promotion of the members themselves or their friends.” These men are focused
only on themselves and their personal gain at the news. This one way for Tolstoy to describe
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and create a dysfunctional world. Similar selfish thoughts are expressed on page 684 and later
in the chapter.
As Pyotr Ivanovich visits Ivan Ilyich’s home to pay respects to his family, we see some of
Tolstoy’s emphasis on absolute reality. There is nothing glossed over in this story. We are told
as he enters the room on page 685 toward the bottom of the first paragraph that he “at once
sensed the faint smell of a decomposing body.” We also gain a description of Ivan Ilyich’s
appearance in the coffin: “The dead man lay, as dead men always do, especially heavy, his
stiffened limbs sunk in the padded lining of the coffin with his head bent back forever on the
pillow, and, as always with dead men, his yellow waxen forehead sticking out, showing bald
patches on his hollow temples, his nose protruding as if it pressed on his upper lip.” (685).
While this is probably not an appealing description to read, it is rather true to the sense of what
Ivan Ilyich’s body might have really looked like, which is Tolstoy’s intent. He intends to show
that this is a story grounded in a sense of reality and not a fairy tale.
In addition, amidst the unflattering descriptions of Ivan Ilyich’s colleagues and decomposing
body, his family proves to also be rather self-absorbed in this moment of sorrow. When we
meet his wife, Praskovya Fyodorovna, she is focused most on how Ivan Ilyich’s illness affected
her. On page 687, she states to Pyotr Ivanovich, “For three whole days he screamed without
drawing breath. It was unbearable. I can’t understand how I bore it; one could hear it from
three doors away. Oh, what I’ve been through!” Rather than focusing her husband’s feelings
and illness, she is focused on how it impacted her life instead.
It turns out that her real reason for talking to Pyotr Ivanovich, after she gets through detailing
her suffering, is to ask about any additional money she could get due to her husband’s death
(as Ivan Ilyich had a government job and was entitled to certain benefits). Tolstoy tells us,
She gave the appearance of asking Pyotr Ivanovich for advice about the pension,
but he saw that she already knew down to the smallest details even what he
didn’t know—everything that one could extract from the public purse on his
death—but that she wanted to learn if one couldn’t somehow extract a bit more
money. (688)
While some worry over finances, particularly as her husband was the primary income for the
household, might make sense, the manipulative fashion in which Tolstoy describes her
concerns shows that she is not necessarily worried just about feeding her family but more
about how much money she can make off of the circumstances.
Chapter 2—
There is tremendous irony (and a certain amount of truth when we get into the details) in the
first line of the chapter: “Ivan Ilyich’s life had been very simple and ordinary and very awful”
(689).
Tolstoy provides the details of Ivan Ilyich’s life in this chapter, particularly his childhood and
young adulthood. We find out on page 689 that he was considered the prodigy of the family
English 2206 – Week #4 4
and “wasn’t as cold and precise as the eldest or as hopeless as the youngest. He was
somewhere between them—a clever, lively, pleasant, and decent young man.”
We are told he has an attraction to upper class people and that as he associates more and more
with that upper class he “gave in both to sensuality and to vanity, and—toward the end, in the
senior classes—to liberalism, but always within the defined limits that his sense accurately
indicated to him as correct” (689).
Tolstoy’s commitment to the idea that youth is truer to nature (and honesty) can be seen in
discussions of Ivan Ilyich’s school years:
At law school he had done things that previously had seemed to him quite vile
and had filled him with self-disgust while he did them; but later, seeing these
things were done by people in high positions and were not thought by them to
be bad, he didn’t quite think of them as good but completely forgot them and
wasn’t at all troubled by memories of them. (689-90)
As Ivan Ilyich ages, he is more prone to compromising his beliefs and moves farther away from
doing things that are true to his ideals. This continues that idea (established in writers like
Wordsworth and other Romantics) that people become corrupted when they move too far
from nature and their true selves.
On page 691, we gain a sense of his rise to status and power and the measures he takes to
achieve that. We also gain a description of his methods as a magistrate, which are rather cold
and logical (not taking into account emotion or the complications of human beings—again,
avoiding nature in a sense):
In the work itself, in the actual investigations, Ivan Ilyich very quickly mastered a
way of setting aside all circumstances that didn’t relate to the investigation and
expressing the most complicated cases in a terminology in which the case only
appeared on paper in its externals and his personal view was completely
excluded, and most importantly all requisite formality was observed. (691)
On page 692 we find out that Ivan Ilyich did not marry for love but more for social status. She is
described as basically doing the same. So this is more of a business transaction than anything
romantic and continues to be described as such as we seen the details of their marriage on
page 692-93. We even see Ivan Ilyich conclude at the bottom of page 692 that “married life—at
any rate with his wife—does not always make for the pleasures and decorum of life but on the
contrary often destroys them, and therefore it was essential to protect himself from this
destruction.” Fatherhood also takes on little interest for him, as we see on the next page.
As much as it is a life that appears to move along ”pleasantly and with decorum” (words near
the end of the chapter by Tolstoy) on the surface, Tolstoy emphasizes some of the undesirable
elements as well. While all lives have their imperfections, some of the references Tolstoy
makes encourages us to think that Ivan Ilyich’s life, in particular, is not necessarily a happy one
despite appearances.
English 2206 – Week #4 5
Chapter 3—
Chapter 3 is significant for being the chapter where Ivan Ilyich is injured. Before we reach that
injury, again Tolstoy emphasizes how Ivan Ilyich and his family should be satisfied with their life
and yet they still want more. On page 694 we find out that he has been passed over for a
promotion, and despite the fact that everyone considered “his situation on a 3,500-ruble salary
quite normal and even fortunate,” it is not enough for him. He is still dissatisfied.
Through fortuitous circumstances he gains a better position in Moscow (with an increase in
pay) and begins to set up a new house for his family there. During this process, he is injured:
“Once he got up on a ladder to show a slow-witted decorator how he wanted the drapes hung;
he missed his footing and fell, but being a strong and agile man he held his balance and only
knocked his side on the handle of the window frame” (696). While this wound does not seem
immediately fatal, it will increasingly become the source of his health trouble.
There is irony in both the way Ivan Ilyich is wounded and in what he is trying to do with the
decoration of his house. Tolstoy emphasizes this in his description of the décor:
In actual fact it was the same as the houses of all people who are not so rich but
want to be like the rich and so are only like one another: brocade, ebony,
flowers, carpets, and bronzes, everything dark and shiny—everything that all
people of a certain type do to be like all people of a certain type. And what he
had was so like that that one couldn’t even notice it, but to him it all looked
somehow special. (696)
Despite all of Ivan Ilyich’s efforts, it is still an illusion of status that he will never truly hold. And
he has unintentionally risked his life in the commitment to creating this façade. Particularly as,
Tolstoy notes later on the page, once the family moves in they are still dissatisfied with their
new income and their new housing.
Chapter 4—
In this chapter we begin to see Ivan Ilyich’s health problems.
As he starts to feel worse, we see the selfish way the other characters treat his illness. On page
699, his wife “decided that her husband had a dreadful character and that he had created the
unhappiness of her life, she started to feel sorry for herself. And the more she felt sorry for
herself, the more she hated her husband. She began to with that he would die, but she
couldn’t wish for that because then there would be no salary.” We see on page 700 that his
daughter also has limited interest in her father’s illness or concerns.
There is additional irony in the way Ivan Ilyich is treated by his doctor on page 700. Ivan Ilyich
treated the people in his court cases rather clinically and with indifference, and his doctor
exhibits much of the same behavior. The doctor approaches Ivan Ilyich’s illness as an
intellectual problem and not as if he is treating a person. Tolstoy points out the contrast: “All
this was very precisely what Ivan Ilyich himself had done a thousand times with defendants and
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as brilliantly” (700). Ivan Ilyich is getting a taste of the very style of treatment he had been
using on others.
Again, Tolstoy uses unglamorous images of illness as Ivan Ilyich gets sicker, but he also
emphasizes that significant change is taking place:
The pain in his side wore him down; it seemed to keep getting worse; it became
constant; the taste in his mouth became stronger; he thought a disgusting smell
was coming from his mouth; and his appetite and strength were going. He
couldn’t deceive himself: something terrible, new, and important was happening
in him, something more important than anything that had happened to Ivan
Ilyich in his life.” (702)
Tolstoy continues to address, in the chapters that follow, how this change ultimately affects
Ivan Ilyich.
Chapter 5—
He continues to get sicker.
On page 705, Ivan Ilyich begins to reflect on dying. He feels that dying is imminent, but he still
does not grasp the reality, particularly when he comments, “It cannot be that we’re all doomed
to this terrible fear” (705). In the rationalization that follows that comment, Ivan Ilyich tries to
find a way in which death is not the ultimate end to his situation.
Chapter 6—
We start this chapter again with a reference to Ivan Ilyich’s dying but also with a discussion of
why he still thinks there has to be some exception for him. The reflections on Caius show how
Ivan Ilyich sees himself as a unique individual and not necessarily subject to the same problems
and concerns of others.
On page 707, we see his continued obsession and reflection on death, particularly in all the
references to “it.”
At the end of this chapter, Ivan Ilyich finally reflects on his own on the irony of his illness: “It’s
true, it was here on these curtains that I lose my life as if in an assault. Did I really? How
terrible and how stupid. It can’t be so! It can’t be, but it is” (708). Rather than die in some
valiant and heroic feat, Ivan Ilyich realizes that he may die for something quite meaningless in
contrast.
Chapter 7—
In this chapter we see one of the few good influences in the story. Gerasim becomes one of the
few figures who actually appears sympathetic to and unafraid of Ivan Ilyich’s illness. He is
described as a “clean, fresh young peasant who had filled out on city food. He was always
English 2206 – Week #4 7
cheerful and sunny” (708). His youth and the fact that he is from the country (closer to nature
in both cases) make him less corrupted by adult concerns and less concerned about things like
death, as he sees it as an inevitable part of life (part of nature).
Gerasim becomes a comfort to Ivan Ilyich. The contrast between the way Gerasim treats Ivan
Ilyich and the way his family approaches him encourages him to see how false much of the
world around him really is. He comes to this awareness on the bottom of page 710: “The
terrible, horrific act of his dying, he saw, had been brought down by all those surrounding him
to the level of a casual unpleasantness, some breach of decorum (as one treats a man who,
entering a drawing room, emits a bad smell); brought down by that very ‘decorum’ he had
served his whole life, he saw that no one had pity for him because no one even wanted to
understand his situation.” Gerasim is the one exception to this.
Chapter 8—
Death becomes the only reality for Ivan Ilyich, as the chapter starts with the idea that his days
are filled with “the same terrible, hateful death advancing, which was the only reality, and
always the same lie” (711).
As his condition worsens, Tolstoy reminds us of the wife’s selfishness on page 713: “Everything
she did for him she did only for herself, and she told him so, as if that was something so unlikely
that he had to understand it in the opposite sense.”
Chapter 9—
There is a reference early on to the “black sack” in this chapter. The sack symbolizes death and
Tolstoy comes back to it again in the last chapter.
Confirming Tolstoy’s emphasis on the power of childhood and the idea that life is truer and
better in that uncorrupted state, Ivan Ilyich reflects on his life:
And he began to go over in his imagination the best moments of his pleasant life.
But—strange to relate—all these best moments of a pleasant life now seemed
quite different from what they had seemed then. All of them—except for his
first memories of childhood. There in childhood was something so truly pleasant
with which he could live, if it returned. But the person who had experienced
those pleasant things no longer existed; it was like a memory of something else.
(716)
This realization that childhood may have been the best time in his life makes Ivan Ilyich
question what his life has really been about:
Marriage . . . so casually entered, and disillusionment, and the smell that came
from his wife’s mouth, and sensuality, hypocrisy! And that deadly work of his
and those worries about money, and on for a year, and two, and ten, and
twenty—and always the same. And the further he went, the more deadly it
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became. “As if I were walking downhill at a regular pace, imagining I was walking
uphill. That’s how it was. In the eyes of the world I was walking uphill, and to
jus…
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