“To talk of loving a man or woman for life is like saying that a candle can burn forever.”
Coming from his own experience Posdnicheff is very critical about the views of marriage and love. A deep feeling of love is not an infinite one; he tries to prove his idea on the example of his own story. Posdnicheff is deeply miserable person, who seeks to find answers for questions which do not bother the rest of the society.
“It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness. A handsome woman talks nonsense, you listen and hear not nonsense but cleverness. She says and does horrid things, and you see only charm. And if a handsome woman does not say stupid or horrid things, you at once persuade yourself that she is wonderfully clever and moral.”
Men love with their eyes – it is the biggest truth that the author puts into the mouth of Posdnicheff, and through beautiful comparisons, metaphors, and epithets he gives more and more evident proofs for this statement. Posdnicheff has been trapped into the nets of marriage by beauty, he could never even considered beauty as evil, but all the truth had opened before him after the marriage, when he simply could not talk with his wife. They were completely different people, both delusive in their views on happiness and marriage.
“Another's wife is a white swan, and ours is bitter wormwood.”
In the meaning of the quote, an allegory of the forbidden fruit is used. It is often that men look at other women thinking how more beautiful, and therefore sophisticated and clever, they are, comparing them to their own wives. The quote calls again to the statement that beauty is not always goodness, and the eyes are the biggest mischief.
“Women, especially those who have passed through the school of marriage, know very well that conversations upon elevated subjects are only conversations, and that man seeks and desires the body and all that ornaments the body.”
No matter how awfully it might sound, but the quote probably reveals the main idea of the story – men always seek for woman’s body and physical closeness. The problem is really urgent, but possible ways for the solution the author does not give.
