Black Milk: ON WRITING, MOTHERHOOD, AND THE HAREM WITHIN

For three females, Beyza, Aurora and Zelda

For seventy years I have been steadily lowering and lowering my opinion of women, and I must still lower it more. The woman question! How could there not be a woman question! Only not about how women should control life, but how they should stop ruining it.

— Tolstoy the Misogynist

The goal of our life should not be to find joy in marriage, but to bring more love and truth into the world. We marry to assist each other in this task.

— Tolstoy the Feminist

I feel great tenderness for her [his daughter Masha]. Her only. She makes up for the others, I might say.

— Tolstoy again