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I
GIRLHOOD’S DREAMS — NIHILISTIC MARRIAGE1
SÖNYA was about seventeen years of age when her
parents took her with them to pass a winter in
Petersburg. Just at that time, in the year 1867, a
strong movement was making itself felt among the
thinking portion of the rising generation in Russia.
This movement especially affected the young girls
of Russia, and may be described as an ardent desire
for the freedom and progress of their fatherland, and
the raising of its intellectual standard.
It was not a nihilistic, scarcely a political, movement.
It was an eager striving after knowledge and mental
development; and it had spread so far and wide that
at this moment hundreds of young girls belonging to
the best families abandoned their homes and betook
themselves to foreign universities in order to study
science.
But as parents, in the majority of cases, opposed
such proceedings, their daughters had recourse to
very strange tactics, characteristic of the times, to
effect their purpose. They went through the form of
marriage with young men devoted to the same ideas
which they held sacred, and in this manner, as married
women, they escaped from parental authority, and
were enabled to go abroad at the first opportunity.
1 Appendix A.
159
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