‘So what passes for beauty among your sort? I suppose you want a woman to look like tuft of grass!’
‘A tuft of grass?’ the narrator repeated, smiling and taking no offence. ‘Now why would you think that? We true Russians have our own ideas about what a woman should look like; they’re far better than any of your modern, light-minded notions, and they have nothing to do with tufts of grass. The point is that we’re not interested in long legs – no, we like a woman’s legs to be strong and stout, so she won’t go straying off, but roll along everywhere like a ball and keep pace with us: those long-legged women run, but then they stumble. That snakelike thinness doesn’t command much respect with us, either: we want a woman to be plump, with a good fat belly, for although that may not look very elegant, it underlines the motherliness in her; and although the faces of our true Russian women are a bit fleshy and meaty, they’re soft and they show more warmth and cheerfulness…But of course the modern taste has left that kindly type behind, and what it approves of in the female sex is airy ephemerality – but that’s just a lot of nonsense… Â – pgs. 191-92, The Sealed Angel
