His wife, without any reason -- *de gaiete de coeur* as Ivan Ilych expressed it to himself -- began to disturb the pleasure and propriety of their life.She began to be jealous without any cause, expected him to devote his whole attention to her, found fault with everything, and made coarse and ill-mannered scenes.
At first Ivan Ilych hoped to escape from the unpleasantness of this state of affairs by the same easy and decorous relation to life that had served him heretofore: he tried to ignore his wife's disagreeable moods, continued to live in his usual easy and pleasant way, invited friends to his house for a game of cards, and also tried going out to his club or spending his evenings with friends.But one day his wife began upbraiding him so vigorously, using such coarse words, and continued to abuse him every time he did not fulfil her demands, so resolutely and with such evident determination not to give way till he submitted -- that is, till he stayed at home and was bored just as she was -- that he became alarmed.He now realized that matrimony -- at any rate with Praskovya Fedorovna -- was not always conducive to the pleasures and amenities of life, but on the contrary often infringed both comfort and propriety, and that he must therefore entrench himself against such infringement.And Ivan Ilych began to seek for means of doing so.His official duties were the one thing that imposed upon Praskovya Fedorovna, and by means of his official work and the duties attached to it he began struggling with his wife to secure his own independence.
With the birth of their child, the attempts to feed it and the various failures in doing so, and with the real and imaginary illnesses of mother and child, in which Ivan Ilych's sympathy was demanded but about which he understood nothing, the need of securing for himself an existence outside his family life became still more imperative.
As his wife grew more irritable and exacting and Ivan Ilych transferred the center of gravity of his life more and more to his official work, so did he grow to like his work better and became more ambitious than before.
Very soon, within a year of his wedding, Ivan Ilych had realized that marriage, though it may add some comforts to life, is in fact a very intricate and difficult affair towards which in order to perform one's duty, that is, to lead a decorous life approved of by society, one must adopt a definite attitude just as towards one's official duties.
And Ivan Ilych evolved such an attitude towards married life.
He only required of it those conveniences -- dinner at home, housewife, and bed -- which it could give him, and above all that propriety of external forms required by public opinion.For the rest he looked for lighthearted pleasure and propriety, and was very thankful when he found them, but if he met with antagonism and querulousness he at once retired into his separate fenced-off world of official duties, where he found satisfaction.
Ivan Ilych was esteemed a good official, and after three years was made Assistant Public Prosecutor.His new duties, their importance, the possibility of indicting and imprisoning anyone he chose, the publicity his speeches received, and the success he had in all these things, made his work still more attractive.
More children came.His wife became more and more querulous and ill-tempered, but the attitude Ivan Ilych had adopted towards his home life rendered him almost impervious to her grumbling.
After seven years' service in that town he was transferred to another province as Public Prosecutor.They moved, but were short of money and his wife did not like the place they moved to.Though the salary was higher the cost of living was greater, besides which two of their children died and family life became still more unpleasant for him.
Praskovya Fedorovna blamed her husband for every inconvenience they encountered in their new home.Most of the conversations between husband and wife, especially as to the children's education, led to topics which recalled former disputes, and these disputes were apt to flare up again at any moment.There remained only those rare periods of amorousness which still came to them at times but did not last long.These were islets at which they anchored for a while and then again set out upon that ocean of veiled hostility which showed itself in their aloofness from one another.This aloofness might have grieved Ivan Ilych had he considered that it ought not to exist, but he now regarded the position as normal, and even made it the goal at which he aimed in family life.His aim was to free himself more and more from those unpleasantness and to give them a semblance of harmlessness and propriety.He attained this by spending less and less time with his family, and when obliged to be at home he tried to safeguard his position by the presence of outsiders.The chief thing however was that he had his official duties.The whole interest of his life now centered in the official world and that interest absorbed him.The consciousness of his power, being able to ruin anybody he wished to ruin, the importance, even the external dignity of his entry into court, or meetings with his subordinates, his success with superiors and inferiors, and above all his masterly handling of cases, of which he was conscious -- all this gave him pleasure and filled his life, together with chats with his colleagues, dinners, and bridge.So that on the whole Ivan Ilych's life continued to flow as he considered it should do -- pleasantly and properly.
so things continued for another seven years.His eldest daughter was already sixteen, another child had died, and only one son was left, a schoolboy and a subject of dissension.Ivan Ilych wanted to put him in the School of Law, but to spite him Praskovya Fedorovna entered him at the High School.The daughter had been educated at home and had turned out well: the boy did not learn badly either.
