person
The Retired Lieutenant ("About Women")
the retired lieutenant
also: отставной поручик
An unnamed retired lieutenant in "About Women" who robbed his mother-in-law and struts about in his wife's half-boots, cited as an authority for the mock-scientific claim that woman, not man, was the first descendant of the ape -- one of the piece's gallery of petty, disreputable mouthpieces for misogynistic cliche.
Reading notes
- About Women §3 descended from the ape
A glancing, garbled reference to Darwinian descent theory, popularized in Russia through the 1870s-80s press; the lieutenant's 'logic' -- that woman must have evolved before man -- is presented as authoritative pseudo-science, undercut by the fact that its speaker is a petty thief who wears his wife's shoes.