Learning of her son Pétya’s death, Countess Rostóv becomes delirious. Natásha sits with her mother for three days. Caring for her mother helps pull Natásha out of her own despair.
Learning of her son Pétya’s death, Countess Rostóv becomes delirious. Natásha sits with her mother for three days. Caring for her mother helps pull Natásha out of her own despair.
Book 15, Chapter 2
Learning of her son Pétya’s death, Countess Rostóv becomes delirious. Natásha sits with her mother for three days. Caring for her mother helps pull Natásha out of her own despair.
Summary:
Natásha’s grief has left her feeling estranged and almost hostile with her family. When she learns a letter about Pétya has arrived, Natásha is unconcerned. Seeing the effect of the letter in her father’s face, however, instantly snaps Natásha back to reality. Her mother is in even worse shape, totally distraught and almost insane with grief. Unable to accept Pétya’s death, the Countess drifts intermittently into delirium, imagining that her son is still alive and has returned to visit them. Seeing her mother like this breaks the spell grief held over Natásha. Natásha stays by her mother’s side for three days, holding her and caring for her, until at last her mother can face the loss of her son. Then, embracing her daughter, the countess began to weep for the first time since learning of Pétya’s death.
quote from the chapter:
Natásha looked at her with eyes full of tears and in her look there was nothing but love and an entreaty for forgiveness.
My darling Mummy! she repeated, straining all the power of her love to find some way of taking on herself the excess of grief that crushed her mother.
And again in a futile struggle with reality her mother, refusing to believe that she could live when her beloved boy was killed in the bloom of life, escaped from reality into a world of delirium.
Natásha did not remember how that day passed nor that night, nor the next day and night. She did not sleep and did not leave her mother. Her persevering and patient love seemed completely to surround the countess every moment, not explaining or consoling, but recalling her to life.
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