To illustrate one aspect of how households function, Tolstoy describes how different persons at Bald Hills uniquely experienced Pierre’s return from his long business trip to Petersburg. He shows that everyone in the household experiences events from their own perspective.
First Epilogue, Chapter 12
To illustrate one aspect of how households function, Tolstoy describes how different persons at Bald Hills uniquely experienced Pierre’s return from his long business trip to Petersburg. He shows that everyone in the household experiences events from their own perspective. Pierre has returned with many gifts and purchases, and his return enlivens the whole household. But, his return effects each individual in the household slightly differently.
Summary:
In this chapter, Tolstoy describes how every large household such as Bald Hills is actually a composition of many smaller distinct worlds merged into a harmonious whole. While coexisting, each retains its own peculiarities. He demonstrates this by showing how different people within the Bald Hills household experienced the return of Pierre from his long business trip to Petersburg differently. Tolstoy tells us that, for each group, Pierre’s return meant something different. He talks about the differnt people in the house, such as the servants, the children, their governesses, Andrew’s son Nicholas, the household guests, Natásha, the old countess and her companion Belóva, the other grown-up members of the family, and the old ladies. Pierre’s return was a joyful and important event and they all felt it to be so. But each element of the household had its own special reasons to rejoice or grieve over that occurrence independently of the others. For example, the servants knew that Count Nicholas would be in better spirits and temper now, and also that they would all now receive handsome presents for the holidays. The children and their governesses were glad of Pierre’s return because no one else drew them into the social life of the household as he did. And Young Nicholas, Prince Andrew’s son, who is now a slim lad of fifteen, was delighted because Uncle Pierre as he called him was the object of his rapturous and passionate affection. Natásha thought the gifts Pierre were a bit too costly. But, although there were additional expenses, Pierre had noticed to his surprise that he spent only half as much as before, and that his affairs—which had been in disorder of late, chiefly because of his first wife’s debts—had begun to improve.
quote from the chapter:
Though the most absent-minded and forgetful of men, Pierre, with the aid of a list his wife drew up, had now bought everything, not forgetting his mother—and brother-in-law’s commissions, nor the dress material for a present to Belóva, nor toys for his wife’s nephews. In the early days of his marriage it had seemed strange to him that his wife should expect him not to forget to procure all the things he undertook to buy, and he had been taken aback by her serious annoyance when on his first trip he forgot everything. But in time he grew used to this demand. Knowing that Natásha asked nothing for herself, and gave him commissions for others only when he himself had offered to undertake them, he now found an unexpected and childlike pleasure in this purchase of presents for everyone in the house, and never forgot anything. If he now incurred Natásha’s censure it was only for buying too many and too expensive things. To her other defects (as most people thought them, but which to Pierre were qualities) of untidiness and neglect of herself, she now added stinginess.
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