This chapter describes the married Natasha. (Perhaps she represents to Tolstoy the ideal Russian wife.) By 1820, she has four children. The changes in Natasha were profound. The entire focus of her life has changed. She seemed, on the surface, like a different person.
First Epilogue Chapter 10
This chapter describes the married Natasha. (Perhaps she represents to Tolstoy the ideal Russian wife.) By 1820, she has four children. The changes in Natasha were profound. The entire focus of her life has changed. She seemed, on the surface, like a different person.
Summary:
Natasha had a different life now. In 1820, Natásha and Pierre had already had three little girls and a baby boy. She had grown robust, stouter and broader, no longer the lively and slim Natásha of former days. Her former animation, that used to charm everyone, was gone. Now her face and body were often all that one saw. Her soul was not visible at all. All that struck the eye was a strong, handsome, and fertile woman, handsome, with a fully developed body she was more handsome than ever, but in a new way. Since marriage, Natasha was rarely seen in society. Her pregnancies, her confinements, nursing of her children, and sharing her husband’s life, left her little time for society, although she always loved being with her relatives. She rarely sang now, having abandoned all her witchery, of which her singing had been an unusually powerful part, and what had most charmed the people she met. She was much less careful about her manners, speech, and her looks. She let herself go, wasn’t careful about her clothes or hair, chose her words poorly, and indulged in petty jealousy—she was jealous of Sónya, of the governess, and of every woman, pretty or plain— these were all habitual subjects of jest to those about her. The general opinion was that Pierre was under his wife’s thumb, which was actually true. Ever since she married, Natásha had only to state her wishes and Pierre submitted to them. On the other hand, Natásha did her best to do things just as Pierre wished. She and Countess Mary seldom mentioned Andrew to her husband, who she imagined was jealous of his memory. In short, the changes in Natasha were extraordinary. Countess Rostov thought Natasha was now living the exact life she was born for. The Countess had always known that Natásha would make an exemplary wife and mother.
quote from the chapter:
The subject which wholly engrossed Natásha’s attention was her family: that is, her husband whom she had to keep so that he should belong entirely to her and to the home, and the children whom she had to bear, bring into the world, nurse, and bring up.
And the deeper she penetrated, not with her mind only but with her whole soul, her whole being, into the subject that absorbed her, the larger did that subject grow and the weaker and more inadequate did her powers appear, so that she concentrated them wholly on that one thing and yet was unable to accomplish all that she considered necessary.
There were then as now conversations and discussions about women’s rights, the relations of husband and wife and their freedom and rights, though these themes were not yet termed questions as they are now; but these topics were not merely uninteresting to Natásha, she positively did not understand them.
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