Tolstoy has never been concerned with rules. Whether it is with the structure of the novel, revered thought on established topics, or even his own past writing, Tolstoy disregards all of them in pursuit of his elusive hero. This constant, intense search for truth fills Tolstoy’s works with the uncanny lifelike quality that has immortalized him. But it can also fill them with contradictions and frustratingly radical conclusions. Tolstoy’s attitude towards his female characters is a prime example of this simultaneous beauty and confusion. He treats them with tender care and breaths such life into them that readers can’t help but fall in love.
Yet he is also quick to send them off the stage, or even conclude their stories in ways that seem dangerously close to being misogynistic. How then should one interpret Tolstoy’s complex relationship to his female characters and to women in general? With Tolstoy, a true understanding usually requires that we think deeply and struggle personally as the man himself did. The meaning behind Tolstoy’s work have a tendency to evolve with the reader for this very reason. Yet regardless of one’s personal experiences, Tolstoy’s female characters are so important to their respective stories that they speak volumes on his convictions on their own.
After careful consideration of his work, one will find that Tolstoy is actually a feminist, indeed maybe even something more than a feminist. Although he does not set out to align with specific feminist ideology, his combined work as both an artist and moralist supports feminist ideas and even iterates them with difficult, yet necessary advancements. Before beginning to discuss Tolstoy’s ideas and their relation to feminism, we need to define the term “feminism” itself. Because of its hotly debated subject matter, this can be a tricky task.
In this paper, feminism will be defined as an ideology that aims to establish equal opportunity and respect for women, whether it is on political, social, or economic grounds. While ideas such as gender-roles are certainly relevant to feminist ideology, they are susceptible to cultural and historical bias, and thus for the scope of this paper will be largely ignored. For example, Natasha’s final description as a domestic mother will not inherently imply anything in this analysis. Careful efforts will be made to only inspect Tolstoy’s intentions, language, and themes. We will start by examining Princess Marya Bolkonskaya from “War and Peace.
At first, Marya’s story seems unlikely to support feminist ideology. From the beginning, she is bound to and even ruled by her father. Despite his constant harassment, she bears everything with a meekness that seems to highlight her inability to assert herself, both a woman and as her own person. Things become even more unfortunate for Marya as her brother goes to war, her father dies, and she is left trapped in the family estate, which the French army is rapidly advancing upon. By this point, it’s hard not to view Marya as a weak, indecisive character in all her unfortunate circumstances.
But amidst all this, Marya suddenly has a realization. “That Prince Andrei should learn that she was in the power of the French! That she, the daughter of Nikolai Andreich Bolkonsky, should beg Mister General Rameau to protect her and be her benefactor! This thought horrified her, made her shudder, blush, and experience fits of anger and pride such as she had never felt before. All that was painful and, above all, insulting in her position vividly presented itself to her. ” (724) Tolstoy continues to describe the suddenness with which Marya develops what appears to be a completely new and fierce conscience.
The point of interest for this paper’s argument isn’t exactly how Marya develops this new conscience, but that Tolstoy gave her one. Tolstoy does not care for any preconceptions about his characters. Many of his characters remain as open and searching as he himself was. As a result, something can click or go awry for them in an instant, and they can develop new personalities. Thus in the same way that “War and Peace” lacks a central plotline, we see that Tolstoy does not have a set agenda for Marya’s story. He develops her, as well as his other male and female, to his/her own unique tune.
This focus on organic essence is important to keep in mind when discussing Tolstoy’s views as they relate to feminism. One can rarely abstract one of Tolstoy’s characters to encompass the man’s view on any particular subject, which was very volatile anyway. What’s more important to note is how Tolstoy explores his characters and themes as an artist. That is, he is concerned with finding the truth behind them, and thus reading them with a preset frame in mind often does them injustice. In the case of Marya, we must first drop our preconceptions about the first half of her life to fully appreciate her second.
Marya eventually meets and falls in love with Nikolai. At a key moment in their relationship, Marya perceives his inner struggles and directly addresses them. Doing so jolts Nikolai out of his cynical stupor, and “For a few seconds they looked silently into each other’s eyes, and the distant and impossible suddenly became near, possible, and inevitable” (1144). In all of this, we see how Tolstoy develops Marya into a strong and capable woman. Her relationship to her father, does not define her development as a woman and as her own person.
