Takeaways of Tolstoy: How Are We Compelled to Live A Certain Way?

It will not have escaped any reader of Late Romantic(1) literature that there is a certain glamour in the doomed: from Werther’s sorrows to Emma Bovary’s undoing, literature presents us with ineffable truths and inherent tragic flaws that push its characters towards tragedy – and, for readers like myself, this romantic idealism is the attraction(2). Russia’s national laureate(3) is the perfect example of this, crafting novels in which the self wrestles with choice to find themselves without any. Tolstoy’s characters are so fully realised that, although they drive towards an ‘inevitable’ ending (including possibly the most famous inevitability in all of literature), no reader could see a different way of acting for the specific characters in his stories. Yet, despite this ‘great tragedy’ railroad, in Tolstoy’s work we see a kernel of ourselves reflected back; by reading his books we can develop an understanding of what it means to make choices when we ‘live in a society’ or have made incorrect choices in the past. Now as much as ever(4) the lessons in his books – lessons he wrote for his own damn self to learn – are something we can turn to for relief from choices we ourselves are compelled to make.

Pierre vs Anna

Tolstoy did not consider ‘War & Peace’ a novel. Truly, anybody who’s carried a copy around in their handbag for months will agree – it’s a behemoth. Despite its status as a history, polemic or other literary function, though, it presents us with one of literature’s great heroes: Pierre Bezukhov. Pierre is clearly analogous to Tolstoy himself, and his growth through the events of the novel sees him move from a drunken, foolish city boy to an idealist, living in the country, grown past covetous desire and instead fully present in the current moment.

By contrast, Anna Karenina is a traditional melodramatic tragedy. The heroine Anna Arkadyevna does everything right for the first 30 years of her life, then she chooses actions that both embody and contradict the person she has been shaped into. In both phases of her life, she acts with an emotional honesty based on what she perceives she wants, but these wants are necessarily clouded by those around her. Tolstoy may not like the comparison, but she is clearly also analogous to him in his later life, as he began to find social convention increasingly disdainful.

What can possibly be the connection between these two characters beyond having a kernel (like most fictional characters) of their creator inside them? For me, they demonstrate a human struggle in decision making – a reaction to social pressures or the ability to shrug them off, two complicated relationships with growing up and growing into yourself that favour ‘doing the right thing’ in worlds where there is no clear path to such a ‘right thing,’ and a nobility in sticking to choices even when they are wrong, or seen as wrong. This is, perhaps, best exemplified in their first marriages: both are mistakes, but made with different motivations: Anna’s marriage to Karenin is a duty she is proud to work on, bearing a son who is her life’s work, (5) but ultimately a marriage motivated propriety and duty – this would be true even if she were married to any other character, but the focus of Karenin’s character being duty and propriety exemplifies this for the eyes of the reader. In contrast, although Pierre’s marriage to Helene is tied up in his complicated feelings about who he ‘should’ be now that he is titled and shows his attempt to use her cultural capital and social graces to move with more mellifluous ease through Petersburg society, the reason for his marriage is that he wants to bang the gorgeous Helene and she wants his money – a truly terrible foundation for a happy lifelong union (6), and his obvious mistake can be justified by observers.

Ultimately, the connection between Anna and Pierre is about living through your choices. Although they may be awakened to their new states by wildly different things (for Pierre, it is war with Napoleon, politics, and experiencing poverty; for Anna it is passion and a good and attentive man who acknowledges her selfhood and autonomy), Tolstoy unravels his characters in front of his reader until we see the true motivations underlying their search for happiness. In the end, Pierre chooses happiness, Anna does not. In many ways this is attainable for Pierre that is not for Anna – sexist society does not judge him in the same way (although his class and blunt conduct is a factor in how he is seen), but fundamentally his wife dies, Natasha’s lover dies, and he has the means and opportunity to run away to the country to live quietly and idylically with his second wife. Anna does not benefit from such serendipity, but the novel still contrasts her with Kitty: Kitty owns her mistakes, chooses correctly the second time, after growing up, and gets the countryside idyll with Levin; Anna does not recognise that choosing happiness means saying goodbye to her old life, the one she outwardly flourished in, and instead tries to straddle both worlds. It is attempting to hold onto the world and values that causes her initial poor motivations (7) and not creating a new model of happiness outside of the validation of external onlookers and social contracts that ultimately causes her to self-destruct. She does the same as Pierre Bezhukov, learns as he does that what society taught them to chase was hollow, yet continues to seek happiness through her old means, with her eyes open.

Tolstoy’s Contemporaries

There are similar characters in the books of Hugo and Dickens (8): Pierre Grignoire (Hugo’s own stand in for Hunchback) chooses happiness and runs away from responsibility; Pip and Estella act, too, like characters from Tolstoy – Estella by rebelling against social expectations, and Pip by returning to his origins having grown. Like Tolstoy, these writers are giving their readers something between a Bildungsroman and an epic – novels which span enough time for characters to undergo deep and fundamental change. What is different about Anna and Pierre, though, is that their choices and journeys are the fundamental purpose of Tolstoy’s books: whilst themes of selfhood and social pressure are themes found in his contemporaries’ work, Tolstoy fabricated rich inner lives for his characters and put them in common circumstances that tested their values. Pip and Estella were conditioned by the social groups that birthed and raised them, but never chose to break out for their own happiness, or even consider what that might look like. Pierre chooses happiness in the form of a sentient goat. These other characters are formed by, but not reliant on, their social exposure, and there are other factors in their stories than just their internal turmoil.

What That Means for Us

Ultimately, the greatest bequest from Romanticism is the question of choice. Is it illusory? Are we compelled by society? What would it mean to choose happiness above sensory pleasure and reject aesthetic and dramatic experience? The Romantic condition is to be drawn to our own toxic traits, to inhabit our worst selves even as we know how to be better, and to form an internal identity isolated from those around us, yet still acknowledging the power of social pressures – and especially romantic entanglements – on the formation of that self. Now, as much as a hundred years ago, god is dead and man is trampling nature; we make positive choices and see no positive change in the world; we still find ourselves pressured and influenced (perhaps more than ever, if we consider the insular potential for online spaces) by the social groups we are in. Romanticism is what I turn to when I feel trapped in a world that doesn’t recognise or appreciate me, and I learned the following from Tolstoy:

• The annoying person from your friend group (Pierre) will grow up and mature better than the socially adept one (Anna). Allow yourself to grow, mature, and admit you were wrong instead of trying to stand in your own shoes from a decade ago.
• No choice is final. You may use new experiences or insights to develop your thinking – and don’t be afraid to step into the new choice wholeheartedly, though, as it’s the only way to make it work.
• Don’t listen to me. Listen to yourself. Make art for yourself, write journals, and tell your own dang self what to think. You can use art – your own or others’ – to work that out. Write yourself as a character. Tolstoy can do it.

(1) consider ‘late romantic’ a stand in for ‘canonical’ here I suppose, as many books referenced will hold a debatable place in the specific pantheon of romanticism.

(2) look at something like Moulin Rouge – a campy and explicit engagement with the themes – for an explanation. The ‘La Boheme’ story finds a home in almost every generation.

(3) yes, I prefer Pushkin too. But broadly he is less well known, I think it’s fair to give Tolstoy the title instead.

(4) the world is on fire and my only joy is books

(5) yay 19th century womanhood

(6) Although honestly wasn’t that the basis of all marriages at the time? Tolstoy’s other work (hello, Kreutzer Sonata…) shows us how much he thought marriage in its contemporary state was utterly untenable, and maybe a big ‘ole terrible idea in general. Idk, I’m not wading into ‘Tolstoy was a sexist’ waters, that’s not what this is about.

(7) This is one interpretation. This book is BEEFY and there are many more. If you come for me, do it politely and with citations.

(8) straight dead white men were not the only people grappling with these ideas – see Emily Brontë, Oscar Wilde – but generally speaking it is people at the top of society, with fewer chances of facing any kind of oppression, who focus on them. Romantic themes do pop up in the works of many writers of colour, and women writers especially, but they tend to have an intersectional connection to other social observations that the privileged few would miss.

On This Topic:

• If you read long books and like your friends to notice, may I suggest StoryGraph rather than Goodreads? Am*zon are evil, please move away from them as much as possible.
• I will say it over and over again – Djali is not a Disney addition to Hunchback… he’s actually maybe the most book accurate part of the film? He is there, in the original, the source of the greatest footnote in literature, in which Victor Hugo says to his reader ‘no no this is not an unbelievable plot point my dudes, it really happened in the middle ages’
• One of my favourite indie songs finds its inspiration in Dickens, perhaps you’ll like it too?

To-Do:

• Paint nails. Don’t walk around looking like trash.
• Organise bookshelf to stave off a great double-stacked collapse. I will not be returning any books to the library, though – bite me.
• Find sewing twine so I can make buttonholes.

Today’s Culture:

• By the time you read this I will be packed and ready to go to Hebden Bridge for the Sylvia Plath Literary Festival. So exciting!! Join me there!
• Currently on a soup diet. I eat soup every evening now. It appears to be working.
• October is apparently new music month. New Hozier? Taylor and Lana collab?? Arctic Monkeys??? If you see me I won’t be able to hear you over my headphones.