War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [751]
The subject that absorbed Natasha fully was her family—that is, her husband, who had to be kept in such a way as to belong entirely to her, to the household; and her children, whom she had to carry, give birth to, nurse, and bring up.
And the more she entered into the subject that absorbed her, not with her mind, but with her whole soul, with her whole being, the more that subject expanded under her attention, and the weaker and more insignificant her own forces seemed to her, so that she concentrated them all on one thing, and still had no time to do everything that seemed necessary to her.
Discussions and arguments about women’s rights, about the relations between spouses, about their freedom and rights, though they had not yet been called “questions,” as they are now, were the same then as they are now; but these questions not only did not interest Natasha, but she decidedly did not understand them.
These questions, then as now, existed only for those people who see in marriage nothing but the pleasure the spouses get from each other, that is, nothing but the beginnings of marriage, and not its whole significance, which consists in the family.
These arguments and present-day questions, similar to the question of how to get as much pleasure as possible from a dinner, did not exist then, as they do not exist now, for people for whom the purpose of a dinner is nourishment and the purpose of marriage is the family.
If the purpose of a dinner is to nourish the body, then someone who suddenly eats two dinners will perhaps achieve greater pleasure, but will not achieve his purpose, because his stomach will not digest two dinners.
If the purpose of marriage is the family, then someone who wishes to have many wives or husbands will perhaps get much pleasure, but in any case will have no family.
If the purpose of a dinner is nourishment, and the purpose of marriage is the family, then the whole question is solved simply by not eating more than the stomach can digest and not having more wives and husbands than are needed for a family, that is, one of each. Natasha needed a husband. A husband was given her. And the husband gave her a family. And not only did she see no need for another, better husband, but, as all her inner forces were directed at serving this husband and family, she could not even imagine and saw no interest in imagining how it would be if it were different.
Natasha did not like society in general, but she valued all the more the society of her relations—Countess Marya, her brother, her mother, and Sonya. She valued the society of the people to whom, disheveled, in a dressing gown, she could come striding out of the nursery with a joyful face and show a diaper with a yellow instead of a green stain, and hear comforting words that the baby was now much better.
Natasha let herself go to such a degree that her clothes, her hair, her words spoken out of place, her jealousy—she was jealous of Sonya, of the governess, of any woman, beautiful or not—were habitual subjects of jokes among all those close to her. The general opinion was that Pierre was under his wife’s heel, and in fact it was so. From the very first day of their marriage, Natasha had announced her demands. Pierre was very surprised by his wife’s view, which was completely new to him, that every minute of his life belonged to her and the family; Pierre was surprised by his wife’s demands, but was flattered by them and submitted to them.
Pierre’s subjection consisted in his not daring, not only to flirt, but even to talk smilingly with another woman, not daring to go to clubs or dinners just to pass the time, not daring to spend money on whims, not daring to leave for long periods of time except on business, in which his wife also included his intellectual pursuits, of which she understood nothing, but to which she ascribed great importance. In exchange for all that, Pierre had the full right at home to