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maplemoodDid I love this book as a whole? Absolutely. Did I love the (first, plot-relevant) epilogue? ...Not so much.
Which...okay. This is completely a matter of opinion and my opinions on marriage and family and female characters and the characterization of female characters are obviously not going to match up with the opinions of a 19th-century radical Christian pacifist dude (though admittedly Tolstoy didn't really get into full-blown radical Christian pacifism until years after he'd written War and Peace [at which point he disowned both it and Anna Karenina for, apparently, not being true to reality], you can still see the seeds of it sprouting early on). It's not that I think the epilogue is badly written or that it doesn't work, exactly; as far as the plot goes and as far as Tolstoy's opinion of his characters goes, I can see how it does work. (A little bit. Maybe. If you couldn't tell already I've got a big bias against the epilogue because I kind of absolutely hated it.) It just doesn't work for me. Which, again, completely subjective! But I also suspect a lot of readers who aren't 19th century dudes have problems with the epilogue, because boy howdy, is it a doozy.
So: Pierre and Natasha are married, Natasha is wrapped up in her kids and in making sure Pierre doesn't so much as look at another woman to the extent that she basically isn't Natasha anymore, and this is...not a good thing, necessarily, I sort of get the feeling that Tolstoy is almost a little contemptuous of her, but at the same time he presents this new mindset as an inevitable change that all God-fearing, baby-wanting women will go through (and if you don't happen to be a God-fearing woman who wants babies...your only option in this book is Hélène, who all-too-conveniently dies from suicide/a botched abortion. Fun times!) Even though Natasha is now obsessively jealous for no good reason, (unless there is a good reason; it could be an issue with the translation I read or an issue with me reading too much into this, but Tolstoy seems to be playing it coy with the question of whether or not Pierre might have been involved with another woman) she and Pierre still do love each other and seem happy. I can't buy it, though. I just can't. Partly I think it's because Tolstoy's own relationship with his wife got famously ugly, so I'm really not inclined to trust any of his views on marriage, and he's obviously working out some of those views in War and Peace. And yeah, of course that isn't fair, and of course Tolstoy had no way of knowing how badly his marriage would turn out. Still. Natasha and Pierre are apparently happy. Good for them. I hope it lasts.
Princess Countess Mary and Nicholas have a similarly apparently-happy, actually-low-key-disturbing marriage going on; they've also had a bunch of kids whom Nicholas has no emotional connection with until they start walking and talking--in the translation I read he calls their new baby a "lump of flesh"--and he's now apathetic, if not downright hostile towards his nephew, Andrei's son. And yeah, even Mary doesn't love her nephew as much as her biological children, which I don't buy for a second since throughout the rest of the book she was the main hand in raising him and clearly loved him just like she would her own child, and also this is Mary we're talking about, but whatever. More understandably, she's not happy with the fact that Sonya, who's still in love with Nicholas and always will be, is part of the household.
So. Sonya. Can we talk about Sonya? Realistically she would have probably still lived with the family and become the spinster aunt; that's fine. Not awesome, not great, not satisfying. It's fine. What drove me up the wall was the fact that it isn't enough that she has to be the spinster aunt--she has to be the spinster aunt no one really likes. Not Mary, not Nicholas, not the old Countess Rostova, not even Natasha. In fact, Natasha and Sonya are barely together (if they're together at all, and I don't think they are, but since it's been a week or two since I finished the book and my memory isn't the best [and also I'm too lazy to get it off my shelf and check] I'll hedge my bets) in the epilogue. I don't get the vibe that they're friends anymore, let alone surrogate sisters. Mary's more or less become Natasha's confidante and best friend and shoved Sonya right out of the way--narratively speaking; again, this is Mary we're talking about. Considering how different Natasha and Sonya's lives end up being, plus the fact that Sonya is ultimately helpless in her position in the family and Natasha isn't, it's maybe not surprising that they drifted apart. It's just sad. Awfully, terribly sad.
Boiling all my problems with the epilogue down to a single point, I think what bugs me the most about it is this sense that these characters aren't the same people we got to know through the whole rest of the story, not in the sense of them growing and changing but in the sense of, I'm not even sure, Tolstoy getting tired of them? Tolstoy slapping his ideas of marriage and family life on a set of characters who are capable of so much better? Sexism? It's this odd, uncomfortable ending tacked onto a book that I otherwise loved--like I said before, I'm biased and looking at at with a completely different pair of eyes, and I'm also obviously not a literary critic or a Tolstoy expert. I still didn't like it. I don't think I'll ever like it. I don't have to like it. I can love the rest and be forever bitter about...well, everyone, but especially Sonya. And I will be forever bitter about Sonya.
Which...okay. This is completely a matter of opinion and my opinions on marriage and family and female characters and the characterization of female characters are obviously not going to match up with the opinions of a 19th-century radical Christian pacifist dude (though admittedly Tolstoy didn't really get into full-blown radical Christian pacifism until years after he'd written War and Peace [at which point he disowned both it and Anna Karenina for, apparently, not being true to reality], you can still see the seeds of it sprouting early on). It's not that I think the epilogue is badly written or that it doesn't work, exactly; as far as the plot goes and as far as Tolstoy's opinion of his characters goes, I can see how it does work. (A little bit. Maybe. If you couldn't tell already I've got a big bias against the epilogue because I kind of absolutely hated it.) It just doesn't work for me. Which, again, completely subjective! But I also suspect a lot of readers who aren't 19th century dudes have problems with the epilogue, because boy howdy, is it a doozy.
So: Pierre and Natasha are married, Natasha is wrapped up in her kids and in making sure Pierre doesn't so much as look at another woman to the extent that she basically isn't Natasha anymore, and this is...not a good thing, necessarily, I sort of get the feeling that Tolstoy is almost a little contemptuous of her, but at the same time he presents this new mindset as an inevitable change that all God-fearing, baby-wanting women will go through (and if you don't happen to be a God-fearing woman who wants babies...your only option in this book is Hélène, who all-too-conveniently dies from suicide/a botched abortion. Fun times!) Even though Natasha is now obsessively jealous for no good reason, (unless there is a good reason; it could be an issue with the translation I read or an issue with me reading too much into this, but Tolstoy seems to be playing it coy with the question of whether or not Pierre might have been involved with another woman) she and Pierre still do love each other and seem happy. I can't buy it, though. I just can't. Partly I think it's because Tolstoy's own relationship with his wife got famously ugly, so I'm really not inclined to trust any of his views on marriage, and he's obviously working out some of those views in War and Peace. And yeah, of course that isn't fair, and of course Tolstoy had no way of knowing how badly his marriage would turn out. Still. Natasha and Pierre are apparently happy. Good for them. I hope it lasts.
So. Sonya. Can we talk about Sonya? Realistically she would have probably still lived with the family and become the spinster aunt; that's fine. Not awesome, not great, not satisfying. It's fine. What drove me up the wall was the fact that it isn't enough that she has to be the spinster aunt--she has to be the spinster aunt no one really likes. Not Mary, not Nicholas, not the old Countess Rostova, not even Natasha. In fact, Natasha and Sonya are barely together (if they're together at all, and I don't think they are, but since it's been a week or two since I finished the book and my memory isn't the best [and also I'm too lazy to get it off my shelf and check] I'll hedge my bets) in the epilogue. I don't get the vibe that they're friends anymore, let alone surrogate sisters. Mary's more or less become Natasha's confidante and best friend and shoved Sonya right out of the way--narratively speaking; again, this is Mary we're talking about. Considering how different Natasha and Sonya's lives end up being, plus the fact that Sonya is ultimately helpless in her position in the family and Natasha isn't, it's maybe not surprising that they drifted apart. It's just sad. Awfully, terribly sad.
Boiling all my problems with the epilogue down to a single point, I think what bugs me the most about it is this sense that these characters aren't the same people we got to know through the whole rest of the story, not in the sense of them growing and changing but in the sense of, I'm not even sure, Tolstoy getting tired of them? Tolstoy slapping his ideas of marriage and family life on a set of characters who are capable of so much better? Sexism? It's this odd, uncomfortable ending tacked onto a book that I otherwise loved--like I said before, I'm biased and looking at at with a completely different pair of eyes, and I'm also obviously not a literary critic or a Tolstoy expert. I still didn't like it. I don't think I'll ever like it. I don't have to like it. I can love the rest and be forever bitter about...well, everyone, but especially Sonya. And I will be forever bitter about Sonya.