Thursday, October 17, 2013

Love and Marriage

During our reading of the novel, we've talked about good matches and good marriages. There are very few examples of a successful, happy marriage so far. The first one that comes to mind is the Count and Countess Rostov. Other than that, we have the Bergs and Boris and Julie. More often than not, Tolstoy shows us an example of an unhappy match, whether it be financial or emotional unhappiness. Andrew didn't love Lise, Pierre doesn't love Helene (although he thought he did at one point), and things don't look good for Andrew and Natasha. What is Tolstoy trying to say with this? Does he believe that the vast majority of marriages are unsuccessful? Is marrying for love (or lust) a bad idea? Would it be better for characters to marry for money, and try to be a good team rather than our idea of a good couple?

6 comments:

  1. As I was reading your post I kept finding myself wondering if we could take a very mathematical approach to finding "Tolstoy's marriage laws." (Somewhat like Newton's laws, except for marriage recipes.) We'd probably have to read the entire book again, but we could take each character and generalize a few categories: their defining traits, their life goals, the reason for their desire to marry. Then, we could look at the combination of various characters and observe the outcome. While this would certainly be an interesting experiment (okay, probably not all that worth it), Stella, your point about how more often than not the marriages are unsuccessful leads me to believe that there is no precise logical formula determines whether a match between x and y will be good. Based on that conclusion (which I honestly would need more evidence to actually call a "conclusion"), I think that Tolstoy is very much in favor of taking time to decide whether the marriage will be good, such as Andrew and Natasha are doing. I don't think that he is necessarily saying that Andrew and Natasha's marriage will be good (that we have yet to discover), but he does reveal the benefits of waiting to see for themselves whether the prospect of a good marriage is favorable.

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  2. Very good question Stella. I believe that Tolstoy does believe in marriage for love to some degree because in the beginning of the novel the Count and Countess Rostova are very happy in their loving relationship. However, I believe Tolstoy wants the reader to pay careful attention to the difference between marrying for love and for lust. Helene and Pierre's marriage was based almost entirely on lust, and we all know how badly that's going... I think overall Tolstoy believes what makes a good match compatible personalities, regardless of mutual attraction. This is why Berg and Vera seem to be working out so well. Their relationship is not based on mutual attraction, but mutual desires in life.

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  3. Good question, Stella. After reading your post, I start to consider more about Tolstoy’s intention of writing marriage in War and Peace. I agree with you that most of good matches are based on lust or money, and marriage based on love ends up with tragedy. But these marriages are limited in the circle of aristocrats instead of normal people. Rather than believing aristocrats’ marriage is a reflection of ordinary ones’, I think Tolstoy again tries to use marriage to point out the discrepancy between aristocrats and normal people. I hope my understanding is not false.

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  4. I think Tolstoy present these different couples and throws in the love & lust twist to express his personal views & experience with marriage. Any marriage, good or bad, has its unhappy sides when both partners weather differences in their values and goals. There was 16-year difference between Tolstoy & his wife, Sofya. They had different personalities and different ideas on parenting. So in a way, his personal troubles are showcased through the characters in War and Peace to show the realities of married life.

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  5. These are the times I wish that I could just email Tolstoy and ask him for clarification. Unfortunately, that is not the case. I almost feel like this topic has less to do with Tolstoy's overall feelings toward marriage and more to do with him trying to have an accurate historical portrayal of what marriage meant at the time. Maybe it's a degree of both. Due to his extreme effort at accuracy in the war sections, however, I can't help but think that indeed, a good portion of all this negativity toward marriage is just in attempts to accurately portray it.

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  6. No marriage in War and Peace can be "happy" if not "successful". All the couples who could have been happy, such as Boris/Natasha and Nicholas/Sonya, are not together because they are not good matches. As we see from the book, it's almost impossible to marry both for love and for money. Maybe the Count and Countess Rostov did it when they were young and they are the only happy and successful couple so far. The Bergs are more like business partners-- they're a good match, but I doubt that they enjoy their marriage. Tolstoy is ironic about the Bergs as a good team, but he writes about them as if their marriage situation is acceptable and even popular at their times. Using the example of the Bergs, Tolstoy criticizes the general idea of "good match".

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