War & Peace book review Part II
Read Part I

[NOTICE: SPOILERS COMING. DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU PLAN ON READING WAR & PEACE AND WANT TO BE SURPRISED]

Photo: Count Tolstoy, with hat.jpg from the Wikimedia Commons
Copyright: Public Domain

Continuing on with where I left off last entry, another character whom the fitting-into-the-adult-world-in-the-way-you-were-expected-to-but-its-okay-because-as-a-kid-you-didn’t-necessarily-understand-it-all thing happens to is the heroine Natasha.

As a young girl she and the eventual kiss-ass-corporate-ladder-climber Boris Drubetskoys promise they will marry. It does not happen, partially because they are both in positions where they need to marry for money. It also doesn’t happen because Natasha simply sees through Borist to the boring person he is.

She then falls in love with Andre, only to squander it all for a trist with Anatole that was thwarted. Following the humiliation she looks to lead a life of ruin for the rest of her days, when she runs into Andre again! They make up, he dies, and she marries the guy she should’ve been with all along, Pierre.

She marries the one with the most money as her mother would’ve had it, but he also was by far the one who truly loved her the most. The thing with Andre was nice, but he wasn’t man enough to stand up to his dying father for her, so he wasn’t really worth it. She also had her rebellious time with Anatole, planning to give up everything for “love” and run away.

Yet, despite literally choosing to throw everything she’s been given away, she was prevented and at the end of the novel seems better for it.

What is Tolstoy trting to say with all these inevitable eventualities for strong minded youths? I imagine it connects up with the close of the second epilogue, relating to the “false sensation of freedom” and accepting a “dependence that we cannot feel.” (Page 1358, Penguin 2006 Red Classic Edition)