Welcome back everyone!

Part 3 of this book had a different mood for me. It took a break from some of the scandal and drama to dig a lot deeper into the character of Levin. There were multiple passages setting a mood of viewing the family life of many of our characters. This is where Tolstoy really shines as I can see each scene as vividly as if it were happening in front of me. I collected extensive quotes (This post will be particularly quote heavy.

Dolly

The opening of this part focuses a lot on Darya, who we have lost track of since the beginning of the book. She is off in the country for the summer and dealing with the spectrum of griefs and joys of parenthood. This also includes a reflection on her own childhood and the contrast of experiencing it as a lonely and anxious adult.

"The first days of her existence in the country were very hard for Dolly. She used to stay in the country as a child, and the impression she had retained of it was that the country was a refuge from all the unpleasantness of the town, that life there, though not luxurious—Dolly could easily make up her mind to that—was cheap and comfortable; that there was plenty of everything, everything was cheap, everything could be got, and children were happy. But now coming to the country as the head of a family, she perceived that it was all utterly unlike what she had fancied."

As Darya manages her children alone in the country we can see a portrait of her motherhood during precious moments with her family. Although she often seems stressed out she regards her family as ultimately good.

"Peaceful with six children Darya Alexandrovna could not be. One would fall ill, another might easily become so, a third would be without something necessary, a fourth would show symptoms of a bad disposition, and so on. Rare indeed were the brief periods of peace. But these cares and anxieties were for Darya Alexandrovna the sole happiness possible. Had it not been for them, she would have been left alone to brood over her husband who did not love her. And besides, hard though it was for the mother to bear the dread of illness, the illnesses themselves, and the grief of seeing signs of evil propensities in her children—the children themselves were even now repaying her in small joys for her sufferings. Those joys were so small that they passed unnoticed, like gold in sand, and at bad moments she could see nothing but the pain, nothing but sand; but there were good moments too when she saw nothing but the joy, nothing but gold."

And I could picture this as a Norman Rockwell painting or even Bessie Pease Gutmann picture.

"Darya Alexandrovna, who had always liked bathing herself, and believed it to be very good for the children, enjoyed nothing so much as bathing with all the children. To go over all those fat little legs, pulling on their stockings, to take in her arms and dip those little naked bodies, and to hear their screams of delight and alarm, to see the breathless faces with wide-open, scared, and happy eyes of all her splashing cherubs, was a great pleasure to her."

Throughout this part of the book I noticed a theme of Levin being the observer of these family moments, but we even get a moment of Darya observing Levin.

"Whatever faults Levin had, there was not a trace of hypocrisy in him, and so the children showed him the same friendliness that they saw in their mother’s face. On his invitation, the two elder ones at once jumped out to him and ran with him as simply as they would have done with their nurse or Miss Hoole or their mother. Lily, too, began begging to go to him, and her mother handed her to him; he sat her on his shoulder and ran along with her. “Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid, Darya Alexandrovna!” he said, smiling good-humoredly to the mother; “there’s no chance of my hurting or dropping her.” And, looking at his strong, agile, assiduously careful and needlessly wary movements, the mother felt her mind at rest, and smiled gaily and approvingly as she watched him."

This interaction was set up by a careless, and we are reminded "unfaithful" Stephan Arkadyovich who only brushed through the preparations for his family and paid no attention to details. Levin is another man indeed, who obsesses and frets over details. I noticed that Levin seems to be extraordinarily observant, and his frustrations seems to stem from finding so much faulty work without even having to make a deep investigation to find the faults. It's a great contrast to our fun loving Stephan in terms of who is managing their household and demonstrating masculine traits successfully.

Vronsky

We gained even more background on Vronsky than any previous Part of the book. Most of our insight is just him pining and carrying on about his indescribable and everlasting love for Anna.

But Vronsky sat down to have a singular day of reflection. And we learned many things. He lives off of an allowance from his mother, and he spends it frivolously and without aim. He also admits that although he’s been begging Anna to run away with him he has no plan as to how that would actually work.

"His mother, who had her own separate property, had allowed Alexey every year twenty thousand in addition to the twenty-five thousand he had reserved, and Alexey had spent it all. Of late his mother, incensed with him on account of his love affair and his leaving Moscow, had given up sending him the money. And in consequence of this, Vronsky, who had been in the habit of living on the scale of forty-five thousand a year, having only received twenty thousand that year, found himself now in difficulties."

We also find that he had a professional setback. He aimed high and turned down a stepping stone opportunity within the military. He has been living his life as if he finds this unimportant, because the next opportunity was sure to come along. But it hasn't. Now his peers are surpassing him and he is wayward, aimless, and jaded.

"And having, whether he liked or not, taken up for himself the position of an independent man, he carried it off with great tact and good sense, behaving as though he bore no grudge against anyone, did not regard himself as injured in any way, and cared for nothing but to be left alone since he was enjoying himself. In reality he had ceased to enjoy himself as long ago as the year before, when he went away to Moscow. He felt that this independent attitude of a man who might have done anything, but cared to do nothing, was already beginning to pall, that many people were beginning to fancy that he was not really capable of anything but being a straightforward, good-natured fellow."

I think this is an insight into why he's found such a fixation on conquering a married woman. Without career goals his only outlet for his testosterone is this sexual frustration. Have we ever heard of Vronsky doing anything physical either? All we know is that he got distracted before an important horse race and failed. Meanwhile Levin is mowing with his peasants and has the insight,

"You can’t imagine what an effectual remedy it (physical exercise/mowing) is for every sort of foolishness. I want to enrich medicine with a new word: Arbeitskur.” “Well, but you don’t need it, I should fancy.” “No, but for all sorts of nervous invalids... it’s a pleasure such as I have never known in my life. And there’s no harm in it, you know. Is there?” answered Levin.

Back to Vronsky though. He has a chat with an old friend who offers him some advice about work-life balance.

"“And here’s my opinion for you. Women are the chief stumbling block in a man’s career. It’s hard to love a woman and do anything. There’s only one way of having love conveniently without its being a hindrance—that’s marriage. How, how am I to tell you what I mean?” said Serpuhovskoy, who liked similes. “Wait a minute, wait a minute! Yes, just as you can only carry a fardeau and do something with your hands, when the fardeau is tied on your back, and that’s marriage. And that’s what I felt when I was married. My hands were suddenly set free. But to drag that fardeau about with you without marriage, your hands will always be so full that you can do nothing. Look at Mazankov, at Krupov. They’ve ruined their careers for the sake of women.” “What women!” said Vronsky, recalling the Frenchwoman and the actress with whom the two men he had mentioned were connected. “The firmer the woman’s footing in society, the worse it is. That’s much the same as—not merely carrying the fardeau in your arms—but tearing it away from someone else.” “You have never loved,” Vronsky said softly, looking straight before him and thinking of Anna. “Perhaps. But you remember what I’ve said to you. And another thing, women are all more materialistic than men. We make something immense out of love, but they are always terre-à-terre.”"

We can argue whether the final statement is true, but it's at least commonly repeated in men's red pill that women only love when you provide the masculine role or the finances. Someone points out to Vronsky that woman –the non-serious and non-marriage material flings, are baggage if his deepest passion is a career. If he wants the career he needs to choose. And if you want a family you need the right woman so that you can "have your hands free" for other matters. But Vronsky has never wanted marriage, and he’s unhappy now, so he should deduce that Anna is bad for him. This peer is trying to get Vronsky to figure out what he really values.

And after this one illuminating conversation he decides that maybe he should reconsider all this foolishness with Anna.

Anna

We again get to see Anna doing what I have to consider to be hamstering. She has anxiety, regrets, resolutions, judgements, and then fears and tears until she rationalizes through another absurd tangent. It is truly perpetual misery.

"She knew what had kept her from it, she knew that she had been ashamed. Her position, which had seemed to her simplified the night before, suddenly struck her now as not only not simple, but as absolutely hopeless. She felt terrified at the disgrace, of which she had not ever thought before. Directly she thought of what her husband would do, the most terrible ideas came to her mind. She had a vision of being turned out of the house, of her shame being proclaimed to all the world. She asked herself where she should go when she was turned out of the house, and she could not find an answer."

Yet when her husband gives her an out, she gets angry and calls him mean!!

"They say he’s so religious, so high-principled, so upright, so clever; but they don’t see what I’ve seen. They don’t know how he has crushed my life for eight years, crushed everything that was living in me—he has not once even thought that I’m a live woman who must have love. They don’t know how at every step he’s humiliated me, and been just as pleased with himself. Haven’t I striven, striven with all my strength, to find something to give meaning to my life? Haven’t I struggled to love him, to love my son when I could not love my husband? But the time came when I knew that I couldn’t cheat myself any longer, that I was alive, that I was not to blame, that God has made me so that I must love and live. And now what does he do? If he’d killed me, if he’d killed him, I could have borne anything, I could have forgiven anything; but, no, he.... How was it I didn’t guess what he would do? He’s doing just what’s characteristic of his mean character."

She really is stuck and so she goes to throw her lot in with Vronsky and she certainly doesn't get the pity party or comfort that she is seeking.

"She hoped that this interview would transform her position, and save her. If on hearing this news he were to say to her resolutely, passionately, without an instant’s wavering: “Throw up everything and come with me!” she would give up her son and go away with him. But this news had not produced what she had expected in him; he simply seemed as though he were resenting some affront."

And she has one clear thought that she quickly disregards

”When she thought of Vronsky, it seemed to her that he did not love her, that he was already beginning to be tired of her, that she could not offer herself to him, and she felt bitter against him for it.”

Meanwhile Vronsky is really only thinking about fighting.

The Duel

I must say that I love Alexey. I love his entire rationalization about why he shouldn’t participate in his wife’s completely ridiculous behavior. A duel! Alexey does refer to himself as a coward for fearing weapons, and mortal danger causing him unease, but I think he is exactly correct. What would a duel prove? What value would it add to the situation?

“What sense is there in murdering a man in order to define one’s relation to a guilty wife and son? I should still just as much have to decide what I ought to do with her. But what is more probable and what would doubtless occur—I should be killed or wounded. I, the innocent person, should be the victim—killed or wounded. It’s even more senseless.”

And Alexey is appropriately angry. He wants to punish her. But he’s correct that sometimes the best punishments are more subtle. And in some ways he starts punishing her immediately with his inattention. He even forgot that he demanded she arrive to him on Tuesday. I remember the pain that he was a feeling when he described in earlier chapters that Anna used to be so attentive to him, that she would have noticed a misplaced hair on his head.

I also though he really got a stinging insult in when he rejected her.

”I cannot be your wife while I…” she began. He laughed a cold and malignant laugh. “The manner of life you have chose is reflected, I suppose, in your ideas. I have too much respect or contempt, or both…I respect your past and despise your present…that I was far from the interpretation you put on my words.”

He’s saying many things here. Most literally that she disgusts him and that he’s not going to force her to “be his wife” in the intimate sense. He doesn’t want a physical relationship with her anymore. He says I have to much contempt for you to even want that. But what is even more touching is the beginning of that sentence, I have too much respect for…your past. He has too much respect for the Anna that was his wife in the past that he could never physically harm her or force her in that way. And for all of Anna’s efforts to call him mean, or say out loud or in her thoughts that she fears him, I’ve never seen any evidence of why. Alexey seems perfectly upstanding, to the point where he might even be BORING!

I don’t think he’s boring though. It reminds me of the advice, “When someone is openly rude and insulting to you act as if it doesn’t bother you, it will drive the other person crazy.” I feel like that’s what’s going on here. Alexey acts reasonable and Anna goes nuts.

”Alexey Alexandrovitch, to his surprise and delight, felt complete relief both from this pity and from the doubts and agonies of jealousy. He experienced the sensations of a man who has had a tooth out after suffering long from toothache. After a fearful agony and a sense of something huge, bigger than the head itself, being torn out of his jaw, the sufferer, hardly able to believe in his own good luck, feels all at once that what has so long poisoned his existence and enchained his attention, exists no longer, and that he can live and think again, and take interest in other things besides his tooth.”

On the other side of this question of a duel is Vronsky. He’s ready. He’s so ready I can just see the blood drain out of his face while Anna is dramatically catching him up on her troubles.

”But directly she had said this he suddenly drew himself up, and a proud and hard expression came over his face.”

”The one thing the husband had a right to was to demand satisfaction with a weapon in his hand, and Vronsky was prepared for this at any minute.”

Anna is trying to read his body language as she tried to cry about how awful her husband is for not publicly embarrassing her and kicking her out on the street…the very thing she feared the most upon waking in the morning. But now, with her husbands letter in hand (Boundaries!!)….

”Now while he held his letter in his hands, he could not help picturing the challenge, which he would most likely find at home today or tomorrow, and the duel itself, in which, with the same cold and haughty expression that his face was assuming at this moment he would await the injured husband’s shot, after having himself fired into the air. And at that instant there flashed across his mind the thought of what Serpuhovskoy had just said to him, and what he had himself been thinking in the morning—that it was better not to bind himself—and he knew that this thought he could not tell her.”

So now as to the question of the duel, her husband is disgusted with her and has deemed his life too valuable to duel, and Vronsky, itching for some masculine task, has decided that it’s possible that this isn’y worth it. And Vronsky had this creeping feeling,

>”He felt sorry for her, and he felt he could not help her, and with that he knew that he was to blame for her wretchedness, and that he had done something wrong.”

​

Anna’s Child

I just want to briefly point out that Anna’s child has now become some sort of accessory, or weapon, or lifeline. In contrast to the other beautiful portraits of peasant families – I’ll get back to that soon, Anna makes some interesting statements about her kid.

”but he knows that I won’t abandon my child, that I can’t abandon my child, that there could be no life for me without my child, even with him whom I love; but that if I abandoned my child and ran away from him, I should be acting like the most infamous, basest of women. He knows that, and knows that I am incapable of doing that.”

But her true intentions…

”This support was her son. In whatever position she might be placed, she could not lose her son. Her husband might put her to shame and turn her out, Vronsky might grow cold to her and go on living his own life apart (she thought of him again with bitterness and reproach); she could not leave her son. She had an aim in life. And she must act; act to secure this relation to her son, so that he might not be taken from her. Quickly indeed, as quickly as possible, she must take action before he was taken from her.”

We will see how this all turns out as the story progresses.

Family Life...and Death

Levin spends a bit more time observing other people’s families before having a reality check about his own family.

”The young wife worked easily, merrily, and dexterously. The close-packed hay did not once break away off her fork. First she gathered it together, stuck the fork into it, then with a rapid, supple movement leaned the whole weight of her body on it, and at once with a bend of her back under the red belt she drew herself up, and arching her full bosom under the white smock, with a smart turn swung the fork in her arms, and flung the bundle of hay high onto the cart. Ivan, obviously doing his best to save her every minute of unnecessary labor, made haste, opening his arms to clutch the bundle and lay it in the cart. As she raked together what was left of the hay, the young wife shook off the bits of hay that had fallen on her neck, and straightening the red kerchief that had dropped forward over her white brow, not browned like her face by the sun, she crept under the cart to tie up the load. Ivan directed her how to fasten the cord to the cross-piece, and at something she said he laughed aloud. In the expressions of both faces was to be seen vigorous, young, freshly awakened love”

And this…

”When Levin went into the kitchen to call his coachman he saw the whole family at dinner. The women were standing up waiting on them. The young, sturdy-looking son was telling something funny with his mouth full of pudding, and they were all laughing, the woman in the clogs, who was pouring cabbage soup into a bowl, laughing most merrily of all. Very probably the good-looking face of the young woman in the clogs had a good deal to do with the impression of well-being this peasant household made upon Levin, but the impression was so strong that Levin could never get rid of it.”

This chapter which started with themes about frolicking and naughty and adorable children ends on the somber note of death. I think Levin seeing his brother again is really going to be a catalyst for him to take action again towards becoming the family man that he wants to be. His sickly brother, the opposite of the vibrant healthy laborers he observes and admires all day, is the reminder that time is short and we are all moving towards death. What does Levin value and what makes a worthy life.

”Both of them now had only one thought—the illness of Nikolay and the nearness of his death—which stifled all else. But neither of them dared to speak of it, and so whatever they said—not uttering the one thought that filled their minds—was all falsehood. Never had Levin been so glad when the evening was over and it was time to go to bed. Never with any outside person, never on any official visit had he been so unnatural and false as he was that evening. And the consciousness of this unnaturalness, and the remorse he felt at it, made him even more unnatural. He wanted to weep over his dying, dearly loved brother, and he had to listen and keep on talking of how he meant to live.”

Conclusions:

Well, that got quite long! I hope you are enjoying the book and I LOVE the discussions that follow. What are your thoughts on Part 3 of the book?

Part 4 is much shorter than the previous 3 parts, but I’m going to wait 4 weeks to talk about Part 4, so I’m aiming for April 9-10. I hope everyone enjoys the beginning of Spring!