Tolstoy and his sister’s unhappy marriage

I’ve been reading Rosamund Bartlett’s biography of Tolstoy and something caught my attention: Tolstoy’s sister Masha left her husband in summer 1857. 

“None of the Tolstoy brothers had particularly liked Valerian Petrovich, but they had not known quite how depraved he was. It now emerged that when he was not away on hunting expeditions, or continuing to spend periods living with his peasant mistress, who had borne him several children, he had been a cruel and despotic husband.” (Ch.6) 

No longer wanting to be part of a “harem”, she left him and moved to her part of the Pirogovo estate, becoming neighbour to her brother Sergey. Lev Tolstoy went there the day after he arrived home from his European travels. 

In 1861, in Aix-les-Bains, Masha met the Swedish Viscount Hector Victor de Kleen, with whom she spent the next 2 winters in Algiers. 

“Her brothers learned they were living together when she made a trip back to Russia in the summer of 1862, just when Tolstoy was about to get married. The following autumn, fearing their censure, she wrote from Geneva to tell them she had given birth to a little girl. Both Tolstoy and his brother Sergey had fathered illegitimate children themselves, and were sympathetic. Tolstoy hastened to reassure Masha of their support, and resolved to try to help her. In January 1864 he and Sergey met with Valerian Petrovich, who acknowledged his responsibility in the breakdown of the marriage and agreed to a divorce. Tolstoy obtained the necessary permission from the bishop, and then sent the documents for Masha to sign and return. She was scared to set things in motion, however, as Valerian Petrovich sent her a threatening letter, telling her a divorce would ‘harm his position and bring him a great deal of unpleasantness’…” (Ch.9) 

That sheds a different light on Anna Karenina, does it not? 

Because of his sister’s situation, Tolstoy had to do research on divorce laws and other related details in Russia, a lot of which went into the novel. Masha didn’t need to go through the divorce from her husband, however, because the viscount returned to Sweden to marry someone richer, leaving Masha mired in debt. His family persuaded him to leave her, “a woman with four children who would also soon bear the stigma of divorce”. Rosamund Bartlett continues: 

“Masha returned to Russia and Valerian Petrovich died the following year, but she remained deeply unhappy in her personal life, having left her daughter Elena behind in Switzerland. As she wrote in the desperate letter to her brother in 1876 in which she likened herself to Anna Karenina, she knew of no single woman from their background with the ‘courage’ to admit to the existence of an illegitimate child.” (ibid.)

Masha’s situation was certainly one of the influences on the depiction of Anna Karenina, as Rosamund Bartlett suggests, but I think some of her unhappy marriage also went into Dolly, Tolstoy’s sympathetic and moving portrayal of a woman worn out by several children and unloved by her husband.

“It was Aunt Toinette, however, who had perhaps the greatest influence on Tolstoy’s views about adultery. In his memoirs, in which he writes about her at length, Tolstoy records telling her late one night about an acquaintance of his, whose wife had been unfaithful and absconded. When he expressed the view that his friend was probably glad to be shot of his wife, he describes how Toinette at once assumed a serious express and urged instead forgiveness and compassion. This is precisely the sentiment Tolstoy voices through his unsung heroine Dolly in Anna Karenina. When Karenin tells Dolly about his predicament at the end of Oblonsky’s dinner party in Part Four of the novel, she pleads with him not to bring shame and disrepute on his wife by divorcing her, as it would destroy her. Toinette’s general view, that one should hate the crime, but not the person, was essentially Tolstoy’s, and holds the key to why Anna Karenina is one of the most compelling and complex literary characters ever created.” (ibid.) 

What I love about Rosamund Bartlett’s biography is that she portrays Tolstoy as a complex man, with both flaws and admirable qualities, and full of contradictions. There’s no denying that Tolstoy had conservative views about a woman’s place in society, and that he was increasingly difficult to his wife Sonya. But he was no mere misogynist—a misogynist like many people claim Tolstoy was would not have been able to write, with so much compassion and sympathy, Anna and Dolly (and Natasha, Marya, Sonya, even Lise… in War and Peace).

The biography also shows that throughout his life, Tolstoy constantly tried to do something about inequality and injustice in Russia (such as his efforts in education, his schools for peasant children, his ABC book, etc.). Tolstoy, despite many of his wrong-headed and maddening views, was in some other ways admirable.