ABSTRACT

As the years passed, the defects in the Countess Tolstoy's character that had at first been latent, grew steadily more pronounced. No longer even trying to understand her husband's ideas, in order to gain her own ends she deluded herself into believing that it was her duty to her family to thwart him in every possible way; and became more and more subject to moods of self-pity and self-justification. "Everyone, Leo Nikolaevich as well as the children, who follow him like a flock of sheep, has come to think of me as a scourge," she recorded on October 25th, 1886. "After throwing on me the whole responsibility of the children and their education; household duties, money matters and all the other material things, which they all make much greater use of than I ever do, they come along, and, with cold, official and pious expressions, tell me to give a horse to a peasant, or some money or some flour, or this, that or the other...." There were painful occasions when she deliberately refused. "At dinner they asked me for some money to give to some old woman and to that thief Ganya. The request was made to me by Liova through the girls. I was hungry, and annoyed that everybody was late for dinner, and didn't want to give any money for the thief; so although I had a few roubles left, I told them I had no money. But later on I felt ashamed, and after finishing my soup, I went and got some." 56