Truth Must Be Common to All: Relationships Between the Sexes in War and Peace

The seminal feminist philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft placed the issue of women's education at the center of her famous treatise A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. She spells out the consequences of failing to educate women, especially with regards to morality and marriage. Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace explores the relationships between the sexes amongst the nineteenth-century Russian gentry, not dissimilar to the eighteenth-century English who were the focus of Wollstonecraft's critiques. Natasha, young and naive, and Hélène, socially skilled and cunning, provide detailed illustrations of women's intelligence in the novel. Natasha falls victim to Anatole partially due to Hélène's imprudent intervention, and her growth in maturity results from caring for the wounded Andrei. Hélène uses her intelligence to manipulate the social game for her desired result, such as escaping her marriage. While both men and women suffer the consequences of these women's actions, the text is not critical of the underlying dynamic that caused them. Tolstoy's novel provides examples of exactly what Wollstonecraft said would result if women were not educated, proving her point that he does not seem to agree with.

Mary Wollstonecraft summarized her argument, saying: "Contending for the rights of woman, my main argument is built on this simple principle, that if she be not prepared by education to become the companion of man, she will stop the progress of knowledge and virtue; for truth must be common to all."[1] She defines education as "an exercise of the understanding as is best calculated to strengthen the body and form the heart. Or, in other words, to enable the individual to attain such habits of virtue as will render it independent."[2] Education is moral formation as well as intellectual, since virtue depends on the use of the intellect. Wollstonecraft laments that her fellow women "are only anxious to inspire love, when they ought to cherish a nobler ambition, and by their abilities and virtues exact respect."[3] She claims that "elegance is inferior to virtue, that the first object of laudable ambition is to obtain a character as a human being, regardless of the distinction of sex; and that secondary views should be brought to this simple touchstone."[4] Women ought to be educated because education is personal formation, the shaping of the intellect and will.

Education is thus necessarily aimed at cultivating the humanity common to both men and women, setting the foundation for their relations. Disparate education, such as women only being instructed about their domestic duties, will show itself in marriage. Wollstonecraft regards marriage highly "as the foundation of almost every social virtue," but refers to its practice as "legal prostitution," because women "marry for a support."[5] If women are nothing except beautiful, they will be "made ridiculous and useless when the short-lived bloom of beauty is over."[6] She considers the consequences for men: "How can [men] then expect women, who are only taught to observe behavior, and acquire manners rather than morals, to despise what they have been all their lives laboring to attain?"[7] Unless men and women share virtue and intellectual interests, they are ill-prepared to form the friendship that Wollstonecraft insists is a vital part of marriage. "When women are once sufficiently enlightened to discover their real interest," then marriage will become "the calm satisfaction of friendship, and the tender confidence of habitual esteem."[8]

In War and Peace, Natasha exemplifies part of what Wollstonecraft predicted would happen when women are not educated, and this plays out in her rejecting Andrei for Anatole. Wollstonecraft lamented that "[women] spend many of their first years of their lives in acquiring a smattering of accomplishments; meanwhile strength of body and mind are sacrificed to libertine notions of beauty, to the desire of establishing themselves . . . by marriage."[9] Natasha is immature even for her age and never receives praise for her intellect as she does for feminine accomplishments like singing. She enjoys "testing her power" with the household staff for entertainment, and anticipates her expanding social horizons as she enters society.[10]

It is in this context that she meets Andrei. The genesis of their relationship is told from his perspective; Natasha's feelings are not mentioned until he proposes, when she tells her mother, "He alone is now dearer to me than anything in the world."[11] The reader is never told why she loves him, and maybe Natasha does not even know. When she catches Anatole staring at her at the opera, she enjoys his admiration, but "his presence made her feel constrained, hot, and oppressed. . . . [S]he felt with fear that between him and her that barrier of modesty which she had always felt between herself and other men was not there at all."[12] Despite being struck by this sense of immodesty, she is not guarded against him or wary of his intentions, which are hardly honorable.

Anatole is able to take advantage of Natasha's naiveté, even if he did not perceive it with malintent. Without the anchor of prudence, which would have been formed if she were properly educated, Natasha takes Hélène's encouragement as moral guidance: "'So she knows I'm betrothed, so she and her husband, Pierre, the upright Pierre,' thought Natasha, 'have talked and laughed about it. So it's nothing at all.'"[13] However, she is uneasy: "She did love Prince Andrei—she clearly remembered how strongly she loved him. But she also loved Anatole, that was beyond doubt. 'Otherwise how could all this have happened?'"[14] There is as little explanation for why she loves Anatole as there was for Andrei; the only evidence is that she was taken in. She breaks off the engagement in a letter to Andrei's sister, not even addressing him directly.[15] The family's intervention prevents her from eloping with a man already married, and after some time, she recognizes her own foolishness.

The catalyst for Natasha's maturation is her reconciling with and caring for the wounded Andrei. Convinced of her need to see him, she enters his room as he reflects on divine love.[16] When his sister arrives, Marya recognizes on Natasha's face "an expression of love, of boundless love for him, for her, for everything that was close to the man she loved, an expression of pity, of suffering for others, and a passionate desire to give all of herself to help them." This is a decisive conversion towards selflessness and wisdom, towards loving disinterestedly and not because Andrei admires her. While she is friends with Pierre throughout, her growth lays the groundwork for their becoming romantically involved.

Pierre's wife Hélène, however, embodies another aspect of Wollstonecraft's point. Gifted intellectually, her lack of formation means she resorts to cunning manipulation. In Wollstonecraft's words,

“The little knowledge which women of strong minds attain, is, from various circumstances, of a more desultory kind than the knowledge of men . . . led by their dependent situation and domestic employments more into society, what they learn is rather by snatches; and as learning is with them, in general, only a secondary thing, they do not pursue any one branch with that persevering ardor necessary to give vigor to the faculties, and clearness to the judgement.”[17]

 As the story unfolds, Hélène's lack of admiration for Pierre becomes clear. She mocks the idea of having children with him, and, when asking about the duel, insults his intelligence and agreeableness.[18] They are badly matched, and this shows on both sides.

Hélène is chiefly characterized by her social status, which she wields masterfully to her desired effect. At the opera, "Hélène's box was filled and surrounded on the parterre side by the most well-born and intelligent men, who seemed to vie with one another in their wish to show everyone that they were acquainted with her."[19] Tolstoy is clear about her duplicitous social skill: "Countess Bezukhov was entitled to her reputation as an enchanting woman. She was able to say what she did not think, and especially to flatter, with perfect simplicity and naturalness."[20] She can play the social game well, shown in her connecting Anatole with Natasha at his request. "The thought of bringing her brother together with Natasha amused her," and she shows no scruples in playing her part, despite Natasha's age and Anatole's existent marriage and selfish intentions.[21] Whether this results from moral weakness or ignorance is unclear.

She uses her intelligence later on her own behalf: "Hélène was faced with a new task in her career: to maintain her close relations with them both without offending either. What would have seemed difficult and even impossible for another woman, never once did Countess Bezukhov stop and think—clearly it was not in vain that she enjoyed the reputation of a most intelligent woman."[22] Her intelligence is singled out along with her questionable morals: "[she], like a truly great person who can do whatever she likes, at once placed herself in the position of being right, in which she sincerely believed, and all the others in the position of being wrong."[23] She uses her intelligence to get what she wants, without any scruples regarding Pierre.

Hélène and Natasha are only one side of the story; Wollstonecraft's point extends to men also. If women are not educated, men will seek companionship outside the home: "Their husbands acknowledge that they are good managers, and chaste wives; but leave home to seek for more agreeable . . . society."[24] Andrei's and Pierre's marriages are loveless, which they recognize as a failing.[25] While the circumstances of Andrei's marriage are unknown, Pierre is notably passive in his own case. He notices Hélène's beauty, and "felt that Hélène not only could, but must be his wife, that it could not be otherwise. . . . he did not even know whether it would be good (he even felt that it was not good for some reason), but he knew that it would be."[26] He only notices her for her beauty, and it does not occur to him to seek anything else, despite the premonition that it will end badly. Andrei is drawn to Natasha for similar reasons. He asks her to dance "because she was the first pretty woman his eyes fell on; but as soon as he put his arm around her slender, mobile, quivering waist, and she began to move so close to him and smile so close to him, the wine of her loveliness went to his head."[27] Andrei comes to love her because Natasha shows herself to "not have the general society stamp on [her] . . . with her astonishment, joy, and timidity, and even her mistakes in French."[28]

Pierre's marriage ostensibly ends with the duel; he so mistrusts his wife that he believes the rumors and begins to hate her.[29] While Natasha's falling in with Anatole affects Andrei directly, it disturbs Pierre also. He connects Natasha with Hélène, saying women are "all the same" and lamenting his and Andrei's position of "[having] the sad lot of being connected with a vile woman."[30] However, this sentiment does not last for either of them. In Andrei's final days, "he vividly pictured Natasha to himself, not as he had pictured her before, with her loveliness alone, which brought him joy; but for the first time he pictured her soul. And he understood her feeling, her suffering, shame, repentance."[31] While this leads to reconciliation, it underscores the tragedy of Andrei just now attending to her soul. He now sees her with divine love. Pierre realizes something similar, albeit much sooner. Confronted with Natasha's grief, he is moved by "pity, tenderness, and love," and despite her claim that she is unworthy, tells her, "Were I not I, but the handsomest, brightest, and best man in the world, and I was free, I would go on my knees this minute and ask for your hand and your love."[32]

The novel ends with their newly formed romance, seemingly the only one with a real chance of happiness. The story shows what happens when men and women are not formed with an attentiveness to their common humanity, even if this is unintentional on Tolstoy's part. The only relations between the sexes in War and Peace (besides familial ones) are romantic, and often they are badly matched, living separate lives and having little love for each other. While this dynamic is not praised, there is also little to suggest that Tolstoy saw it as anything other than normal. Wollstonecraft critiques her culture's prioritization of women's beauty over their intelligence, and Tolstoy is guilty of the same error. Women are not desired by the men in War and Peace for much more than their beauty, and never for their intelligence. The most telling passage concerning women's intelligence comes at the end of the novel:

“Now, as [Pierre] told it all to Natasha, he experienced that rare pleasure which is granted by women when they listen to men—not intelligent women, who, when they listen, try either to memorize what they are told in order to enrich their minds and on occasion retell the same thing, or else to adjust what is being told to themselves and quickly say something intelligent of their own, worked out in their small intellectual domain; but the pleasure granted by real women, endowed with the ability to select and absorb all the best of what a man has to show.”[33] 

Tolstoy suggests that women's intelligence consists in memorization of what they are told, or a half-hearted listening with the intent of showcasing their own intelligence. Either women's intelligence has its source in men, rather than the woman herself, or it serves a self-congratulatory function. In distinguishing between "intelligent women" and "real women," he suggests that intelligence is not proper to her, and that it is not sought by men in conversing with women. Pierre is affirmed by Natasha's listening, not her potential for contributing to a dialogue. Tolstoy proves Wollstonecraft’s point, perhaps unintentionally, because he shows the extremely flawed relationships that emerge from a culture that does not educate women comparably.

Tolstoy's novel provides examples of what Wollstonecraft predicted would happen if women were not educated, proving her point that he does not seem to agree with. Natasha and Hélène suffer from this lack of formation in opposite ways: Natasha's naiveté makes her victim of a predator, and Hélène uses her untrained intelligence to manipulate others. This affects not only them but also the men they are in relationships with, Pierre and Andrei. While the novel ends with one promising relationship, the text does not critique the dynamic that led all the others to collapse, suggesting that Tolstoy himself did not perceive the truth that Wollstonecraft preached twenty years before the novel is set.     

[1] Mary Wollstonecraft, letter to M. Talleyrand-Périgord, in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, ed. Candace Ward (Garden City: Dover Publications, 2023), 2.

[2] Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, ed. Candace Ward (Garden City: Dover Publications, 2023), 20.

[3] Ibid., 6.

[4] Ibid., 8.

[5] Ibid., 72, 152.

[6] Ibid., 9.

[7] Ibid., 120.

[8] Ibid., 105-06.

[9] Ibid., 9.

[10] Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (New York: Vintage Books, 2007), 518.

[11] Ibid., 478.

[12] Ibid., 565.

[13] Ibid., 571.

[14] Ibid., 574.

[15] Ibid., 579.

[16] Ibid., 921-22.

[17] Wollstonecraft, 22.

[18] Tolstoy, 318, 320.

[19] Ibid., 562.

[20] Ibid., 563.

[21] Ibid., 570.

[22] Ibid., 833.

[23] Ibid.

[24] Wollstonecraft, 67.

[25] Tolstoy, 328, 317.

[26] Ibid., 206.

[27] Ibid., 460.

[28] Ibid., 461.

[29] Ibid., 313.

[30] Ibid., 590.

[31] Ibid., 921.

[32] Ibid., 599.

[33] Ibid., 1117.