How It Feels To Be The Wife Of Lev Tolstoy

Sofiya Tolstaya (Bers) was in a marriage with Lev Tolstoy from the year 1862 to 1910 and gave birth to 13 of his children. Threw all her life, she was writing her diaries since 11 years old and destroyed all of them right before the marriage, with the feeling that she doesn’t need them anymore. From this moment, she always would be able to share all her thoughts and feelings with her loved one, with her husband. Nevertheless, diaries were opened again for writing only two weeks after the wedding, and from that moment she was writing all the time in it, till the year 1910, when her husband passed away. She was writing after each fight or after any worries on her heart and tragic situations. Therefore, her diaries are quite gloomy and sad, but thanks to them we know a lot about Lev Tolstoy’s marriage, him as a husband, their family life, and his wife’s inside feelings.

When they got married, Sofiya was 18 years old and Lev was 34. Before Lev’s decision for marriage, he had a lot of mistresses and romances with different women. All the romantic experiences he was writing and describing in his diaries and he was considered that it would be honest for his wife to know all about it. So he gave them to Sofia right after the wedding ceremony and asked to read them all. After all those pages she was totally horrified and with full eyes of tears. She was strongly depressed by that and had a hard feeling that all her dreams are ruined. She was giving all her life, all her first and last to Him, but she self was just “another”. She saw his unmarried past as filthy and since that moment never could forget this, it always was a reason for a lot of conflicts for all their future life.

The only thing that still was holding her – was a dream about children. View of a child was so truly clean and pure, so as it was not available in any way to see those things in her husband, she hoped that child’s bright soul will cover everything and will bring happiness for her and into this marriage. Unfortunately, even in the fact that they did had 13 children, seven of them died, which left a deep scar on Sofiya’s heart.

The married couple lost their son Piotr in 1873, when he was one year old, after one and a half year, passed away Nikolay, in 1886 was gone Alesha, who was just four years old, only after two hours of living left Varechka, daughter Maria died when she was 35 years old and at the end of Sofiya’s life, she lost her son Andrey as well. But the strongest sorrow brought for Sofiya was the death of little Ivan, the 13th child, the last and youngest one, who died when he was seven. He was the most loved one by everyone in the family, after his death, she wrote: “My dear Vanechka died in the evening, at eleven o’clock, o my God and I am still alive!” (S.T.” Diaries”1862-1910, chapter 1895, page 15).

Another thing that was holding marrieds from each other on mental distance was a view on the “woman question”. Sofiya was very sad by Lev’s words about that. He was against women’s freedom and their equal rights, confident that even if a woman is into teaching, arts, or medicine, it all falls apart when she finds her real destination, which is marriage and sexual connection. Those words were painful for Sofiya, she felt angry, totally disagreed, and said that her husband is a pessimistic cynic. “That’s made me be disappointed by my husband and from now on, to love him less”, (S.T. “Diaries” 1862-1910, chapter 1898, page 19). She was more than sure, that all his thoughts about the women, he got from his unmarried experience, when he for a long time was not interested in woman’s soul, but just in body connection and now she was the person, who need to suffer because of that.

There were also bright spots in a life with genius and famous writer. Sofiya Tolstaya already had the greatest education from everything that women could get in that time, and as she lived with such a talented person, she always developed herself in different areas and wanted to be always as educated as her husband. She read a lot, was very interested in art and music, educated herself also in the fields like literature, philosophy, and politics.

And still, no matter all the hurtful moments Sofiya loved Lev, with all her heart, with a lot of patience, from the first day till the last. In 1863 she wrote: “Levochka (endearment name for Lev) pushed me to feel that you cannot be satisfied just by marriage’s life and by wife or husband, but you need something else, something to do”, under this note, Lev wrote with his hand in her’s diary: “Nothing else needed than you. Levochka is lying”.

 

 

 

 

 

Sources:

• Sudakova, A. S. (2018, August 17). 8 цитат из дневников Софьи Толстой. Arzamas. https://arzamas.academy/mag/576-tolstaya

• Sofia Tolstaya, S. T. (2017). Дневники. 1862–1910 [E-book]. Издательство «Захаров». https://mybook.ru/author/sofya-tolstaya/dnevniki-18621910/