War and Peace readalong thread 2022 - thread 3

Thanks Channel. It hadn't occurred to me, or more accurately, I didn't know about that rule.

@SanFranBear The endnote in my copy says that only one of the two marriages could happen, as a marriage to a brother/sister-in-law was forbidden by the Church. That certainly wasn’t the case in 19th-century England: there’s a double brother-sister marriage in Nicholas Nickelby, for instance.

Hi SanFran! It seems a certainty that Nicolai is going to marry Marya. It ticks all the boxes. He seems to need someone to tell him what to do. I always felt that Sonya was going to be disappointed.

The last line of the chapter wouldn't fill you with optimism though, that he only felt dread. Here's hoping it will work out. Marya has been through enough.

Was away over the weekend so just caught up...

I'm very much liking the budding romance between Nikolay & Marya! And how fortuitous was that letter from Sonya - I sense wedding bells as soon as Marya is out of mourning! Might be a bit odd for brother & sister to be married to sister & brother - but then again, the aristocracy has always been a little inbred, whichever country its in?

26/09/22

Volume 4, Part 1, Chapter 7

•	As soon as news about Borodino makes it to Voronezh, Nikolai is antsy and wants to take off.

•	He goes to the church service in honor of the victory and sees Marya there.

•	She’s deep in prayer and doesn’t pay any attention to him.

•	When they are leaving, he comes up to her and tries to comfort her – because now she knows about Andrei. 

•	Afterwards, he thinks about how into her he’s becoming and regrets having committed himself to Sonya. All his thoughts are bubbling over with love for Marya.

•	He is overcome and starts to pray – for real, the way he saw Marya doing, not how he used to pray as a kid.

•	Just then he gets a letter from Sonya. She's calling off their engagement. He’s overjoyed that his prayers have been so immediately answered.

•	He gets another letter from his mom telling him about how Andrei is staying with the Rostovs, and how Natasha is taking care of him.

•	Nikolai shows the letter about Andrei to Marya, sees her off, and then goes back to his regiment.

25/09/22
Volume 4, Part 1, Chapter 6

•	It’s been a month since her dad died, so Marya is less overcome with guilt and grief than before. Plus, she’s been repressing all her feelings for Nikolai.

•	After coming to Moscow, she got a letter from Andrei telling her and the gang to head on over to Voronezh to stay with her aunt (her mother’s sister), who had pretty much hated old Prince Bolkonsky. (Oh, really? We like her already.)

•	The governor’s wife comes to talk to the aunt, and they agree to get the young people together quietly and see what shakes out.

•	Two days later, Nikolai is supposed to come visit Marya.

•	Marya is tense and nervous and doesn’t know how to act. Then she sees Nikolai and instinctively starts to be as graceful and pretty and captivating as anyone could be. Even Mlle. Bourienne is impressed, and she has the seductress act down cold.

•	Marya feels wonderful in Nikolai’s presence. He’s bowled over by her, too. But of course, for appearances, they have meaningless chitchat about nothing – about the war, about how Andrei’s son, Nikolushka, is doing (remember him?), and so on. They don’t talk about Andrei, since that’s an actual serious conversation and can’t be joked about (and they don’t even know yet that he’s been wounded at Borodino).

•	Afterward, Nikolai has some weird thoughts trying to picture a future life with Marya. Usually he can imagine a pretend home life – with Sonya for instance – but Marya is such an unknown quantity that his fantasies of married life don’t work. This worries him. Is it a good sign? A bad sign? It’s hard to tell, and the text doesn’t clue us in about what to think.

24/09/22
Volume 4, Part 1, Chapter 5

• All night long Nikolai keeps hitting on this woman right in front of her husband. It’s kind of gross.

•	Finally, the governor’s wife calls him away and tells him that Marya is in town. Seems everyone knows the whole story about how he rescued her from the peasants who didn’t want to let her leave her estate.

•	Nikolai is hemming and hawing, talking about Sonya, but at the same time he asks the governor’s wife to figure out a way to get the marriage ball rolling with Marya. He definitely has feelings for her, and it would be a financially good marriage that would make his mom happy.

•	It’s not the proper time for all this to be out in the open, since Marya is still in mourning, but the governor’s wife is all, um there are other, more discreet ways.

• Shmoop brain snack: back in the day, mourning wasn’t just a personal period of grief after someone died. It was an actual official-ish length of time when the survivors were expected to lead drastically restricted social lives. So no balls, no dinner parties, no theater or opera, and certainly no romance. Just a really quiet life at home. And how long would this last? Depends on how close the dead person was to the mourner. For Marya, since it’s her dad, the mourning period would be pretty long.

Volume 4, Part 1, Chapter 4

•	In hindsight, everyone seemed dedicated to doing their all for their country – one of those “greatest generations” that war creates. But in reality, plenty of people were just as worried about their own lives and small-time doings during the war.

•	Let’s check out one such person, our old friend Nikolai Rostov.

•	He’s sent ahead of his division to the city of Voronezh, way outside the fighting, to resupply. He goes happily, psyched to escape army life for a few weeks.

•	In Voronezh, he meets the head of the militia, then the city governor, whose wife turns out be one of his mom’s old friends.

•	Immediately he gets sucked into the little social scene there. All the ladies flirt with him and everyone makes a huge deal out of him. Which is just fine with Nikolai.

•	One night everyone gets together for an informal ball, and Nikolai chats up the wife of some local official. Her husband isn’t the greatest fan of this, but Nikolai plays it like they’re all three in on the joke together.

I like the irony that the Russian patriot doesn’t speak a word of Russian. I suppose being invaded by France must have been particularly traumatic to a Francophile elite.

Very unlikely, I think!

22/09/22
Volume 4, Part 1, Chapter 3

•	Nine days later, a messenger comes from Kutuzov to Emperor Alexander.

•	Basically, he tells the emperor the deal – that it was either lose Moscow and the army, or just Moscow.

•	Alexander takes it in stride.

•	Then the messenger says the army is raring to fight. Which is music to Alexander's ears.

•	Alexander gives a little speech about how, if he ever stops being emperor, he’ll go and be a peasant and eat potatoes. Unlikely, but still, good effort.

Ah...interesting.

Poor Hélène.

Certainly the BBC adaptation graphically portrayed Helena's death as a botched abortion attempt when she overdoses on poison given to her to induce birth prematurely.

Yes! I thought her death was treated dismissively. That makes sense. Thanks cassandre for that insight. * *

Oh god poor Helene. I was never a big fan of hers but I feel indignant now. How typical that the woman who sexually transgresses gets punished. It was certainly a failed abortion attempt IMO. She has finally found herself in a position where she can't carry on imperviously in society, keeping up appearances with her customary aplomb; her woman's body has let her down. Transgressing social norms can only happen up to a point.

I also find it upsetting, but fitting, that we don't get to witness the end of her story firsthand. We just find out through the gossip mill. It's as though society has closed in around her. In her case, social death and literal death come together.

Another one here who didn't get that first time round! Talk about reading inbetween the lines! It's more plausible than the angina story. I'm surprised and a bit sad that she felt driven to taking her own life.
As SanFran says,* *presumably the scandal was too great.

Oooh, Desdemona - do you know... I didn't get the whole 'pregnant, tried to abort, od'd' from the text but your summary makes so much sense. But I also think it's unlikely despite what they said (although angina also seems unlikely!) - I think Helene would've brazened it out if she'd fallen pregnant? Or maybe I'm misjudging the times and it was just about as bad as it could be - I mean, it could not have been her husbands?

21/09/22
Volume 4, Part 1, Chapter 2

•	It turns out Anna Pavlovna is right – the next day the letter from Kutuzov arrives declaring a big victory over the French in Borodino. Everyone is overjoyed.

•	Prince Vassily is all, see I told you Kutuzov is the man.

•	Later that day, though, a different piece of news arrives: Helene has died! The official story is that she had some kind of heart malady, but in private people tell the more likely story: she was pregnant and using the new doctor to induce a miscarriage. When Pierre didn’t respond to her letter and she realized there was no divorce coming, she overdosed on the meds the doctor was giving her and killed herself.

•	Three days later, news comes that Moscow is going to be abandoned, and Prince Vassily changes his tune again about Kutuzov.

Thanks for all the summaries. I got a bit bogged down in the last section but am back on track now.

I thought they were teeing up Helene and the dodgy doctor to kill her off, leaving Pierre guilt free to pursue Natasha. But I maybe very wrong!

I was wondering if she was pregnant, but I’m probably inferring too much.

I agree. I missed the St. Petersburg set too. They all seem to be a bit more exaggerated in their traits; the unsettling effect of the war, probably. I'm also wondering what's up with Hélène.

Nice to be back in the party scene - and given how far St Petersburg is from Moscow, I can finally understand why the war seems to far away now.

I wonder what is really up with Helene... I'm sure trying to be married to two men is stressful 🙄 but sounds like more than that.

And I know he's an idiot, but was nice to see Hippolyte sticking his foot in his mouth again (and loved his explanation!)

Last Volume! 20/09/22
Volume 4, Part 1, Chapter 1

1812

•	OK, let’s back up a bit to just before the battle of Borodino. Zoom away from Moscow and refocus on Petersburg.

•	On the day of the battle of Borodino, Anna Pavlovna is having one of her famous salons – this time featuring some bland patriotic letter from the head of the Petersburg Orthodox Church. Prince Vassily gets the honor of reading it because he supposedly has such a super fantastic reading voice. Mostly this means that he sometimes reads the words quietly and sometimes loudly, mostly at random.

•	Anyway, this is a good time to gossip about Helene, who is apparently so sick that she can’t go out in public. Not only that, she’s being treated by a new doctor, not her normal guy.

•	Everyone feels like this illness is mostly because she’s trying to marry two men at once, and there’s some veiled mockery.

•	But of course, since Prince Vassily (her dad) is there, and since her friend Bilibin sticks up for her a bit by saying that the new doctor is some hotshot from Spain, they leave it alone.

•	After the letter reading, Anna Pavlovna predicts that they’ll get news the next day.

It was an impulsive genuine act of kindness.

I thought so too. Irritating as she can be, I think that her heart is in the right place.