Family happiness

It is difficult to say whether the one narrated by Tolstoy in this novel is the physiological evolution of any conjugal love; certainly the strong feeling that binds Masha, the young protagonist, to her beloved Sergey is transformed, through time, habit, and silence, into a quiet disposition of mind centered on being parents rather than spouses. It is a well-known parable, yet Tolstoy offers it as a model of the familial happiness he never stopped seeking for himself. The young Masha acquires on her own skin the realization that joy lies not in the "life of the great world," but within the family: in this way she becomes the bearer of Tolstoy's answer to the question of the meaning of being a woman, just as talk of women's emancipation was beginning to take hold in Europe.