- Now a little recap of Natasha and Pierre’s marriage.
- Almost immediately after getting married, they have four kids. Natasha goes totally into wife-and-mother mode.
- What with nursing her kids, dealing with the house, and taking care of her family, she has no time for society.
- This isn’t surprising to those who know her because it's the life she’s wanted all along.
- Natasha also totally lets herself go and doesn’t take much care of her appearance. She’s not in the business of seducing her husband anymore.
- She doesn’t care about questions of women’s rights or suffrage – she’s just totally, wholly engrossed in the idea of her family, which she values above her marriage. This goes a little bit against the usual thinking of the time, that aristocratic children should be farmed out to nannies, tutors, and boarding schools and not be raised by their parents so much.
- Pierre is completed whipped. That’s not Shmoop’s language – it’s Tolstoy’s.
- He’s given up society too, doesn’t look at other women, and just devotes all of his time to the family and the home.
- In exchange, he gets to have his way at home as much as possible, and Natasha does everything just the way he likes it.
- What do you think about this arrangement?