
Family Happiness
by Leo Tolstoy
'Family Happiness' Summary
The story is narrated by Masha. After a courtship that has the trappings of a mere family friendship, Masha's love grows and expands until she can no longer contain it. She reveals it to Sergey Mikhaylych and discovers that he also is deeply in love. If he has resisted her it was because of his fear that the age difference between them would lead the very young Masha to tire of him. He likes to be still and quiet, he tells her, while she will want to explore and discover more and more about life. Ecstatically and passionately happy, the pair immediately engages to be married. Once married they move to Mikhaylych's home. They are both members of the landed Russian upper class. Masha soon feels impatient with the quiet order of life on the estate, notwithstanding the powerful understanding and love that remains between the two. To assuage her anxiety, they decide to spend a few weeks in St. Petersburg. Sergey Mikhaylych agrees to take Masha to an aristocratic ball. He hates "society" but she is enchanted with it. They go again, and then again. She becomes a regular, the darling of the countesses and princes, with her rural charm and her beauty. Sergey Mikhaylych, at first very pleased with Petersburg society's enthusiasm for his wife, frowns on her passion for "society"; but he does not try to influence Masha. Out of respect for her, Sergey Mikhaylych will scrupulously allow his young wife to discover the truth about the emptiness and ugliness of "society" on her own. But his trust in her is damaged as he watches how dazzled she is by this world. Finally they confront each other about their differences. They argue but do not treat their conflict as something that can be resolved through negotiation. Both are shocked and mortified that their intense love has suddenly been called into question. Something has changed. Because of pride, they both refuse to talk about it. The trust and the closeness are gone. Only courteous friendship remains. Masha yearns to return to the passionate closeness they had known before Petersburg. They go back to the country. Though she gives birth to children and the couple has a good life, she despairs. They can barely be together by themselves. Finally she asks him to explain why he did not try to guide and direct her away from the balls and the parties in Petersburg. Why did they lose their intense love? Why don't they try to bring it back? His answer is not the answer she wants to hear, but it settles her down and prepares her for a long life of comfortable "Family Happiness".
Book Details
Author

Leo Tolstoy
Russia
Born to an aristocratic Russian family in 1828, Tolstoy is best known for the novels War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1878),often cited as pinnacles of realist fiction. He first achieved litera...
More on Leo TolstoyListen/Download Audiobook
- Select Speed
Related books

Ada Merton by Francis J. Finn, S.J.
It is a captivating novel that takes readers on a heartfelt journey through the life of its titular character. Written by the esteemed author in the 2...

Eugene Oneguine by Alexander Pushkin
Eugene Onegin is a novel in verse written by Alexander Pushkin. Onegin is considered a classic of Russian literature, and its eponymous protagonist ha...

Sanctuary by Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton's early novella focuses on Kate Orme, who begins the story happily in love with her fiance, only to discover that he hides a terrible se...

The Woman of the Wood by Abraham Merritt
The story follows a group of adventurers who set out to find a mysterious woman who is said to live in the heart of a dark and dangerous forest. Set...

The Sorcery Club by Elliott O’Donnell
Leon Hamar and his friends were out-of-work and starving in San Francisco after the firm they worked for went out of business. Leon acquired a strange...

The Mistress of Shenstone by Florence Louisa Barclay
When Lady Myra Ingleby learns by telegram that her husband has been killed in the war, the sadness if not true grief that assails her along with the s...

A Daughter of the Land by Gene Stratton-Porter
Independent Kate Bates resents the fact that, as the youngest of a large family, she is expected to stay at home and help her parents while her brothe...

Not for the Night-Time by Theo Gift
The story follows the lives of two sisters, Ann and Dorcas, who are caught up in a web of family secrets and deceit. When their estranged brother retu...

The Story of Ab by Stanley Waterloo
This is the story of Ab, a man of the Age of Stone, who lived so long ago that we cannot closely fix the date, and who loved and fought well

Jerry by Jean Webster
Jerry is the humorous story of a young man's attempt to win his lady. Jerry is waiting for his friends at a hotel in Italy, and is bored and lonely. W...
Reviews for Family Happiness
No reviews posted or approved, yet...