Anna Karenina

evin had been married three months. He was happy, but not at all in
the way he had expected to be. At every step he found his former dreams
disappointed, and new, unexpected surprises of happiness. He was happy;
but on entering upon family life he saw at every step that it was
utterly different from what he had imagined. At every step he
experienced what a man would experience who, after admiring the smooth,
happy course of a little boat on a lake, should get himself into that
little boat. He saw that it was not all sitting still, floating
smoothly; that one had to think too, not for an instant to forget where
one was floating; and that there was water under one, and that one must
row; and that his unaccustomed hands would be sore; and that it was
only to look at it that was easy; but that doing it, though very
delightful, was very difficult.

As a bachelor, when he had watched other people’s married life, seen
the petty cares, the squabbles, the jealousy, he had only smiled
contemptuously in his heart. In his future married life there could be,
he was convinced, nothing of that sort; even the external forms,
indeed, he fancied, must be utterly unlike the life of others in
everything. And all of a sudden, instead of his life with his wife
being made on an individual pattern, it was, on the contrary, entirely
made up of the pettiest details, which he had so despised before, but
which now, by no will of his own, had gained an extraordinary
importance that it was useless to contend against. And Levin saw that
the organization of all these details was by no means so easy as he had
fancied before. Although Levin believed himself to have the most exact
conceptions of domestic life, unconsciously, like all men, he pictured
domestic life as the happiest enjoyment of love, with nothing to hinder
and no petty cares to distract. He ought, as he conceived the position,
to do his work, and to find repose from it in the happiness of love.
She ought to be beloved, and nothing more. But, like all men, he forgot
that she too would want work. And he was surprised that she, his
poetic, exquisite Kitty, could, not merely in the first weeks, but even
in the first days of their married life, think, remember, and busy
herself about tablecloths, and furniture, about mattresses for
visitors, about a tray, about the cook, and the dinner, and so on.
While they were still engaged, he had been struck by the definiteness
with which she had declined the tour abroad and decided to go into the
country, as though she knew of something she wanted, and could still
think of something outside her love. This had jarred upon him then, and
now her trivial cares and anxieties jarred upon him several times. But
he saw that this was essential for her. And, loving her as he did,
though he did not understand the reason of them, and jeered at these
domestic pursuits, he could not help admiring them. He jeered at the
way in which she arranged the furniture they had brought from Moscow;
rearranged their room; hung up curtains; prepared rooms for visitors; a
room for Dolly; saw after an abode for her new maid; ordered dinner of
the old cook; came into collision with Agafea Mihalovna, taking from
her the charge of the stores. He saw how the old cook smiled, admiring
her, and listening to her inexperienced, impossible orders, how
mournfully and tenderly Agafea Mihalovna shook her head over the young
mistress’s new arrangements. He saw that Kitty was extraordinarily
sweet when, laughing and crying, she came to tell him that her maid,
Masha, was used to looking upon her as her young lady, and so no one
obeyed her. It seemed to him sweet, but strange, and he thought it
would have been better without this.

He did not know how great a sense of change she was experiencing; she,
who at home had sometimes wanted some favorite dish, or sweets, without
the possibility of getting either, now could order what she liked, buy
pounds of sweets, spend as much money as she liked, and order any
puddings she pleased.

She was dreaming with delight now of Dolly’s coming to them with her
children, especially because she would order for the children their
favorite puddings and Dolly would appreciate all her new housekeeping.
She did not know herself why and wherefore, but the arranging of her
house had an irresistible attraction for her. Instinctively feeling the
approach of spring, and knowing that there would be days of rough
weather too, she built her nest as best she could, and was in haste at
the same time to build it and to learn how to do it.

This care for domestic details in Kitty, so opposed to Levin’s ideal of
exalted happiness, was at first one of the disappointments; and this
sweet care of her household, the aim of which he did not understand,
but could not help loving, was one of the new happy surprises.

Another disappointment and happy surprise came in their quarrels. Levin
could never have conceived that between him and his wife any relations
could arise other than tender, respectful and loving, and all at once
in the very early days they quarreled, so that she said he did not care
for her, that he cared for no one but himself, burst into tears, and
wrung her arms.

This first quarrel arose from Levin’s having gone out to a new
farmhouse and having been away half an hour too long, because he had
tried to get home by a short cut and had lost his way. He drove home
thinking of nothing but her, of her love, of his own happiness, and the
nearer he drew to home, the warmer was his tenderness for her. He ran
into the room with the same feeling, with an even stronger feeling than
he had had when he reached the Shtcherbatskys’ house to make his offer.
And suddenly he was met by a lowering expression he had never seen in
her. He would have kissed her; she pushed him away.

“What is it?”

“You’ve been enjoying yourself,” she began, trying to be calm and
spiteful. But as soon as she opened her mouth, a stream of reproach, of
senseless jealousy, of all that had been torturing her during that half
hour which she had spent sitting motionless at the window, burst from
her. It was only then, for the first time, that he clearly understood
what he had not understood when he led her out of the church after the
wedding. He felt now that he was not simply close to her, but that he
did not know where he ended and she began. He felt this from the
agonizing sensation of division that he experienced at that instant. He
was offended for the first instant, but the very same second he felt
that he could not be offended by her, that she was himself. He felt for
the first moment as a man feels when, having suddenly received a
violent blow from behind, he turns round, angry and eager to avenge
himself, to look for his antagonist, and finds that it is he himself
who has accidentally struck himself, that there is no one to be angry
with, and that he must put up with and try to soothe the pain.

Never afterwards did he feel it with such intensity, but this first
time he could not for a long while get over it. His natural feeling
urged him to defend himself, to prove to her she was wrong; but to
prove her wrong would mean irritating her still more and making the
rupture greater that was the cause of all his suffering. One habitual
feeling impelled him to get rid of the blame and to pass it on to her.
Another feeling, even stronger, impelled him as quickly as possible to
smooth over the rupture without letting it grow greater. To remain
under such undeserved reproach was wretched, but to make her suffer by
justifying himself was worse still. Like a man half-awake in an agony
of pain, he wanted to tear out, to fling away the aching place, and
coming to his senses, he felt that the aching place was himself. He
could do nothing but try to help the aching place to bear it, and this
he tried to do.

They made peace. She, recognizing that she was wrong, though she did
not say so, became tenderer to him, and they experienced new, redoubled
happiness in their love. But that did not prevent such quarrels from
happening again, and exceedingly often too, on the most unexpected and
trivial grounds. These quarrels frequently arose from the fact that
they did not yet know what was of importance to each other and that all
this early period they were both often in a bad temper. When one was in
a good temper, and the other in a bad temper, the peace was not broken;
but when both happened to be in an ill-humor, quarrels sprang up from
such incomprehensibly trifling causes, that they could never remember
afterwards what they had quarreled about. It is true that when they
were both in a good temper their enjoyment of life was redoubled. But
still this first period of their married life was a difficult time for
them.

During all this early time they had a peculiarly vivid sense of
tension, as it were, a tugging in opposite directions of the chain by
which they were bound. Altogether their honeymoon—that is to say, the
month after their wedding—from which from tradition Levin expected so
much, was not merely not a time of sweetness, but remained in the
memories of both as the bitterest and most humiliating period in their
lives. They both alike tried in later life to blot out from their
memories all the monstrous, shameful incidents of that morbid period,
when both were rarely in a normal frame of mind, both were rarely quite
themselves.

It was only in the third month of their married life, after their
return from Moscow, where they had been staying for a month, that their
life began to go more smoothly.