Beet
Atlas Star
Posts: 28,917
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« Reply #1 on: July 30, 2022, 11:36:27 PM » |
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Well from the early drafts, she was clearly written to be this devil-creature by Tolstoy, and that was his intent. However, from a more enlightened sensibility we can see that she is a basically good person, whose sexual life was retarded and prematurely frozen by a too-early marriage, seduced, and then trapped by a sexist legal and social system that refuses her the right to see her son or to have any place in society for seeking a divorce, which ultimately makes her a martyr. The novel stands as a great indictment of patriarchal society, IMO. She is one of the great figures of literature for sure.
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