While reading War and Peace, Andrei broke my heart a million times, and so of course he was my favorite character in the book and now one of my favorite characters in all of literature. Although I knew Andrei’s ending prior to reading, I was hoping against hope for my favorite character’s contentment. Alas, *spoiler alert!* it wasn’t to be. He died after forgiving the woman he loved, Natasha Rostova, for betraying his trust.
I never fully liked Natasha until after she nursed Andrei. I wasn’t sure if she was Andrei’s equal match, but if she made him happy, I was willing to accept her. And seeing how Andrei was nearly only happy when he was in her presence, I was rooting for them to find peace in each other. Before I read the novel, I watched the film version with Audrey Hepburn and Mel Ferrer playing Natasha and Andrei respectively, and I was definitely rooting for Andrei to end up with Audrey’s Natasha. I absolutely hated that Natasha ended up with Pierre, whose character I was never fond of until his POW journey and was still iffy about after. Since I was prepared by the film and because of Tolstoy’s genius characterization, I was more able to accept Natasha and Pierre’s ending. But I couldn’t help but wonder: what if Andrei had recovered from his wound and Natasha and Andrei had ended up together instead? How would their marriage differ from Natasha’s and Pierre’s that we glimpsed in the First Epilogue?
Andrei was always looking for a sense of purpose and searching for the ideal, whether it be the ideal man, the ideal way of life, the ideal happiness, etc., but he was always left disappointed. Would he have been disappointed with marriage to Natasha?
Andrei went through many changes throughout the novel (as all the characters did), but something he consistently maintained was his difficulty to become close to anyone. At the beginning of the novel, Andrei esteemed glory above all else; he even admits he holds it above his relationship with his wife, sister, and father. He finds no validation in the frills of high society. He was in pursuit of this narcissistic glory until wounded at Austerlitz, when he realized that “All is vanity, all is falsehood, except that infinite sky.” He realizes his own insignificance and the insignificance of his thirst for glory. At that moment, Andrei “was only glad that people were standing near him, and only wished that they would help him and bring him back to life, which seemed to him so beautiful now that he had today learned to understand it so differently” (230). As he regains consciousness, he has no thought of glory, but keeps thinking of the tenderness he feels for his family (232). He recognizes the importance of relationships. But he quickly loses that feeling and falls into a depression.
That feeling is very momentarily awakened in him during a conversation with Pierre. At this point in time, Pierre has joined the freemasons and believes he has found a true purpose in helping others. In his depression, Andrei believes otherwise:
You lived for yourself and say you nearly ruined your life and only found happiness when you began living or others. I experienced just the reverse. I lived for glory. — And after all what is glory? The same love of others, a desire to do something for them, a desire for their approval. — So I lived for others and not almost, but quite, ruined my life. And I have become calmer since I began to live only for myself. (303)
As Paul Krause points out, “Andrei is not yet aware that he lived for himself prior to Austerlitz and still lives for himself after Austerlitz.” But during this conversation, Andrei gets a glimpse of that feeling he experienced at Austerlitz. It almost immediately disappears yet again, but Andrei now knows that awakening is somewhere inside of him, and he wants to find it again.
When Andrei first meets Natasha, he thinks, “For her I might as well not exist” (346). He again realizes his own insignificance, but this time, it makes him feel a pang (345). He wants to be significant to her. She makes him feel alive again: “In his soul there suddenly arose such an unexpected turmoil of youthful thoughts and hopes, contrary to the whole tenor of his life, that unable to explain his condition to himself he lay down and fell asleep at once” (346). Again, he’s turning to a relationship to nourish his soul.
But the thing is, Natasha was never a real person to Andrei. From the moment he meets her, Natasha remains of symbolic significance to him: “It never occurred to him that he was in love with Natasha; he was not thinking of her; he was only picturing her to himself, and as a consequence, all life appeared in a new light” (381). He was so entranced by her joy and his own inability to comprehend why she was so joyful. All he knew was he wanted this joy in his life. When he watched her sing, “something new and joyful stirred in his soul. He felt happy and at the same time sad. […] The chief reason was a sudden, vivid sense of the terrible contrast between something infinitely great and illimitable within him, and that limited and material something that he, and even she, was” (381). Again, he is reminded of the insignificance of everything, including himself, and he associates her with that feeling he wants in his life. But Andrei doesn’t know who she is behind the joy she personifies. His ideas of her never developed and she never actually developed into a person in his eyes.
If he did, he might see Natasha in the same light as he did his first wife Lise. Andrei’s first marriage to Lise wasn’t successful, mostly because she was a social butterfly and shallow. Andrei didn’t receive the same nourishment from his social role and didn’t feel fulfilled in the marriage. Andrei says to Pierre:
Never, never marry, my dear fellow! That’s my advice: never marry until you can say to yourself that you have done all you are capable of and until you have ceased to love the woman of your choice and have seen plainly as she is…Marry when you are old and good for nothing—or all that is good and noble in you will be lost. (26)
Of course, this is when all he sought was glory, so of course he felt stifled in a marriage that was refraining him from obtaining glory. But he also sees Lise “plainly as she is” and is disgusted by her sole nourishment from society. Before her marriage to Pierre, Natasha was very nearly the same. She was never vapid, and was instead quite intuitive, so perhaps that was the quality that differentiated Natasha significantly from Lise. But Natasha also thrived in other people’s company, was painfully bubbly, and cared about all of the many frills and artificialities society had to offer. Andrei was at first fascinated by her because she wasn’t of the “conventional society stamp” (376), which was a product of her innocence and exuberance, but over time, would that novelty have worn off? Would Andrei tire of Natasha? To be fair, Andrei seemed like the type of person to become irritated upon close and prolonged interaction with just about anyone.
But in contrast to Lise, after marriage, Natasha gave up all society for family: “Countess Bezukhova was not often seen in society, and those who met her there were not pleased with her and found her neither attractive nor amiable” (927). Who does this remind you of? Prince Andrei. I doubt Natasha would have been such a good caregiver if not for the growth she displayed when caring for a dying Prince Andrei. That was really the first time she abandoned her self-absorption and focused solely on another person.
Natasha also knew that Prince Andrei was pursuing a feeling Natasha produces rather than pursuing Natasha herself. Again, Natasha was very intuitive, and she asked herself, “What does he hope to find in me? What is he searching for with that look? Suppose what he is seeking in me is not there?” If Prince Andrei had recovered and they married, unless Andrei’s near-death experience permanently instilled in him a resolution, he might still be forever searching for that awakening he felt at Austerlitz. And he would probably turn to Natasha, which she would intuitively ascertain. But it would be exhausting for Natasha to continuously have to question, adapt, and wonder if she was adequate.
But I also don’t think Natasha would have found as much reason to be so jealous with Andrei as she was with Pierre. Pierre was always weaker-willed, more prone to succumbing to temptation. With Andrei, she would have probably been less nervous, but she might have been more insecure. Perhaps Andrei would have had cause to be the jealous one in that marriage due to Natasha’s former indiscretions. After his dying-induced forgiveness and overflowing love, would Andrei have returned to bitterness because of Natasha’s unfaithfulness? Would that always hang over their heads?
Perhaps both Tolstoy and Andrei knew that Andrei could never be fulfilled in life—not in the same way as Natasha and Pierre, who found fulfillment in family—and perhaps Tolstoy couldn’t himself imagine Andrei’s future, and thus couldn’t imagine Andrei’s and Natasha’s joint future.
As Ruthellen Josselson points out, “Tolstoy appears to intend us to view Prince Andrei’s death as, in part, self-induced. Though Prince Andrei is very seriously wounded, his death results from failure of his will to live” (93). Andrei couldn’t achieve that wholeness he sought in life, so he succumbed to death, which finally granted him peace. He forsook all relationships; in his dying days, he could no longer connect to his sister, to Natasha, or to his son. His journey was circular: he failed to connect to his fellow men because of his search for glory, then he tried and failed to connect mainly because of his desire to understand everything (which no one can) and he sought it in all the wrong places, and then he accepted his failure to connect and succumbed to death.
As much as I wish Andrei and Natasha had a chance together at happiness, I’m not sure their future together would be a happy one. A part of me can imagine a forgiving, perpetually calm, and still noble Andrei like he was on his deathbed before his dream with a less bubbly, caring, and intuitive Natasha, withdrawing from society and focusing on family life. But in the quiet of rural life, would Andrei’s active mind be able to refrain from overthinking his situation, from trying to find an even better ideal, from seeking a rationale that is impossible to have in life, from trying to obtain a level of contentment he could only find in death? Would Natasha be working overtime in trying to ease Andrei’s mind, something that even her inner strength wouldn’t be able to endure?
One thing I do know is this: they would never have been happy on the foundation they built when they were first engaged. Maybe they could have thrived after they both matured during Andrei’s convalescence, but since at least a part of Andrei actively chose death, I have to accede to the superiority of Tolstoy’s ending: Pierre and Natasha were probably destined to achieve, if not a higher level of happiness, a more consistent contentment together.
Resources
Gregg, Richard. “Psyche Betrayed: The Doll’s House of Leo Tolstoy.” The Slavic and East European Journal, vol. 46, no. 2, American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages, 2002, pp. 269–82, https://doi.org/10.2307/3086176.
Josselson, R. “Tolstoy, Narcissism, and the Psychology of the Self: A Self-Psychology Approach to Prince Andrei in War and Peace.” Psychoanalytic Review, vol. 73, no. 1, 1986, pp. 77–95.
May, Paul Krause. “Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace: The Odyssey of Love.”
Warner, Nicholas O. “Character and Genre in War and Peace: The Case of Natasha.” Mln, vol. 100, no. 5, 1985, pp. 1012–1024.
