An Indian Reader's take on Tolstoy's Misogyny & "Sex Hatred"

I haven't read "Anna Karenina". I do have a copy of "War and Peace" on my shelf and haven't figured out clever enough ways to use it yet. (Maybe a chock to secure the front wheel of my car as I change a rear tire? Or to press the homemade paneer  into shape? Yes, yes I did carry it all the way to Mexico to read in the airports, but never got much reading done..there were books on Mayan anthropology to be gotten out of the way too.)

Being decidedly less ambitious these days, I reread Father Sergius the other day.  "Reread" because this was part of a collection of Tolstoy stories and novellas I once owned and faithfully read. Sometime in my early adolescence.  Courtesy the Calcutta book fair.  Ma wanted to buy me "War and Peace" (uff not again...middleclass Bong parents are pretentious, I know..but still what would I have done without them :( ) I protested that although known to family circles as a bookworm (well I read all the time to avoid having to go for swimming lessons), this was a serious minded monster of a book that I could not handle at my age. The bookselling guy was all astute and seeing his chance, peddled off  "Kreutzer Sonata, Father Sergius and other stories" to mom, "the kid will like this. It's simpler and shorter, and it's still Tolstoy."  Ma wouldn't have been so happy if she knew what themes these stories obsessed with. I think this Tolstoy fascination in Bongs has something to do with the fact that he is bearded and seen in long robes, like our Robi Thakur, and that he is Russian - the land of The great Revolushun. To be honest, I think the closest thematic parallels to Indian society and literature in Western culture are to be found in the works of Russian masters - a polemic claim which I am too lazy to justify here.

This along with some Sunil (a popular Bengali writer, for the uninitiated), and a bit of Kundera ("Immortality" I think) were the serious books dealing with the question of  sex that I first read. That made me feel weird, creeped out, yet furtively pleasured, confused, all erotically awakened, masturbatorily excited, guilt-complexed...anybody who's been an adolescent knows the deal.  Except, for the nonbookish masses it probably comes from cheap porn vids. Yes I know I like to feel smugly superior.  And no, I did not just compare some very fascinating works by Tolstoy to smut. Though I do believe, like most of us I guess, that great writers often tread the fine line between porn, erotica and philosophico-aesthetic meditations on sex, and get away with it too easily. Well, Kundera at least does. After reading Calvino and the other postmodernists, I don't rate him so highly.

Jai hok, essentially, Father Sergius is the story of a prince who turns priest because he's mad at his girlfriend for having had another man before him. Then for fifty odd years, he obsesses over two main questions. One is Faith. Being a proud, spirited man of many parts, he is unable to tolerate the hypocrisy he sees in the clergy, and cannot accept religion unquestioningly.  The second is Sex.  He enjoyed women once, and women are still very apparently attracted to him, and he to them. But then his is  the kind of masochistic mountain-climber personality that revels in hard challenges, and he struggles with his intellect and his passions lifelong instead of resolving things in some simpler, humbler, milder way.  He cuts off his thumb as self-inflicted punishment for letting himself be seduced by a rich sexual adventuress. This is certainly one of the more dramatic things he does, but in all respects he is a sexual martyr, his story reads like a monk's hagiography except one where the focus is always on his inner conflicts and we see how miserable his position is - this 19th c Russian Bhishma pitamaha of sorts, both choosing celibacy on a whim.

This was the aspect that caught my fancy as an adolescent - that age when Bangali boys are torn between Moonmoon Sen and Vivekananda. The glorification of sexual martyrdom got hardwired into my psyche and ensured I would face problems later.  But ok, back to Uncle Leo.  When I read Sergius again, in the light of my twenty-something intellectual maturity - all the literature courses I took in college, all the left libby political idealism that I imbibed, all the being smitten by intelligent feminist women (all of which went unrequited), must have taken its toll - because now I find Sergius, and the strange man who was able to write this story, terribly misogynistic.  I still think Sergius is a fascinating story by all means, a lesson in the dangers of false pride and  people choosing lifestyles ill-suited to them, as well one of philosophical struggles, the dangers of sex and of trying to avoid it. But what will strike the 21st c reader most strongly in this long story, particularly if she is a "she", is that the bearded Russki intellectual giant was full of hatred of women and sex, and often conflated the two.

Enough talk in the air. Now for the evidence, fair members of the jury.

a) all the women characters, barring a female relative in the end, are temptresses, and one feels : unrealistically, allegorically exaggeratedly so. Some are weak-kneed, some intellectually deficient, and some beguiling and clever - but the sole objective of their lives seems the corruption of Sergius.  They hardly have any voice, we learn little else about their perspectives and motives.

b)  First there is the woman who he is engaged to be married to. The reason for breaking off would be frivolous by modern standards. It's simply because our protagonist cannot bear the fact that she's had sex with another man before him. He considers it  deep deception that the woman reveals this to him so late in the course of their probably chaste courtship, but now I'll let Tolstoy speak for himself

: "Kasatsky belonged to those men of the eighteen-forties (they are now no longer to be found) who while deliberately and without any conscientious scruples condoning impurity in themselves, required ideal and angelic purity in their women, regarded all unmarried women of their circle as possessed of such purity, and treated them accordingly. There was much that was false and harmful in this outlook, as concerning the laxity the men permitted themselves, but in regard to the women that old-fashioned view (sharply differing from that held by young people to-day who see in every girl merely a female seeking a mate) was, I think, of value. The girls, perceiving such adoration, endeavoured with more or less success to be goddesses. " 

This passage is extremely interesting, and we will visit questions of Tolstoy's personal beliefs soon, but it's clear that though he doesn't admire philandering men, he likes the woman to play the goddess, and sees it as collectively good for humanity.  So girl A is a fallen goddess, one who sought to hold men to her but failed.

c) Girl B in the story is a rich widow who loves having affairs and creating scandals, and seduces the pious but handsome Father just to win a bet with friends.  Shockingly amoral.  Girl C is mentally retarded, brought to the saintly man to be cured, but is sexually enthusiastic enough to take the Father's hand and place it on her breast, and lead him astray.  There are more mentions of women, who giggle (under veils) at and lust after the Father when he conducts his church services. Except for a cousin that the tortured monk seeks solace in, all the women seem this lustful sort that amorally and erotically pursue this unfortunate(?) man.  Very unrealistic one'd think.

What made this extremely cerebral author paint women in this light?  I had to research but two minutes on his life for google to throw up probable answers.


a) Tolstoy was deeply unhappy in his relationships with women, particularly his wife Sofya, and came to view sex in an extremely negative light, while still managing to father 13 children!  Against the wife's wishes and refusing her requests to use contraceptives. He married her when he was 34, and she 18. One of the first things he did after marriage was to give her a diary detailing his sexual experiences with serf women. Numerous meaningless exploitative experiences no doubt

b) Tolstoy belonged to the Russian nobility, and spent most of his life outside writing, on  supervising his estate, except when he was not soldiering in the Caucasus for a brief period. So he was always paternal and patronizing with his serfs, probably always being disgusted by their pettiness, while his own exalted aristocratic intellect was spent on tackling deeply spiritual and metaphysical questions, that found vent in grand tomes where aristocratic characters indulged in profoundly Socratic discussions that will still light up a modern cultured drawing room.

c) A probably unhealthily large fraction of his philosophical meditations seems to have been spent on Sex, which according to modern liberal views should be easily accessible to both sexes and not be such  a big deal.  Tolstoy wrote "The Kreutzer Sonata" to lay down his views on sex, which by now, anyone can guess, were very negative. He considered it an obstacle to the spiritual development of man. Sex cannot sustain love, sex even fails marriages, and women in their state of powerlessness imposed on them by Man, turn to sex as a tool of insidious subversion to get what measure of vengeance they can!  Like the author  the protagonist too fathers many children with his wife, considering these as the only breaks in their relentlessly nightmarish marriage.  A relationship forged on lust hurtles towards tragedy and offers no spiritual respite.  Despite this simplistic preachiness, "The Kreutzer Sonata" is extremely well-crafted, and considered one of his best works.

Tolstoy is  a wonderful example of how even the greats need to be seen as a product of their times.  The harsh sociopolitical climate of feudal Russia (feudalism went but the harshness did not go from that unfortunate country's politics and even today it remains a place with  festering social wounds) meant that men and women were very unequal, just like the classes were. The sway of the Orthodox church would have done nothing to improve gender issues. Thinking men of the caliber of Tolstoy would have been extremely distressed by this turn of affairs, and yet to sustain their success in life, which smart ambitious men of any era can't really be blamed for striving towards, they would have to play by the rules. This would have led to much schism and inner conflict.  And there was the question of understanding women to partner these men, which would have been in very short supply.  One sees contemporaneous parallels in the plight of the Young Bengali babus, who all excited with new Western ideas learnt from English books, would find waiting for them in the bridal chamber, a poorly educated adolescent girl too shy to step out of the social purdah that she had been brainwashed beyond repair to believe in. Rabindranath like Tolstoy seemed mostly cold towards the wife (though both hadloads of sex and procreated as much progeny as their talents would justify) and like him enjoyed some success with administering estates.  Though we Bongs are a milder people than those wild northerners from a harsher clime (:P), and Babu Tagore is not known to have consorted with peasant women,and actually seems very sensitive to women's problems in his novels.  Then when you think of how much influence Gandhi claimed from Tolstoy, all his obsessions with (ironically) how to avoid sex while talking about it all the time and having many babies, falls into place. Tolstoy after  all in  his own peculiar Orthodox way was upholding that ancient  spiritual ideal of an eternally patriarchal India : bramhacharya.  He just stopped short of talking about the virtues of conserving semen.

It's all pretty unfortunate, but I would urge the angry young women of the world to not mount their high mares too soon. A little bit of poise and balance may be needed to understand these men and their insecurities, and appreciate their undoubtedly great works.  Meanwhile when I whine about not finding compatible enough women to consort with, and generally feel shy and strung up about the supposedly trivial question of sex, I  have only to remind myself that I have it far easier than these 19th c folks!