52 pages • 1 hour read
Leo TolstoyThe Kreutzer Sonata
Fiction | Novella | Adult | Published in 1889A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Pozdnychev
Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses violence against women, domestic abuse, and suicide.
Pozdnychev is a middle-aged Russian nobleman who murders his wife. He is the novella’s protagonist and functions as a secondary narrator because the main plot of the novella is written in his voice, recounting the events leading up to his wife’s murder. His voice and biased perspective color the narration of all but the framing narrative, and so Tolstoy exhibits his personality as much through the way he describes events as through his actions in the events themselves.
Pozdnychev has a changeable and highly suggestible personality that is prone to mood swings and fits of excessive emotion. His inner turbulence is both a reflection and critique of the upheaval that Russian society was undergoing in the late 19th century. It is also a representation of the force of Sensual Passion as a Corruption of Purity; his capacities for peace and tranquility are marred by his excessive passion. The depth of his suggestibility and the rapidity of his mood swings are particularly evident in the aftermath of hearing the Kreutzer Sonata in Chapter 23. Initially, hearing the music transports him into an uncharacteristically buoyant and content frame of mind. Within a matter of days, however, he has been so overcome with jealousy and insecurity that his better sense is entirely overruled, and he rushes home to confront his wife in a rage.
As Pozdnychev recounts the events leading up to the murder of his wife, he also discusses the moral and philosophical revelations that struck him after the fact. These typically relate to the main themes of the novella: The Subjugation of Women, the view of Sensual Passion as a Corruption of Purity, and his frequent Conflict Between Social Expectation and Moral Duty. Pozdnychev’s professed beliefs align closely with the messages on which Tolstoy elaborates in “The Lesson of The Kreutzer Sonata” where he communicates the intended morals of the story and the argument in favor of sexual abstinence. Pozdnychev functions as Tolstoy’s mouthpiece and fictional counterpart within the story, sharing several key formative experiences with the author. Most pertinently, the later years of Tolstoy’s increasingly fraught and bitter marriage to Sonya closely resemble the hostile relationship between Pozdnychev and his wife—albeit without the dramatic conclusion. Like Pozdnychev, Tolstoy also married a young, innocent wife in a love match that eventually soured. Prior to the wedding, Tolstoy even provided his fiancée with a diary containing details of his former conquests, shocking her with his sexual exploits just as Pozdnychev admits to doing in Chapter 6.
Despite the revelations that struck Pozdnychev after he came to terms with the fact that he’d murdered his wife, many facets of his personality remain unchanged by the ordeal. He has always had a propensity toward anger and “brutishness” toward women; not only does he fly into repeated violent rages toward his wife, but he also treats her widowed sister with “brutality” and coarseness. Even after coming to terms with and repenting his wife’s murder, he continues to exhibit this tendency in his argument with the lawyer’s female companion in Chapter 2. While speaking to her he is “evidently agitated,” “seemed to wish to say something disagreeable to the lady” (2, 12), and soon begins “shouting.” He also declares himself a “voluptuary” in the present tense, alleging that once one’s sexual “purity” is soiled, there’s no recourse for undoing the damage. Despite some consistencies in his characterization throughout the novella, however, he remains suggestible and changeable. His inner turbulence is reflected in the dramatic physical changes that render his face “unrecognizable” to the unnamed narrator from one minute to the next.
Pozdnychev’s wife
Pozdnychev’s wife is the second most significant character in The Kreutzer Sonata after the protagonist, Pozdnychev. She alternately takes on the role of love interest, antagonist, and victim through the course of the narrative, but is never referred to by name. Instead, she is defined wholly by her relationship to her husband.
She is already dead by the opening chapter of the novella and only appears in her husband’s narration of the events leading to her death. With her true character obscured by the bias of her husband’s voice, and any element of her life beyond her husband’s perspective omitted, she is more of a prop than a truly fleshed-out character. Despite the assumptions that Pozdnychev often makes about her motives and actions, there is significant ambiguity in how she feels about the events leading to her death, and whether she ever committed any wrongdoing.
Pozdnychev believes that a woman’s “whole life is spent in preparations for coquetry, or in coquetry itself” (14, 6) and that without a man present “life stops.” The only exception to this that he allows is when a mother nurses her children. Consequently then, Pozdnychev does not credit his wife as a fully-fledged individual outside of the roles he ascribes to her: seducer, wife, and mother. Through Pozdnychev’s treatment of her, her character epitomizes The Subjugation of Women. Not only does he dominate her in life through the power that he wields in a patriarchal society, but he kills her and extends his power over her in death to subsume her entirely into his own experiences and perspectives.
The character development that she appears to undergo is heavily colored by Pozdnychev’s own beliefs and emotions. This development is ultimately portrayed as a “fall” from “purity” to corruption. Prior to their marriage, she is perceived as representing the archetypal “virgin”: a “young girl” entirely “pure” and ignorant of the power of her beauty. Following their marriage and her initiation into the “baseness” of sensuality, Tolstoy consistently presents her as equally culpable for the “immoral” and unhappy life that she and Pozdnychev lead together. She is described as an equal participant in their conjugal arguments, equally cruel and vexing to Pozdnychev as he is to her and just as prone to unfounded jealousy. Pozdnychev considers her murder justified by her assumed infidelity, both during and in the immediate aftermath of the attack. Even society tacitly approves of the murder when the courts acquit Pozdnychev of any wrongdoing. Only later does Pozdnychev recognize the immense sin that he has committed, and even then, he considers it an “inevitable” outcome of their life together rather than anything unwarranted. In this light, her character development is an archetypal downward spiral: of a woman’s descent from “angel” to “jezebel” and an illustration of Sensual Passion as a Corruption of Purity.
However, she is also a sympathetic character. Pozdnychev’s actions toward her clearly constitute physical and emotional domestic abuse, on top of the position of financial and legal domination that he holds over her as a matter of course in 19th-century Russian society. Her mental health is impacted by the hardship that she endures at her husband’s hands, as evidenced by her mental health crisis in Chapter 22 and her suicide attempt in Chapter 20. She does have some life outside of her husband: She is close with her widowed sister, cares deeply for her children, and even has a “confidant” in the doctor who treats her. There’s no reason to assume that she doesn’t have additional interests and positive relationships that don’t merit her husband’s notice or comment. She is a skilled and dedicated musician able to play Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata, a very technically difficult piece. Tolstoy hence presents her characterization beyond Pozdnychev’s view obliquely and yet with definite evidence of an active life, making her a more sympathetic figure when Pozdnychev abuses and murders her.
Her true motives throughout the novella cannot be discerned, and Pozdnychev’s assumptions about her thought processes and intentions say more about him than her. Her actions and the actions of characters around her, when isolated from the bias of Pozdnychev’s perspective, paint her as a far more nuanced and tragic character.
Troukhatchevsky
Troukhatchevsky is a young, Paris-educated musician whose arrival to Moscow and reacquaintance with Pozdnychev serve as a catalyst for the violent climax of the novella. He is a character more notable for the function that he serves in the narrative than for any personal qualities; Pozdnychev knows little about his lifestyle and values (although his jealousy and paranoia lead him to assume the worst) and there is consequently little concrete information available to the reader.
He is something of a dandy, wearing “diamond cufflinks” that Pozdnychev considers to be in poor taste, and is certainly attractive enough to raise Pozdnychev’s hackles. He is an uncommonly skilled violinist, highly trained, and possesses a certain seductive power from his musical prowess. He also has the opportunity to pursue a high degree of socially sanctioned intimacy through his music: the intimacy of preparing and then performing a duet with Pozdnychev’s wife. It is unclear whether he and Pozdnychev’s wife actually transgress the bounds of propriety or have an affair, or if their connection is simply misinterpreted by a jealous Pozdnychev. Young and influenced by his time in Europe, he represents the “Europhile” factions that advocated for wider adoption of Western European values and customs in Russia during the 19th century. Pozdnychev views Troukhatchevsky’s modernity—his “dandyism,” Parisian knowledge, and musical education—as a threat to his home life on a micro scale and to Russia itself on a macro scale.
When Pozdnychev attacks his wife, Troukhatchevsky surprises Pozdnychev by intercepting his attack and attempting to prevent her murder. This implies a certain measure of bravery, although he does then flee the room, leaving Pozdnychev’s wife to her fate. Notably, nothing more is said of him after he flees the room; he seemingly neither suffers Pozdnychev’s wrath nor the censure of society. Instead, both blows fall solely on the head of Pozdnychev’s wife. In this way, his absence highlights the double standards that contribute to The Subjugation of Women.
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By Leo Tolstoy
