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.
Themes
Sensual Passion as a Corruption of Purity
Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses violence against women and domestic abuse.
When Tolstoy wrote The Kreutzer Sonata, he was a devout anarchist Christian who followed his own literal interpretation of the teachings of Christ. Tolstoy’s personal beliefs were quite different to the established dogma espoused by the institution of the Church. One of Tolstoy’s deeply held beliefs, and the primary argument of The Kreutzer Sonata, is that sexual abstinence is the only truly moral way to live one’s life. In order to convey this message and provide an argument against sexual promiscuity, Tolstoy uses the narrative to explore sensual passion as a corruption of purity.
The initial state of “purity” that Tolstoy idealizes is that of complete sexual abstinence. It is this perceived purity that Pozdnychev relinquishes when he has sex for the first time in a brothel at the age of 16 and this “purity” which he believes he despoils his wife of on their honeymoon. Pozdnychev goes into detail about how a single experience of sensual pleasure forever soiled his relationships with women. He states that he “had become what is called a voluptuary; and to be a voluptuary is a physical condition like the condition of a victim of the morphine habit, of a drunkard, and of a smoker” (5, 9), suggesting the extreme corruptive impact that even a single indulgence in sexual activity can have on both body and mind.
Tolstoy also presents sensual passion as a corruption of the concept of purity through the degradation that Pozdnychev’s wife undergoes throughout the course of the narrative, both in her husband’s eyes and in the eyes of society. Prior to their marriage, she is presented as the archetypal “virgin,” a “young girl” entirely “pure,” and capable of living up to Pozdnychev’s unrealistic standards of a “perfect” life partner. Following their marriage and her initiation into the “baseness” of sensuality, she is consistently presented as equally culpable for the supposedly immoral and unhappy life that they lead together. By the end of the novel, she is dead, and in the eyes of society her murder is justified by her assumed infidelity. Whether she actually committed adultery or not, the novella suggests that she has been corrupted by her participation in a marriage founded on sensual passion and sullied by her husband’s jealous assumptions.
Through the character of Pozdnychev, too, Tolstoy presents sensual passion as a corruption of “purity” by showing how his unconstrained emotions—motivated and exacerbated by excessive passion and sensuality—consistently disrupt any hope of his finding peace or equilibrium. Pozdnychev, who functions as Tolstoy’s mouthpiece in the narrative, attributes all of the worst hardships and tragedies in the course of his marriage to sensuality. Tolstoy himself reiterates the view that indulgence in sexual pleasures will only lead to degradation of the self in the “Lesson of The Kreutzer Sonata.”
The Subjugation of Women
The subjugation of women is a particularly striking theme in The Kreutzer Sonata because it is so brutally illustrated in the novella’s violent climax. It is also omnipresent in the fact that Pozdnychev’s wife is never introduced by name; throughout the entirety of the novella, she is defined entirely by her role in the life of her husband. The lack of rights that women have in contemporary Russian society is consistently acknowledged through the novella as a simple fact. In the “Lesson of The Kreutzer Sonata,” one of Tolstoy’s main points is that there’s an unfair double standard for men and women when it comes to permissible sexual behavior and the severity of the consequences.
Despite this, Pozdnychev nonetheless insists that women are in fact the dominant gender and reign supreme by using their sensual wiles to “enslave” men. This perspective highlights the patriarchal foundations of the novella despite the fact that Tolstoy acknowledges a double standard for men and women. Pozdnychev believes that a woman’s “whole life is spent in preparations for coquetry, or in coquetry itself” (14, 6) aside from when a mother nurses her children. Consequently, therefore, Pozdnychev’s wife is only presented within the boundaries of male-assigned roles throughout the novel: seducer, wife, and mother. When she deviates from the roles of wife and mother, violent actions occur.
Pozdnychev considers any action undertaken by his wife against his wishes as a challenge to his authority, and an affront equal to the domestic abuse that he commits against her. This is illustrated by his horror that “she could do with [her body] as she liked, and that she liked to do with it as I did not like” (25, 16). Tolstoy only shows Pozdnychev’s wife’s life beyond Pozdnychev obliquely, and Pozdnychev uses every independent element of her life—her relationships, doctor appointments, and musicianship—as evidence that she is “immoral.”
Pozdnychev’s wife suffers throughout the course of the novella as a result of her subjugation both within the family structure and in society as a whole. By the end of her husband’s narration, she has been both murdered physically and destroyed in reputation.
Conflict Between Social Expectation and Moral Duty
As an anarchist Christian, Tolstoy was intimately familiar with the conflict between social expectation and moral duty that came from having unconventional beliefs and convictions. He believed that one’s moral duty could force one to behave contrary to the expectations held by society. Many of the actions and circumstances that Tolstoy believed to be irredeemably immoral were considered quite natural and acceptable in contemporary society.
The most striking and omnipresent example of this theme in The Kreutzer Sonata is Tolstoy’s insistence that all forms of sexual activity, whether or not they are sanctioned by society, are immoral and ultimately harmful. Of his bachelor years, Pozdnychev says: “I led the life of so many other so-called respectable people,—that is, in debauchery” (4, 3). Tolstoy conflates “debauchery” and respectability to suggest that what society accepts and what is moral are not the same.
Tolstoy further illustrates this theme when Pozdnychev discusses medicine and doctors. Doctors provide women with advice on how to avoid unwanted pregnancies and lay down rules of hygiene to help prevent STDs. Via Pozdnychev, Tolstoy presents these advances in the field of medicine as morally harmful because they remove or reduce the potential negative consequences of premarital sex. Tolstoy suggests that doctors, backed by the government, use their positions of authority to lead society away from moral duty toward a newly accepted standard of sexual immorality. This motif illuminates the conflict between social expectation and moral duty.
Pozdnychev refers to doctors as “rascals” and condemns them for advising his wife not to nurse her first child and to use contraceptives to prevent conception, even though both recommendations were done with the health of Pozdnychev’s family in mind. While society would expect one to follow the recommended actions and treatments to try and combat high rates of infant mortality, Tolstoy’s sense of moral duty (presented via Pozdnychev) instead demands that one rely on faith and a moral life rather than resorting to medicine.
Tolstoy is aware that the lessons that he espouses in The Kreutzer Sonata go against social expectations, “opposed as they undoubtedly are to the trend and tenor of our lives” (“Lesson of The Kreutzer Sonata,” 20). He nonetheless asserts that, regardless of the conflict, one has “no choice but to accept them” because they are one’s moral duty (“Lesson of The Kreutzer Sonata,” 20).
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