Anna Karenina - Part 5

Levin had been married three months. He was happy, but not at

all in the way he had expected to be. At every step he found his

former dreams disappointed, and new, unexpected surprises of

happiness. He was happy; but on entering upon family life he saw

at every step that it was utterly different from what he had

imagined. At every step he experienced what a man would

experience who, after admiring the smooth, happy course of a

little boat on a lake, should get himself into that little boat.

He saw that it was not all sitting still, floating smoothly; that

one had to think too, not for an instant to forget where one was

floating; and that there was water under one, and that one must

row; and that his unaccustomed hands would be sore; and that it

was only to look at it that was easy; but that doing it, though

very delightful, was very difficult.

As a bachelor, when he had watched other people's married life,

seen the petty cares, the squabbles, the jealousy, he had only

smiled contemptuously in his heart. In his future married life

there could be, he was convinced, nothing of that sort; even the

external forms, indeed, he fancied, must be utterly unlike the

life of others in everything. And all of a sudden, instead of

his life with his wife being made on an individual pattern, it

was, on the contrary, entirely made up of the pettiest details,

which he had so despised before, but which now, by no will of his

own, had gained an extraordinary importance that it was useless

to contend against. And Levin saw that the organization of all

these details was by no means so easy as he had fancied before.

Although Levin believed himself to have the most exact

conceptions of domestic life, unconsciously, like all men, he

pictured domestic life as the happiest enjoyment of love, with

nothing to hinder and no petty cares to distract. He ought, as

he conceived the position, to do his work, and to find repose

from it in the happiness of love. She ought to be beloved, and

nothing more. But, like all men, he forgot that she too would

want work. And he was surprised that she, his poetic, exquisite

Kitty, could, not merely in the first weeks, but even in the

first days of their married life, think, remember, and busy

herself about tablecloths, and furniture, about mattresses for

visitors, about a tray, about the cook, and the dinner, and so

on. While they were still engaged, he had been struck by the

definiteness with which she had declined the tour abroad and

decided to go into the country, as though she knew of something

she wanted, and could still think of something outside her love.

This had jarred upon him then, and now her trivial cares and

anxieties jarred upon him several times. But he saw that this

was essential for her. And, loving her as he did, though he did

not understand the reason of them, and jeered at these domestic

pursuits, he could not help admiring them. He jeered at the way

in which she arranged the furniture they had brought from Moscow;

rearranged their room; hung up curtains; prepared rooms for

visitors; a room for Dolly; saw after an abode for her new maid;

ordered dinner of the old cook; came into collision with Agafea

Mihalovna, taking from her the charge of the stores. He saw how

the old cook smiled, admiring her, and listening to her

inexperienced, impossible orders, how mournfully and tenderly

Agafea Mihalovna shook her head over the young mistress's new

arrangements. He saw that Kitty was extraordinarily sweet when,

laughing and crying, she came to tell him that her maid, Masha,

was used to looking upon her as her young lady, and so no one

obeyed her. It seemed to him sweet, but strange, and he thought

it would have been better without this.