Two Books About Women

Alexandra Popoff's new biography of Sophia Tolstoy ( The Life of Sophia Tolstoy) is based in large part on an unpublished memoir by that most long suffering of literary wives. For those who have seen the cinematic version of the Tolstoys' final days together, The Last Station, this is a must read. Popoff is a pedestrian writer but her material makes up for her flat prose. It's hard to imagine a more put-upon woman than Sophia, who was a mere girl when she married the already-noted novelist. The description of their wedding night alone--a near rape--is enough to stand the reader's hair on end. In the long years that followed she bore 13 children, buried 3 of them, ran at least 2 households simultaneously, supervised the publishing of Tolstoy's works, managed the family's complicated finances, etc., etc. etc. It's exhausting even to read and one marvels at the depth of her emotional and physical strength. One also marvels at the depth of her husband's egotism, if that's what it was--hard to say. As someone who considers War and Peace and Anna Karenina, let alone some of the short stories, essential to life, it's hard to reconcile their all-encompassing humanity with the man who emerges from Popoff's pages, based pretty directly on Sophia's memoir. It's not that she complains all that much, and indeed, it seems obvious enough that the Tolstoys loved each other, or whatever the word might be for such a complex relationship. When I was in Russia a few years ago I visited the Tolstoy's Moscow house. Standing in a perfectly preserved sitting room room, we listened to a recording of the great man speaking and playing a short piece on the piano. It was an incredibly moving moment for a lover of his work. Yet now, looking back, I ponder the dilemma of a great artist who is not such a great human being, or was he? It's a mystery, but Sophia is a marvel.
By chance, the next book I read (or re-read) was Kate Walbert's A Short History of Women. I'm not exactly sure why, but it moved me tremendously the first time around, about a year ago and I wanted to understand better its appeal. the women in question range from a girl growing up in late-Victorian England to a young woman starting at Yale in the present day--with quite a few in between. Linked by blood, their stories, which are presented in short-story form and some of which were published as such, arguably do form a kind of history of a certain kind of woman. the character with whom I was most intrigued, perhaps for obvious reasons, was one roughly my age who gradually finds herself protesting the Iraq war, divorcing, and living a nun-like life, for reasons she cannot entirely explain, even to herself, as she admits on the blog that her daughters, somewhat to their dismay, discover by chance. She still, she insists, wants to get it right, whatever "it" might be. There are some marvelous set pieces in the book, one of which is the former's reluctant participation in a '70s consciousness-raising group that will ring true with anyone who ever endured one. I especially liked a section about a young Manhattanite mother whose daughter's play date turns into a sadly pleasant drunken session with the other mother.
It's interesting to think about these 2 books side by side, Sophia's selfless toil and, I think, genuine love for her genius husband, and believe it or not, her sense of having had at least a satisfying life, compared with the frustrated, unsatisfied longings of the women in Walbert's book, who feel continually silenced by the world around them. Neither book resolves anything, but each lays out some fascinating issues.