Natasha married in the early spring of 1813, and by 1820 already has three daughters besides a son for whom she had longed and whom she is now nursing. She has grown stouter and broader, so that it is difficult to recognize in this robust, motherly woman the slim, lively Natasha of former days. Her features are more defined, calm, soft, and serene. The ever-glowing animation that once constituted her charm is gone. Often her face and body are all one sees, and her soul is not visible at all. What strikes the eye is a strong, handsome, fertile woman. The old fire very rarely kindles: when her husband returns, when a sick child is convalescent, when she and Countess Mary speak of Prince Andrew, whom she never mentions to her husband, whom she imagines jealous of that memory, or on the rare occasions when something induces her to sing, a practice she has quite abandoned. At those moments she is even more attractive than in former days.
They have lived in Moscow, Petersburg, on their estate, or with her mother at Nicholas's house. The young Countess Bezukhova is not often seen in society, and those who meet her there are not pleased, finding her neither attractive nor amiable. Not that she likes solitude. She does not know whether she likes it. With pregnancies, confinements, nursing, and sharing every moment of her husband's life, she has demands that can be satisfied only by renouncing society. All who knew her before wonder at the change as at something extraordinary. Only the old countess, with maternal instinct, had realised that Natasha's outbursts were due to her need of children and a husband. Discussions of how to get the greatest gratification from marriage, Tolstoy says, are like asking how to get the greatest gratification from dinner. For those whose purpose is nourishment, the question does not exist. If the purpose of marriage is the family, a person who wishes many wives or husbands may obtain much pleasure, but will not have a family. Natasha needed a husband. A husband was given her and he gave her a family. She sees no need of any other, and cannot imagine how it would be if things were different. She does not care for society in general, but prizes relatives from whom she can come striding disheveled from the nursery in a dressing gown to show a yellow stain on baby's napkin.
After the birth of their first delicate child, when they had to change the wet nurse three times and Natasha fell ill from despair, Pierre told her of Rousseau's view that to have a wet nurse is unnatural. When her next baby was born, despite mother, doctors, and even her husband, she insisted on nursing herself, a thing then unheard of, and after that nursed all her babies. It often happens that in irritation they dispute, and long afterwards Pierre finds in her ideas and actions the very thought against which she argued, divested of everything superfluous he had added in excitement. After seven years he has the joyous consciousness that he is not a bad man, because he sees himself reflected in his wife. The good and bad within him are inextricably mingled, but only what is really good is reflected in her. All that is not quite good is rejected. This is not logical reasoning. It is a direct and mysterious reflection.
Coming Up in Chapter 348
Two months previously, while Pierre is already staying with the Rostovs, he receives a letter from Prince Theodore asking him to come to Petersburg to confer on questions discussed by a society of which Pierre is a principal founder. Natasha, who always reads her husband's letters, herself suggests that he should go.
