Emma Watson Pussy
Books:
Anna Karenina
War And Peace
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had serious intentions, that Kitty felt no great
attraction to him, and other side issues; but she did not state
the principal point, which was that she looked for a better match
for her daughter, and that Levin was not to her liking, and she
did not understand him. When Levin had abruptly departed, the
princess was delighted, and said to her husband triumphantly:
"You see I was right." When Vronsky appeared on the scene, she
was still more delighted, confirmed in her opinion that Kitty was
to make not simply a good, but a brilliant match.
In the mothers eyes there could be no comparison between Vronsky
and Levin. She disliked in Levin his strange and uncompromising
opinions and his shyness in society, founded, as she supposed, on
his pride and his queer sort of life, as she considered it,
absorbed in cattle and peasants. She did not very much like it
that he, who was in love with her daughter, had kept coming to
the house for six weeks, as though he were waiting for something,
inspecting, as though he were afraid he might be doing them too
great an honor by making an offer, and did not realize that a
man, who continually visits at a house where there is a young
unmarried girl, is bound to make his intentions clear. And
suddenly, without doing so, he disappeared. "Its as well hes
not attractive enough for Kitty to have fallen in love with him,"
thought the mother.
Vronsky satisfied all the mothers desires. Very wealthy,
clever, of aristocratic family, on the highroad to a brilliant
career in the army and at court, and a fascinating man. Nothing
better could be wished for.
Vronsky openly flirted with Kitty at balls, danced with her, and
came continually to the house, consequently there could be no
doubt of the seriousness of his intentions. But, in spite of
that, the mother had spent the whole of that winter in a state of
terrible anxiety and agitation.
Princess Shtcherbatskaya had herself been married thirty years
ago, her aunt arranging the match. Her husband, about whom
everything was well known before hand, had come, looked at his
future bride, and been looked at. The match-making aunt had
ascertained and communicated their mutual impression. That
impression had been favorable. Afterwards, on a day fixed
beforehand, the expected offer was made to her parents, and
accepted. All had passed very simply and easily. So it seemed,
at least, to the princess. But over her own daughters she had
felt how far from simple and easy is the business, apparently so
commonplace, of marrying off ones daughters. The panics that
had been lived through, the thoughts that had been brooded over,
the money that had been wasted, and the disputes with her husband
over marrying the two elder girls, Darya and Natalia! Now, since
the youngest had come out, she was going through the same
terrors, the same doubts, and still more violent quarrels with
her husband than she had over the elder girls. The old prince,
like all fathers indeed, was exceedingly punctilious on the score
of the honor and reputation of his daughters. He was
irrationally jealous over his daughters, especially over Kitty,
who was his favorite. At every turn he had scenes with the
princess for compromising her daughter. The princess had grown
accustomed to this already with her other daughters, but now she
felt that there was more ground for the princes touchiness. She
saw that of late years much was changed in the manners of
society, that a mothers duties had become still more difficult.
She saw that girls of Kittys age formed some sort of clubs, went
to some sort of lectures, mixed freely in mens society; drove
about the streets alone, many of them did not curtsey, and, what
was the most important thing, all the girls were firmly convinced
that to choose their husbands was their own affair, and not their
parents. "Marriages arent made nowadays as they used to be,"
was thought and said by all these young girls, and even by their
elders. But how marriages were made now, the princess could not
learn from any one. The French fashion--of the parents
arranging their childrens future--was not accepted; it was
condemned. The English fashion of the complete independence of
girls was also not accepted, and not possible in Russian society.
The Russian fashion of match-making by the offices of
intermediate
Anna Karenina page 24 Anna Karenina page 26
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