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simply a good, but a brilliant match.
In the mother’s 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. “It’s as well he’s not
attractive enough for Kitty to have fallen in love with him,” thought the
mother.
Vronsky satisfied all the mother’s 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 every-
thing 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 busi-
ness, apparently so commonplace, of marrying off one’s 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 hus-
band 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 daugh-
ters, 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 prince’s touchiness.
She saw that of late years much was changed in the manners of society,
that a mother’s duties had become still more difficult. She saw that girls
of Kitty’s age formed some sort of clubs, went to some sort of lectures,
mixed freely in men’s 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 aren’t 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 children’s 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 if intermediate persons was for some