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Chapter 14.
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. Al-
though 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 under-
stand 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