Intercourse, by: Andrea Dworkin - Feminish

Sophie’s view of the great man was not reverential. One dayat tea he spoke of a vegetarian menu that he had read and liked:almonds and bread. In her diary Sophie wrote: “I expect theperson who wrote the menu practises vegetarianism as muchas the author of the Kreutzer Sonata practises chastity. [Thirtysevenwords deleted by surviving family. ]”8Her irony is seldomappreciated by Tolstoy’s biographers (Troyat being thedistinguished exception). Most side with the pious Count andconsider her vain, corrupt, selfish, the adversary of a saint. Theauthor of Tolstoy and Gandhi: Men of Peace, for instance,blamed her for “ a continual denial of Tolstoy’s beliefs, and anirritable and sometimes hysterical ridicule, ” also “moral triviality”and “inconsistency and brute egotism. ”9She would nothave been surprised. “And his biographers, ” she wrote in1895, "wil tel of how he helped the labourers to carry bucketsof water, but no one will ever know that he never gave his wifea rest and never—in all these thirty-two years—gave his child adrink of water or spent five minutes by his bedside to give mea chance to rest a little, to sleep, or to go out for a walk, or evenjust recover from all my labours. ” 10Her labors were considerable, hard and sad. She had thirteenpregnancies, thirteen children; six died of difficult, painfulillnesses— for instance, meningitis and croup. She had puerperalfever at least once, other fevers, inflamed breasts. Shetranscribed all the Count’s books and diaries, except for a briefperiod late in their marriage when he gave them to his growndaughters in order to exclude her (he had her start transcribingagain with The Kreutzer Sonata). She educated their children.From 1883 on, she managed his estates, his money, his copyrights,fed and housed their children; she published his books,which sometimes included the necessity of pleading with the