How we cite our quotes: (Volume.Part.Chapter.Paragraph). We used Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky's translation.
Quote #1
"No, do promise, do promise, Basile," Anna Mikhailovna said behind him, with the smile of a young coquette, which must have suited her very well once, but now did not go with her emaciated face.
She evidently forgot her age and employed, out of habit, all her old feminine resources. But as soon as he left, her face again acquired the same cold, sham expression it had had before. She went back to the circle, where the viscount was going on with his story, and again pretended to listen, waiting for the moment to leave, since her business was done. (1.1.4.36-37)
Does the society described in this novel give many resources to women for accomplishing what they want, other than their looks and sexuality?
Quote #2
Anna Mikhailovna was already embracing her and weeping. The countess was also weeping. They wept because they were friends; and because they were kind; and because they, who had been friends since childhood, were concerned with such a mean subject—money; and because their youth was gone....But for both of them they were pleasant tears....(1.1.14.29)
What a great little scene of long-term friendship. Each woman knows what the other is feeling without having to express it. They share in the same disappointments over time passing and old age approaching. It's also really a rare thing to see female friendship that isn't in any way a competition, or with one woman secretly out to betray the other.
Quote #3
"for me marriage is a divine institution to which one must conform oneself. However painful it may be for me, if the Almighty imposes upon me the duties of a wife and mother, I shall try to fulfill them as faithfully as I can, without troubling myself with the examination of my feelings regarding him whom he will give me for a husband." (1.1.22.38)
This is what Marya says in her letter to Julie while her father is still alive and someone is at the house potentially looking to marry her. Could there be any sadder description of what she thinks married life is all about? And is it any surprise that she's expecting to go from being abused and oppressed by her dad to being abused and oppressed by some new guy?
Quote #4
Helene leaned forward so as to make room and, smiling, glanced around. As always at soirees, she was wearing a gown in the fashion of the time, quite open in front and back. Her bust, which had always looked like marble to Pierre, was now such a short distance from him that he could involuntarily make out with his nearsighted eyes the living loveliness of her shoulders and neck, and so close to his lips that he had only to lean forward a little to touch her. He sensed the warmth of her body, the smell of her perfume, and the creaking of her corset as she breathed. He saw not her marble beauty, which made one with her gown, he saw and sensed all the loveliness of her body, which was merely covered by clothes. And once he had seen it, he could not see otherwise, as we cannot return to a once-exposed deception. [...] "But she's stupid, I've said myself that she's stupid," he thought. "This isn't love. On the contrary, there's something vile in the feeling she aroused in me, something forbidden. I've been told that her brother Anatole was in love with her and she with him, and there was a whole story, and that's why Anatole was sent away. Ippolit is her brother. Prince Vassily is her father. It's not good," he thought; but while he was arguing like that (these arguments were left unfinished), he caught himself smiling and was aware that a whole series of arguments had floated up from behind the others, that he was at the same time thinking about her worthlessness and dreaming of how she would be his wife, how she might come to love him, how she might be quite different, and how everything he had thought and heard about her might be untrue. And again he saw her not as some daughter of Prince Vassily, but saw her whole body, merely covered by a gray dress. (1.3.1.27-37)
So there goes Pierre, thinking with something other than his brain. What's interesting is that Helene's main problem doesn't seem to be that she's superhot. It isn't really even the fact that she's maybe having an incestuous thing with her brother. Basically, we come to realize that her problem is that she is kind of an idiot. She's never been taught to think; she's always just used her looks to get what she wants. But looks without brains is a dangerous combination, as she finds out at the end of her story. But even if she had reached old age (um, spoiler, we guess), what would she have turned into?
Quote #5
The little princess [Lise] got up from the armchair, rang for the maid, and began hurriedly and cheerfully devising a costume for Princess Marya and carrying it out. Princess Marya felt insulted in her sense of her own dignity, because the arrival of the promised suitor excited her, and she was still more insulted that her two friends did not suppose it could be otherwise. To tell them how ashamed she was of herself and of them would mean to betray her excitement; besides, to refuse the dressing up they suggested would lead to prolonged bantering and insistence. She flushed, her beautiful eyes faded, her face became covered with blotches, and, with that unattractive expression of a victim which most often lingered on her face, she gave herself into the power of Mlle. Bourienne and Liza. The two women concerned themselves in all sincerity with making her beautiful. She was so plain that the thought of rivalry with her did not occur to either of them; they therefore undertook to dress her up in all sincerity, with that naïve and firm conviction of women that clothes can make a face beautiful. (1.3.3.54)
It's impressive that Marya is never revealed to be secretly beautiful; she just goes through the whole book being plain-faced. Even Nikolai doesn't see her as beautiful. What other female protagonists can you name that don't get beauty slapped on them as par for the course? We can only think of Jane Eyre, really.
Quote #6
There was tormenting doubt in Princess Marya's soul. Was the joy of love, of earthly love for a man, possible for her? Thinking of marriage, Princess Marya dreamed of family happiness and children, but her chiefest, strongest, and most secret dream was of earthly love. This feeling was all the stronger the more she tried to conceal it from others and even from herself. (1.3.3.71)
Check out the realism here! This book realizes and isn't afraid to point out that even Marya – pious, uptight, quiet, beaten-down Marya – has sexual desires and fantasies. That might make War and Peace ridiculously ahead of its time.
Quote #7
At that time there was a special atmosphere of amorousness in the Rostovs' house, as happens in a house where there are very nice and very young girls. Every young man who came to the Rostovs' house, looking at these young, susceptible girlish faces, always smiling at something (probably their own happiness), at this lively rushing about, listening to this young female babble, incoherent but affectionate towards everyone, ready for anything, filled with hope, listening to these incoherent noises, now of singing, now of music, experienced the same feeling of readiness for love and expectation of happiness that these young people of the Rostovs' house themselves experienced. (2.1.10.7)
Or maybe we spoke too soon. Really, Tolstoy? "Incoherent babble"? That's what young women talking sounds like to you?
Quote #8
His room was on the first floor. Those in the rooms above were also awake. He heard female voices overhead.
"Just once more," said a girlish voice above him which Prince Andrew recognized at once.
"But when are you coming to bed?" replied another voice.
"I won't, I can't sleep, what's the use? Come now for the last time."
Two girlish voices sang a musical passage – the end of some song.
"Oh, how lovely! Now go to sleep, and there's an end of it."
"You go to sleep, but I can't," said the first voice, coming nearer to the window. She was evidently leaning right out, for the rustle of her dress and even her breathing could be heard. Everything was stonestill, like the moon and its light and the shadows. Prince Andrew, too, dared not stir, for fear of betraying his unintentional presence.
"Sonya! Sonya!" he again heard the first speaker. "Oh, how can you sleep? Only look how glorious it is! Ah, how glorious! Do wake up, Sonya!" she said almost with tears in her voice. "There never, never was such a lovely night before!"
Sonya made some reluctant reply.
"Do just come and see what a moon!...Oh, how lovely! Come here....Darling, sweetheart, come here! There, you see? I feel like sitting down on my heels, putting my arms round my knees like this, straining tight, as tight as possible, and flying away! Like this…." (2.3.2.9-18)
Sonya and Natasha are two very different kinds of women. One is quiet, humble, self-sacrificing, basically exactly what a woman was supposed to be according to the behavioral guidelines of the time. The other is adventurous, a little strange, joyful, and unpredictable. Guess which one appeals to the characters of this book? Now put Sonya and Natasha into other 19th-century books that you've read. Which one would be praised? Which would be seen as problematic? Which would appeal to male characters? Female characters?
Quote #9
After dinner Natasha went to her room and again took up Marya's letter. "Can it be that it is all over?" she thought. "Can it be that all this has happened so quickly and has destroyed all that went before?" She recalled her love for Andrei in all its former strength, and at the same time felt that she loved Kuragin. She vividly pictured herself as Andrei's wife, and the scenes of happiness with him she had so often repeated in her imagination, and at the same time, aglow with excitement, recalled every detail of yesterday's interview with Anatole.
"Why can't it be both together?" she sometimes asked herself in complete bewilderment. "Only so could I be completely happy; but now I have to choose, and I can't be happy without either of them. (2.5.15.20-21)
Natasha wants a ménage à trois! Again, it's impressive for a 19th-century book to put this kind of thought into its heroine's head without then having her die some gruesome death because she has somehow become "impure."