Resurrection: Chapters 1 & 2: The Crushing Poverty of a Lower-Class Woman

Part One begins with four versus from the Gospels of the New Testament:

Matthew 18:21-2

Matthew 7:3

John 8:7

Luke 6:40

Other than one word order choice in the first quote, the King James Version is used for all the quotes. Whether this is Edmonds' choice or not I can't be certain.

Chapter 1:

The novel opens with an emphasis on how men had tried to change the environment around them, but through it all, "spring, however, was still spring, even in the town." (Gustafson, in his introduction, makes a comparison between spring and the idea of resurrection.) There is then a further disconnect between nature and the grown-up people who "never left off cheating and tormenting themselves and one another." "what they considered sacred and important were their own devices for wielding power over each other." This is used as a segue to introduce Maslova, who is one of three prisoners being called to the court-house. The jail is then contrasted in description with the beautiful spring. This really sets up the primitivism and primacy of the rural of Tolstoy in stark contrast to the institutions that are used to wield power over other people. Nature here is presented as pure, while the machinations and creations of mankind is seen as dirty and confining. The idea of nature winning here in this opening description is actually optimistic, despite the deplorable conditions of the prisons that humanity places themselves in.

An old woman, also in jail, gives Maslova the advice to "stick to your story and stay mum". Maslova, on the other hand, just wants it to be over and decided one way or the other. Tolstoy introduces this character as not a fighter for justice or someone directed by anger (whether righteous or not), but as someone who is defeated and accepting. The fear of waiting, such as Pierre in prison when he believes he may be shot, is the primal fear of the prison which causes a person to break down and lose their emotional stamina (this feeling of being overwhelmed is what leads to the plethora of plea deals in countries like the United States, which arrests far more people than they can possibly try, making the prosecutors put pressure on making the client surrender to a lesser sentence than if they were to be found guilty). Interestingly, the novel begins the way War and Peace climaxes, with a character being forced to walk from a prison by guards.

The chapter ends with a description of those who saw Maslova in town:

"some shook their heads and thought to themselves: 'This is what evil conduct - conduct not like ours - leads to.' Children stared terror-stricken...until they saw that she was guarded by soldiers...A peasant from the country...went up to her, crossed himself and gave her a kopeck...Aware of the looks directed towards her..The prisoner smiled, then heaved a deep sigh as she recalled her present circumstances."

I really like this depiction of the perceptions others have of her. Some see in her and her situation the reflection of justice, that this is what happens to criminals, but not people like us, not making the human connection between themselves and her, placing her in a different class. Others, children here, are scared of her, seeing the criminal and immediately thinking about the danger her presence signifies, only comforted by the "safety" brought by the soldiers (failing to reflect that those, and this is the point that I believe that Tolstoy wants to make here, very same soldiers are the ones that put them in danger much more than the criminal puts them in danger). The rural peasant shows his religion both in his mannerism and his ethical practice, showing a much deeper understanding than those (evidently city dwellers) who judge or fear her. Maslova appreciates the public attention, which one imagines she had not had otherwise, while at the same times having this relish deflated because of the circumstances it is in.

Chapter 2:

A flashback chapter that gives us an overview of Maslova's life, though not quite to the situation that put her in jail. Tolstoy calls her story "nothing out of the ordinary", but the entirety of the chapter is a story of oppressive poverty, sexism, and desperation.
After her mother, a prostitute who allowed (or perhaps forced depending on your reading) her first five children to die, dies, Maslova is saved and eventually placed in the care of two very different maidens that bring her up in contradictory ways. When she is 16, a young prince, on leave from his regiment, visits and impregnates her. Ashamed, Maslova rebels against those who raised her (in somewhat of a guilty push back, where people who feel bad about themselves or that they have done something wrong push themselves away from people they no longer quite feel worthy) and asks to leave. Once she does, she stays with a police officer who "began to pester her" until she pushed him down and leaves (is fired) to find a midwife, who, at least Maslova is told (the "according to the old woman who took him there" qualifier is interesting) sickens the baby and causes it to die. Since Maslova "did not know how to save money", she runs out of money and runs into a series of sexual harassers (the language Edmonds uses is not as powerful as the Maude translation). She then comes into contact with a mistress that introduces her to an old man with a gray beard that is a writer, which, incidentally, is a perfect description for Tolstoy. Obviously all of Tolstoy's sexual escapades that brought him so much emptiness were as a young man, but one can't help but see the Tolstoy at time of writing as a stand-in here, especially since he was a man with no qualms about having multiple stand-ins for himself.

Maslova then acquires a prostitute's card and starts to make money, which causes the aunt that she lives with to no longer make her do the hard job of laundering. The description of laundering here is powerful:

"She now looked with pity at the back-breaking lives led in the front rooms by the pale laundresses - some of them already consumptive - with their thin arms washing and ironing in a temperature of nearly 90°, the atmosphere full of soapy steam, and widows open summer and winter. She looked at them and shuddered at the thought that she, too, might have accepted such drudgery."

I think the descriptive element of the daily life of working peasants is important because through this narrative power, empathy can be aroused for the people we don't normally see, which is why I think it is very important to have fiction, and not just newspaper articles that may not reach the same audience, in our time that portrays the suffering, the poor, the immigrants, the addicted, or the foreign (the most famous semi-effective examples in American history is The Jungle, which did not accomplish what it set out to do as far as society's reaction, but was a prime mover in the reform of the food industry). One of the key ideas we see in this chapter is the few choices available for poor women, which should (though Tolstoy embraces the "traditional family unity", as demonstrated with Natasha's arc in War and Peace) not only bring us to the realization of the plight of the poor and the way that their circumstances affect their decision-making, but to the plight of the unemancipated woman, which has to do hard household work for minuscule pay or use their body (and be subject to the whims of men) to get ahead.

Maslova, who Tolstoy notes has already been smoking (one of the guards in chapter 1 is described as "reeking in smoke".), begins to drink "because it made her forget all the misery she had suffered, and gave her abandon and confidence in her own worth, which she never felt except under the influence of drink. Without wine she felt depressed and ashamed." And even today, recreation is of course a prime cause of alcohol and drug use, but on the everyday scale, they are used as stress relievers and as an escape from unhappiness. Millions of people come home from their jobs unhappy, wasting the majority of their waking hours doing something that is difficult, they do not find fulfilling, and ultimately meaningless. Not only does this dull their energy and their ability to think about the position they are in or participate politically, it makes them more willing to turn to substances that distract them from their reality rather than giving them the tools to change it.

Lured by security and the promise of pretty dresses, Maslova enters prostitution. Tolstoy then spends a paragraph outside of description to lament legal prostitution, "a life which for nine out of ten women ends in painful disease, premature old age and death." Since elsewhere I've talked about the unfortunate aspects of Tolstoy's beliefs about sex work, I'm going to (at least halfheartedly) defend him here. Sex work can be dangerous work due to the exposure the workers have to diseases and dangerous men, and in the more desperate classes, this danger is multiplied and prostitution is often not done as a choice weighed against many other good options, but as last resort, with the stigma attached to it. For the most part (of course their exceptions, especially those that are in it in the high or even middle classes), prostitution is a symptom of a societal problem of lack of opportunity for young women. It is degrading for Tolstoy not just because of his aversion of sex (though this plays a large role) but because it is something that does not further the intellectual or spiritual life of the woman. They are in a job that is purely physical (and unlike some manual labor that Tolstoy attaches the idea of a connection with nature to), which limits their moral progress.

This is followed by the description of the routine which Tolstoy clearly sees a cycle of "transgressions", "And so it goes on, day after day, summer and winter, weekdays and holidays." For seven years Maslova does this and we are told this leads to the incident for which she was arrested (though we aren't told what that incident is). Chapter 2 is very instructive because after showing a woman in prison, we see the physical, emotional, and economic circumstances that shaped her as a young person, making it very believable that we might find her on the wrong side of the law, but still making her sympathetic because we do not see has as evil, but as someone shaped by forces around her.