Chapter 3:
We are introduced to Prince Dmitri Ivanovich Nekhyludov, who is immediately revealed as the man who "had seduced her (Maslova)". This is a really interesting narrative decision by Tolstoy, as the introductions I read made me think it was a rather significant spoiler that Nekhyludov was the one who "seduced" (I really dislike the word and framing, interestingly Britoff uses "wronged", because it does not imply rape, whether statutory or violent, but takes away all of Maslova's agency. I'm very interested in how the scene is portrayed later in the book to talk more about how Tolstoy frames the moment and how we should frame the moment.) Maslova. However, Tolstoy gives us this information as soon, and immediately, as Nekhlyudov is introduced. It colors how we view his entire character and the rest of the chapter, but, in a dramatic tense, it forsakes the idea of tension, creating a dramatic irony that we are aware of, but anticipate the character's reaction to their learning. This is a tool that Tolstoy really likes to use. We see it in War and Peace most dramatically in learning that Prince Andrei is the officer that is taken in by the Rostovs before they leave Moscow. The reader learns immediately, and the characters learn later, rather than the reader and character learning simultaneously, which is how many writers and fiction creators create tension. Interestingly, the panoramic and nationalist aspects of War and Peace operate in the exact way. The reader, especially a Russian reader or those familiar with the history of the Napoleonic wars, knows how it ends: Moscow burns, the French retreat, and Napoleon is eventually vanquished (twice). Instead, Tolstoy focuses on the reaction and interaction of the characters, both real and created, spinning them in a way to match his social, political, and historical theories.
Nekkhyludov is of course smoking (I'm probably going to get tired of highlighting every time Tolstoy uses smoking as a shorthand for moral failure) and thinking about the night before. We get a long description of his morning routine that may remind modern readers of American Psycho and Tolstoy readers of his autobiographical work confessions that he was obsessed with being comme il faut. "Everything he used...were of the best and most expensive kind...". This is of course a clear class contrast from the description of the destitution of the prisoner Maslova. This is set up really well and it is a point where Tolstoy's descriptions have actual narrative power.
We are introduced to his mother's (now deceased) maid Agrafena Petrovna but get very little of her character at this point other than she is familiar with him enough to call him "Mitenka", a name we recognize from War and Peace as being the name of the incompetent steward of the Rostov family, eventually coming to a head with Nikolai. He is in a situation where he is expected to get engaged the young Princess Korchagina. Nekhyludov has been in a relationship with a married woman that he is trying to break off, which plays into his hesitance to get engaged to the princess.
We get a description of her husband: "The Marshal was a liberal-minded man, and with others who shared his views struggled to oppose the current of reaction that ran so strongly under Alexander III; absorbed heart and soul in the struggle, he was quite unaware of his domestic misfortune."
It is difficult to tell what to make from here, whether Tolstoy sympathizes with the husband or just finds him ridiculous. Perhaps he is like a Pierre, who fails domestically and attempts to succeed politically through his Masonry, or maybe, unlike Nekhlyudov's (who imagines fighting in a duel with him and how he would fire in the air) waning liberalism replaced by comfort and affairs, he is the true political warrior that does not concern himself with a comme il faut existence. Nekhlyudov finds himself in the moral quandary of landownership, which thanks to his admiration of Herbert Spencer and Henry George and belief that private property is wrong, he finds his inheritance of his mother's property morally complex, as he must give it back to the peasants or risk showing that his old views are a sham. Just like Pierre (and Tolstoy of course), he is unable to balance his ideals with his riches.
Chapter 4:
Nekhyludov is a failed painter, which he sees evidence of in his studio that was expensive. When he thinks about what to do about the Princess Marya Korchagina, "he could not decide either way, any more than he could decide most of the other questions that came to his mind." He hopes that marriage and children will give his life meaning and a moral standing but is afraid of losing freedom. He is completely frozen and unable to make any kind of decision, similar to Pierre in War and Peace.
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