Anna Karenina

The old princess herself had married thirty years ago, with her aunt as matchmaker. The fiancé, of whom everything was known beforehand, came, saw the bride, and was seen himself; the matchmaking aunt found out and conveyed the impression made on both sides; the impression was good; then on the appointed day the expected proposal was made to her parents and accepted. Everything happened very easily and simply. At least it seemed so to the princess. But with her own daughters she had experienced how this seemingly ordinary thing - giving away her daughters in marriage - was neither easy nor simple. So many fears had been lived through, so many thoughts thought, so much money spent, so many confrontations with her husband when the older two, Darya and Natalya, were being married! Now, as the youngest one was brought out, she lived through the same fears, the same doubts, and had still greater quarrels with her husband than over the older ones. The old prince, like all fathers, was especially scrupulous about the honour and purity of his daughters; he was unreasonably jealous over them, and especially over Kitty, who was his favourite, and at every step made scenes with his wife for compromising their daughter. The princess had already grown used to it with the first two daughters, but now she felt that the prince’s scrupulousness had more grounds. She saw that much had changed lately in the ways of society, that the duties of a mother had become even more difficult. She saw that girls of Kitty’s age formed some sort of groups, attended some sort of courses,²⁶ freely associated with men, drove around by themselves, many no longer curtsied, and, worse still, they were all firmly convinced that choosing a husband was their own and not their parents’ business. ‘Nowadays girls are not given in marriage as they used to be,’ all these young girls, and even all the old people, thought and said. But how a girl was to be given in marriage nowadays the princess could not find out from anyone. The French custom - for the parents to decide the children’s fate - was not accepted, and was even condemned. The English custom - giving the girl complete freedom - was also not accepted and was impossible in Russian society. The Russian custom of matchmaking was regarded as something outrageous and was laughed at by everyone, the princess included. But how a girl was to get married or be given in marriage, no one knew. Everyone with whom the princess happened to discuss it told her one and the same thing: ‘Good gracious, in our day it’s time to abandon this antiquity. It’s young people who get married, not their parents; that means the young people should be left to arrange it as they can.’ It was fine for those who had no daughters to talk that way; but the princess understood that in making friends her daughter might fall in love, and fall in love with someone who would not want to marry or who was not right as a husband. And however much the princess was assured that in our time young people themselves must settle their fate, she was unable to believe it, as she would have been unable to believe that in anyone’s time the best toys for five-year-old children would be loaded pistols. And therefore the princess worried more about Kitty than she had about her older daughters.

Now her fear was that Vronsky would not limit himself to merely courting her daughter. She saw that Kitty was already in love with him, but she comforted herself with thinking that he was an honest man and therefore would not do such a thing. But along with that she knew how easy it was, with the present-day freedom of behaviour, to turn a girl’s head and, generally, how lightly men looked upon this fault. The week before, Kitty had repeated to her mother her conversation with Vronsky during the mazurka. This conversation had partly set the princess at ease; but she could not be completely at ease. Vronsky had told Kitty that he and his brother were both so used to obeying their mother in all things that they would never dare undertake anything important without consulting her. ‘And now I’m waiting, as for a special happiness, for my mother’s arrival from Petersburg,’ he had said.