Tolstoy’s ideal wife is a body stripped of the animation of her former self

Evidence

November 23: … Of course I am idle at present, but I am not so by nature; I simply have not discovered anything I could do … Sometimes I long to break free of his rather oppressive influence and stop worrying about him, but I cannot. I find his influence oppressive because I have begun thinking his thoughts and seeing with his eyes, trying to become like him, and losing myself. And I have changed too, which makes it even harder for me. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1267 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

As far back as I can recall, all the foolish acts or all the good deeds I have done stem from the same cause, an aspiration to the perfect and ideal love where I can give myself entirely, confide all my being to another being, God, man, or woman, so superior to me that I would no longer think of leading my life or watching over myself. To find someone who would love me enough to take the trouble to make me live, someone whom I would blindly and confidently obey, sure that he would keep me from all failure and would put me on the right track, very gently and with much love, toward perfection. How I envy the ideal love of Mary Magdalene and Jesus: to be the ardent disciple of an adored and worthy master; to live and die for one’s idol, believe in him without any possible shadow of doubt, to hold at last the final victory of the Angel over the beast, to be held in his enveloping arms, so small, so pressed in his protection, and so much his that I no longer exist. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1848 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

For a wife who wants to live her situation in lucidity, in authenticity, her only resort is often to stoic pride. Because she is totally dependent, she can only have a deeply interior and therefore abstract freedom; she refuses ready-made principles and values, she judges, she questions, and thus escapes conjugal slavery; but her haughty reserve and her acceptance of the saying “Suffer and be still” constitute no more than a negative attitude. Confined in denial, in cynicism, she lacks a positive use of her strength; as long as she is passionate and living, she finds ways to use it: she helps others, she consoles, protects, gives, she has many interests; but she suffers from not finding any truly demanding job, from not devoting her activity to an end. Often eaten away by loneliness and sterility, she ends up by giving up, destroying herself. Mme de Charrière provides us with a notable example of such a destiny. In the sympathetic book he devotes to her, Geoffrey Scott depicts her with “a frond of flame; a frond of frost.” But it is not her reason that put out this flame of life that Hermenches said could “warm the heart of a Laplander,” it is marriage that slowly assassinates the brilliant Belle de Zuylen; she resigned herself and called it reason: either heroism or genius would have been necessary to invent a different outcome. That her lofty and rare qualities were not sufficient to save her is one of the most stunning condemnations of the conjugal institution found in history. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1355 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: A wife can lose her own self by absorbing her husband’s thoughts and vision. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1267; Total dependence reduces a wife’s freedom to abstract interiority that cannot save her — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1355; Traditional marriage confines woman to immanence and denies her transcendence — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1196 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• A wife can lose her own self by absorbing her husband’s thoughts and vision. #corroborates (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1267
• Pathological feminine love yearns to dissolve selfhood entirely into another’s will #corroborates (0.82) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1848
• Total dependence reduces a wife’s freedom to abstract interiority that cannot save her #corroborates (0.78) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1355
• Traditional marriage confines woman to immanence and denies her transcendence #expands (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1196