Family Happiness

by Leo Tolstoy

Discover a heartfelt story of passion, duty, and emotional awakening in Leo Tolstoy’s classic novella Family Happiness. First published in 1859, this introspective narrative captures the complexities of married life through the eyes of a young woman named Masha.

When seventeen-year-old Masha is left motherless, she finds comfort and guidance in her much older guardian, Sergei Mikhailych. Their relationship blossoms into a romantic courtship and culminates in marriage. But what begins as an idyllic union soon becomes a reflection on the changing nature of love and the silent expectations within domestic life.

Told from Masha’s perspective, this deeply personal story traces her emotional journey—from youthful infatuation to the sobering realities of married existence. As her desires for freedom, identity, and personal growth clash with her husband’s traditional views on a woman’s role, the couple faces estrangement and an eventual, quiet reconciliation.

Inspired by Tolstoy’s own longing for love and influenced by contemporary philosophical thought, Family Happiness explores timeless themes such

The role of women in 19th-century society

The emotional dynamics of marriage

The conflict between personal desire and social duty

Perfect for fans of classic literature, feminist fiction, and psychological romance, this novella remains one of Tolstoy’s most intimate and relatable works. A must-read for anyone interested in the emotional intricacies of relationships and the pursuit of lasting happiness.

128 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 11, 2025

About the author

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (Russian: Лев Николаевич Толстой; most appropriately used Liev Tolstoy; commonly Leo Tolstoy in Anglophone countries) was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist fiction. Many consider Tolstoy to have been one of the world's greatest novelists. Tolstoy is equally known for his complicated and paradoxical persona and for his extreme moralistic and ascetic views, which he adopted after a moral crisis and spiritual awakening in the 1870s, after which he also became noted as a moral thinker and social reformer.

His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him in later life to become a fervent Christian anarchist and anarcho-pacifist. His ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You, were to have a profound impact on such pivotal twentieth-century figures as Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.