Family Happiness and Other Stories

by Leo Tolstoy

"Family Happiness and Other Stories" collects six stories by Russian born Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910). Most known for "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina," considered two of the greatest novels in world literature, Tolstoy also penned numerous novellas and short stories which remain valuable classics in their own regards. First published as a novella in 1859, "Family Happiness" explores the female identity within changing romantic relationships. Narrated in first person by the female protagonist Masha, the tale is a skilled and engrossing story of woman's difficult position in a shifting society. "Three Deaths" follows three characters who each are stricken with fatal cases of consumption. Tolstoy examines death with an eloquence and realism unseen in his contemporaries. In "The Three Hermits" an archbishop on a sea voyage pursues three wise men on a secluded island. In "The Devil," two brothers struggle with a new inheritance riddled with debts when sudden romance and lust threaten to turn their world upside down. "Father Sergius" tells of a young aristocrat who, upon discovery of his fiancé's infidelity, retreats into the life of a monastic Orthodox Christian, though this radically new life proves to be difficult. Lastly, in "Master and Man," a landowner and his peasant journey to purchase a small forest only to get caught in a blizzard. The ethics of self-sacrifice resolve this moralizing tale. These classic short stories from Russia's greatest author demonstrate his supreme skill and timeless talent.

Genres: Classics, Fiction, Short Stories, Russia, Russian Literature, Literature, Classic Literature

161 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

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.

Reviews

[justme · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tolstoy has the ability to create a rich world full of its own detail and atmosphere within a mere 80 some pages. That alone is a gift. That aside, "Family Happiness" really made me depressed. Even though I've never been married, the issues and the dialogue in the arguments were all too familiar with what unfortunately tends to happen to many long term relationships.

The story of "Family Happiness" discusses the course of love within a relationship--- its development from "romantic love" to this sort of dumbed-down, dulled-down version of what Tolstoy considers to be the love that a marriage aspires to be-- one built on the love of the children and a shift from a romantic/desirous love for the spouse to a mutual respect for the parent of your child.

The odd part of it all for me was that the main character, Masha, was actually happy with this at the end, which made no sense to me whatsoever. The end of her romance with her husband and the birth of this new version of love, one that feels sterile and PG, and watered down was something that I cringed at by the end of the story.

If this is a happy marriage, I don't want it.

[Freya Entrup · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is supposed to give an insight into a young woman’s thought in her new marriage.
The book follows the story of Masha, who looses her mother (her father is already dead). It’s beautifully written, as with any Tolstoi book.
What I have a problem with is the plot. Tolstoi does a fantastic job romanticizing a 33 year old man falling in love with a 17 year old and then marrying her.

This man is a former friend of her late father. Furthermore, the older man is aware, and scared that Masha is young and beautiful and may not want to rot away in his country residence where he wants to spend all his time.

So to „get the urge out of her“ he gets her to St. Petersburg where she is discovered in society and new flash: she loves it. Her husband then immediately grows resentful and punishes her for the fact that she is popular and has fun.

Once they have their first kid Masha doesn’t stay home like her husband wants. She says something that really stuck with (probs to Tolstoi to muster up so much emphaty for a young mother): „I love my child, but to sit beside him all day long would bore me; and nothing will make me pretend what I do not really feel“. (P. 56)

Unfortunately the book ends with Masha being enlightened to the fact that society can never satisfy her and what truly makes her happy are her kids and her husband. She’s 21 at the end of the book.

Poor girl.

[Micah Allen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I only read “Family Happiness” but I wanted to get it on my shelf. I am astonished. I will be assigning this book for premarital counseling for the rest of my life. Tolstoy is a master. Just read it it’s not even a 100 pages. You will not regret it.

[Mitchell Gardepe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anything written by Tolstoy is going to be many things at once. It’s a love story. It’s an allegory. It’s a scathing critique of 19th century urban culture. But above all, it’s a regretful exploration of what it means to be a young adult in the modern world.

Young people grow up by making mistakes. Sometimes you have to burn your hand on the stove to really *know* why you weren’t allowed to touch it. But these experiences leave their mark - you aren’t the same person you were before and you’ve probably lost something along the way.

It’s difficult to ignore parallels between Tolstoy’s descriptions of spiritual rot in the city and the “hook-up culture” hangover that our society seems to be now recovering from. We’re left with something to contemplate - how might we rework the idea of what it means to be a liberally-minded person in the 21st century so as to encourage the nourishment, rather than degradation of the deeper, simpler parts of ourselves?

[Madi · Rating 3 out of 5]

"'In the summer when I first knew you, I used to lie awake all night, thinking about you, and I made that love myself, and it grew and grew in my heart. So again, in Petersburg and abroad, in the course of horrible sleepless nights, I strove to shatter and destroy it, but I destroyed that part of it which gave me pain. Then I grew calm; and I feel love still, but it is a different kind of love.'"

[Josue Mosquera · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing story about the purpose of life and how to be content. Recommend every young adult to read this to battle with their own inner demons and desires.

[Jon Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just a really stunning delight. Tolstoy knows his land and his nature and how it speaks to the heart and the soul. Can’t wait to discuss this story in book club.

[Ben Rowe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really great a nice warmup for when I read War and Peace!

[Anders Klingenberg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Typen bok du er mer fornøyd med å ha lest enn å faktisk lese. Ganske tung til tider, og budskapene resonnerte ikke helt med meg, men det er vel sånn klassikere er…

[Vivien Alunia’s wifeu 🤭❤️ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oceniam tylko Family Happiness. Jak cudowny był to utwór, w życiu bym się nie spodziewała. Dla hopeless romantic takiego jak ja ta powieść jest just so so so amazing. Była piękna miłość, była zazdrość- czego mogę chcieć więcej. No czytałam z uśmiechem na ustach i z zapartym tchem. Opis romantycznego uczucia w tym utworze 10/10 dziękuje Tołstoj. Jedynym haczykiem jest zakończenie, bardzo mnie zasmuciło. Liczyłam na coś innego …

[Bemmu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Internal anguish so well described that it makes for a surprisingly gripping read.

[Leonie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting exploration of love and happiness in the context of a marriage between a young girl and a much older man. The ending is quite morally ambiguous in the sense that Tolstoy doesn’t tell you whether the evolution of their love is a positive or negative change, but leaves the reader to make up their own mind. Although set in the 1800s in rural Russia, it still feels relevant today.

Some takeaways:
1. “What I had taken for the end of love was only its transition to another form.” - It is natural for love to move from the exciting honeymoon phase to a calmer, more sustainable, mature love. Pain arises when you try to fight this natural evolution and try to stay in the infatuation stage forever.

2. Loving someone is not just a feeling but a choice you have to make over and over again (I seem to be getting this message from so many books these days, like All About Love & The Art of Loving & The Dream of a Ridiculous Man)

3. “He guided me lovingly, as one guides a child.” / “I felt that I must live, that I must experience everything for myself.” - Dating a significantly older man may seem exciting at first, but young people need to learn lessons by living freely and making their own mistakes instead of learning second-hand from a more experienced partner. That will never satisfy the natural human curiosity.

4. “I felt alive only when others admired me.” / “All this brilliance, this noise, left me empty afterward.” - The book really highlights the danger of depending on external validation within “high society” for feeling content, the fragility of that happiness, the feelings of emptiness when realizing that external excitement can only feed the ego and cover internal emptiness for so long.

Masha’s initial, hopelessly romantic and youthful perspective on love resonated with me too:

* “It seemed to me that all life consisted in loving and being loved.”
* “I felt that without love there could be no happiness, no life.”
* “I could not imagine a life in which love was not everything.”
* “To love and to be loved appeared to me the sole purpose of existence.”
* “I lived only in love, and through love everything had meaning.”

[Majed Binabbas · Rating 2 out of 5]

(2.5/5)

Family Happines contains Tolstoy's views about love, marriage, and families. He presents a story between a young woman who becomes infatuated and in love with a relatively older man.

What begins as a successful marriage soon corrupts into a life led by an obsession with society's glamor and superficialities. The young woman starts to act, behave, and engage in activities just to capture the public's attention, while the husband silently protests. After her relationship with her husband deteriorates, she realizes the meaninglessness of her facade and seeks to begin her life anew with a new source of happiness, her children and family.

As is custom with Tolstoy, he reveals how infidelity begins and takes place in relationships. It is obvious that he values loyalty and the conventional roles associated in tradition. The author demonstrates the pull and influence that society can have on an individual as not something to be dismissed. However, he still believes that although some go astray, there is nonetheless always a chance for someone to right their wrongs, and this clearly evident by the book's ending.

Leo Tolstoy's mastery comes at depicting how quarrels and disputes happen on a day-to-day basis. The dialogue between husband and wife felt very comparable to how conversations take place in reality. One thing to note was that the story seemed to lack an overall purpose, with nothing really major happening throughout the plot. Despite this drawback, if someone is interested in the psychological aspects of relationships, Family Happiness is the perfect book for it.

P.S. It made me a bit wary of wanting to get married.

[Laurence · Rating 5 out of 5]

Six very different stories, and yet. The realistic details, the insights in the characters' mind, the fluidity of the style bring a whole world to life in all of them. In a few pages the reader is immersed into Tolstoi's Russia to meet simple characters or more complex, tormented ones, and to explore their progress towards happiness, wisdom or serenity.

[Luca Lovrich · Rating 4 out of 5]

“he in his madness prays for the storms, and dreams that storms will bring him more peace.”

ngl i thought this was weird af until page 48

[Haroon Shaikh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am so tolstsoy pilled after this book. Best descriptions of emotions I have ever read.

[Alaska Youngren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Family Happiness might be the most beautiful story I have ever read.

[Am.Almh · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.8

[Asude · Rating 3 out of 5]

Felt more like tolstoys fantasy smh. ‘Look if you go against your husbands will, this will happen. Your husband is the smartest’ type shi. We lost a baddie..

[Jo Rich · Rating 5 out of 5]

Makes marriage sound pretty bleak

[Pat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Family Happiness is about a young woman who marries an older man and the trials and tribulations of trying to remain in love while wanting different things out of life due to their age differences. It is psychological in its approach and is told in the first person from the perspective of the young wife. This serves to give the reader the opportunity to get a deeper understanding of the inner turmoil of the character, Masha, and her struggle to understand herself and her husband better.

I thought that it was a good book, but I was a little let down. This was my first Tolstoy but not my first nineteenth century Russian novel, as I have read three Dostoevsky novels. I was expecting this book to be more like those, but it never packed the punch for me that those did. If anything, it was more similar to a novel like Jane Eyre than anything by Dostoevsky.

[L · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read Family Happiness some 3 years ago but I remember that feeling that crept into me after I closed the book: a mix of sadness and happiness, I think I've never felt like that after I read something - I was just so happy for Masha for finding happiness with her newborn and husband,but also sad because while finding happiness in her new life as a woman, she stepped out of her childhood (I think she was about 18 or 20 then) and also because I think girls shouldn't get married at such tender age, however Masha has proved that she is mature for her new role and way of living. But despite all that I was sad and somehow angry at her husband who has "taken her youth" - because of personal reasons :)
All in all a cute and refreshing masterpiece!

[Dee · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a beautiful little compilation of stories! This is Tolstoy at his best. He paints scenes of Russian life so beautifully that it is hard not to become immersed in the story. Yet every story has its own message to resound with readers on a deeper level. I truly did not get a true sense of Tolstoy's mastery of writing from reading Anna Karenina, so I am very glad I got a copy of this! I liked every story better than the last, so I cannot pick a favourite but I would recommend them all!

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a terrific short story. There were surprising parallels to my own relationship.

[Houry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Family Happiness 4 stars
Three Deaths 5 stars
The Three Hermits 2 stars
The Devil 3 stars
Father Serguis 2 stars
Master and man 2 stars

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title story is very good. Keeping in mind when it was written, that being some 175 years ago, and has some dated ideas about marriage and love, it still has some passages of wonder.

Masha is a seventeen year old girl still reeling after the death of her mother. Her beloved father dead previous it is now she responsible for their small estate. Servants care for her and help and she has her younger sister to care for but she is abject and feels like giving up. A family friend, Sergey, a friend of her father’s is to help settle affairs and stops by. Twice her age and considering himself a paternal figure he tries to get her to buck up , which, over several visits she begins to do. They both deny their feelings for a long time, he especially considers it folly, with their age difference he is sure she will regret any decision of marriage.

As they discus the possibility of being together he tells her that, of course she is enough for him. A life with her would be a blessing for him :

“ yes my dear, it is little to give you,(his love) you have use and beauty. I often lie awake at night from happiness, and all the time I think of our future life together. I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet, secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them, then Work, which one hopes may be of some use, then rest, nature, books, music, love for one’s neighbour Dash, such as my idea of happiness. And then on the top of all that, you for a mate, and children, perhaps – what more can the heart of man desire?”

But he fears that after the excitement of marriage she will become bored with the simple life he describes. She rebukes the idea, but, in the end, he is correct.

It is a winter social season in Petersburg that births the problem. She loves the balls, events, and yes, attention that is drawn to her youth and beauty. He takes it as superficial fluff which he has no use for. Three years later she has her younger sister son, and they are adrift, she especially. We read :

Many a night when I went, dressed for a ball, to the nursery, to sign the child with the Cross before he slept, I found my husband there and felt his eyes fixed on me with something of reproof in their serious gaze. Then I was ashamed and even shocked by my own callousness, and asked myself if I was worse than other women. “ but it can’t be helped,“ I said to myself, “I love my child, but to sit beside him all day long would bore me, and nothing will make me pretend what I do not really feel.”

One evening the two are having a discussion that seems to be amenable. She is filled with guilt if not remorse over actions. He claiming his connectedness has no desire to look anything but forward. She asks him “ do you not regret the past?” She struggles to accept his answer of acceptance and again inquires “ but would you not like to have it back?” His response I think is one I would make “I might as well wish to have wings. It is impossible.”

I have had people want to tear apart the past with me. For some people it’s just not who they are. That was true, inevitably even more true 175 years ago in Russia, as it is now.

In the end what she regrets, misses, is the passion and joy of their early love. He and she realize that eventually love changes shape and grows more mature. Of course she is in her early twenties when she comes to accept this. A different world.

“Three Deaths” is a much simpler, a much smaller story. What we see is a family trying to travel into Europe from Russia to get a woman, tubercular, to a better climate. Her doctor, and her husband, both fear she will not survive the trip, but she is insistent they must try. She does, in fact, die on the trip, bitter at her husband for not departing sooner. Their driver of the coach, they are travelling on stops by a wave station and convinces a very old gentleman resting there on a fireplace to give him his boots as he will no longer be needing them. The man says that he will place a stone on the man’s grave as payment. Time passes, the man does die, and his fellow drivers tell him it is time for him to place a stone on the man’s grave. He hedges, but that’s a great to go out into the woods to find a tree to mark a cross in the interim. The third death, which in reading I thought was going to be the driver, turns out to be the large tree itself. Its death allows to story a chance to describe the forest and the nature and the lives affected by the tree both in the air, and once it’s fallen.

[Youssef · Rating 3 out of 5]

i had read lots of tolstoy before this: anna karenina, war and peace, the death of ivan illych, and more. i always put tolstoy amongst my top 5 writers. part of it was that his books were among the first few i read when i seriously picked up reading. the other parts were that he was easy to read, engaging, had similar philosophical leanings, and really understood the human condition in so many different faucets.

when i started reading family happiness i was honestly a bit disappointed. was this the author i held in such high regard? the prose was very simple, the plot line was not much different, it felt very similar to his other works, and the age gap relationship was something i was tired of seeing from tolstoy. despite all this the book was short enough where i was willing to give it a good shot. and im glad i did.

the points i mentioned above all stayed true, but the value came from the development of the relationship. in tolstoys longer works many relationships are idyllic, and have happy endings. this is fine if youre self inserting or if you get your value out of second hand enjoyment but if you want to learn something you get absolutely nothing and it sets up unrealistic expectations. obviously not all relationships in his longer books ended like that, but the people i found to be tolstoys self inserts always had happy endings.

family happiness does not do this. it starts out idyllic, the honeymoon phase, and then degenerates into realistic qualms and conflicts. the value difference of city versus country life is most in the foreground but it covers a lot of the other deeper value differences. seeing things play out the way they did was not pleasant of course but how it ends is realistic and honest. it is bittersweet but leaning more towards the bitter. it captures a sense of loss that is much more difficult to make legible. i didnt like how supercilious the husband was acting as well so i guess it wasnt just the wife. overall i thought it was a valuable read.

[Will McGee · Rating 4 out of 5]

My second by Leo Tolstoy. The particular edition I got of this has two novellas, Family Happiness and Master and Man, and a short story, Alyosha the Pot, and then another short story by Holly Goddard Jones (which I haven't read yet - was really reading this for the Tolstoy).
Family Happiness is a melancholy but acutely observed story of a young woman who marries an older friend of her family and the particular characteristics of their love, which goes about how you might imagine. Where another author might wring this dynamic for melodrama, Tolstoy explores his characters from a three-dimensional angle that makes it feel very true to life. I think my favorite was Master and Man, about a local lordling who intends to ride several kilometers to buy a plot of land before the other local lordlings can, but a snowstorm is imminent, so his wife insists he bring along one of his peasants. He has every opportunity to stop for the night, and the snowstorm continuously gets them turned around or routed back from whence they came, but his desire to have one up on his peers eventually overcomes even his most basic common sense and survival instinct. A great story of class, greed, and survival. Finally, Alyosha the Pot is the story of an unassuming young man of the lower class who gets work in a merchant's household and establishes himself as someone who will do any task without complaint. One day, he finds that he has fallen in love with the cook, and suddenly sees himself as more than just a servant to be at someone's beck and call. This cannot last, though, as life is not kind to people like Alyosha, even if he is perfectly content with his unhappy lot.
Overall I really enjoyed all of these stories and would like to make time to read Anna Karenina one day, too.

[Marius · Rating 5 out of 5]

Å lese Lev Tolstoj føles nærmest urettferdig. Gjennom sine mange kortere fortellinger blottlegger han sine syn på livet, det lurer erfaringer bak alle betraktningene hans, gode, vonde og religiøse. Hans møte med ungdomstiden betraktes gjennom refleksjonen i øynene til en som har opplevd livets nonsens, og forsøket på å forstå ham gjennom en ungpikes ønske om kjærlighet som forvandles smertelig og irreversibelt, men som til slutt blir fritt for anger, om enn ikke noe håpefullt. Han fortsetter med en kraftig advarsel mot de privilegertes tro på livets uendelighet, han dreper like gjerne tre karakterer og betrakter hvordan de takler døden. Mens advarslene fortsetter i uforminsket styrke om at det gamle, gode man fant i mennesker før i tiden er på vei til å bli tapt, se bare på den uspiselige ungdommen nå til dags, øker samtidig religiøsiteten hans. Han utforsker selvmotsigelsen i å praktisere religion for sin egen skyld. Å virkelig ofre seg for andre er både ubehagelig og usynlig, man kan hengi seg uten selv å være klar over det. Selv om han finner veien religiøst, taper han sine kamper mot djevelen. Det er lite man kan gjøre for å beskytte seg mot en kvinne man begjærer, men ikke vil ha. Drep henne, eller ikke, Tolstoj klarer ikke bestemme seg og skrev like gjerne to endinger. Til slutt avslutter han mesterlig i en inderlig russisk snøstorm. En mesters korttenkthet overgår snøføykens ugjennomsiktighet, i jakten på profitt drar han med seg sin kloke hest og sin avalkoholisertes tjener mot den sikre død hele tre ganger. Bare en overlever, helt klart den som beviser seg som den moralsk overordnede tolker jeg Tolstoj rett, men, hvem?

[Ulfah · Rating 5 out of 5]

God dammit Tolstoy. I first read Tolstoy sometime during my PhD, so maybe 2013 or something. It was thick, but the feelings from that book lasted so long even till today. I haven't got around to read War and Peace, but this tiny short book reminded me on why he's one of the greatest writer out there. This might be something you'll call an Anna Karenina if she didn't decide to jump off the ship, but as that book, it has so many things that got to be said about life. It tells about a love that entered into marriage when the woman has not yet fully understand what life is, and a man who failed to communicate so they carry the hurt and burden for so long until they come to a point where they finally TALK and transform. It's about how some things cannot be returned to what it was, and we can only accept and move forward. There's always something in the way Tolstoy writes that talk to your heart and soul and you see your own life and life of others and you think, this dude from the past understood it. He nailed it. I mean, just wow. I'm glad I met my husband in the right timing though, bcs although the ending feels content, the death of such love will always be regretted. I mean, the what ifs 🥲