ls, put on fashionable dresses, and sing romantic
songs to fascinate her husband would have seemed as strange as to adorn
herself to attract herself. To adorn herself for others might perhaps
have been agreeable--she did not know--but she had no time at all for
it. The chief reason for devoting no time either to singing, to dress,
or to choosing her words was that she really had no time to spare for
these things.

We know that man has the faculty of becoming completely absorbed in
a subject however trivial it may be, and that there is no subject so
trivial that it will not grow to infinite proportions if one's entire
attention is devoted to it.

The subject which wholly engrossed Natasha's attention was her family:
that is, her husband whom she had to keep so that he should belong
entirely to her and to the home, and the children whom she had to bear,
bring into the world, nurse, and bring up.

And the deeper she penetrated, not with her mind only but with her whole
soul, her whole being, into the subject that absorbed her, the larger
did that subject grow and the weaker and more inadequate did her powers
appear, so that she concentrated them wholly on that one thing and yet
was unable to accomplish all that she considered necessary.

There were then as now conversations and discussions about women's
rights, the relations of husband and wife and their freedom and rights,
though these themes were not yet termed questions as they are now; but
these topics were not merely uninteresting to Natasha, she positively
did not understand them.

These questions, then as now, existed only for those who see nothing in
marriage but the pleasure married people get from one another, that is,
only the beginnings of marriage and not its whole significance, which
lies in the family.

Discussions and questions of that kind, which are like the question of
how to get the greatest gratification from one's dinner, did not then
and do not now exist for those for whom the purpose of a dinner is the
nourishment it affords; and the purpose of marriage is the family.

If the purpose of dinner is to nourish the body, a man who eats two
dinners at once may perhaps get more enjoyment but will not attain his
purpose, for his stomach will not digest the two dinners.

If the purpose of marriage is the family, the person who wishes to have
many wives or husbands may perhaps obtain much pleasure, but in that
case will not have a family.

If the