Standing behind his inert hero, Goncharov is aware that not all is well at Oblomovka, idyllic as it may seem. The indolence has gone so far that even basic house repairs are not made. A balcony long decrepit and ruled out of bounds to the family (but not to their serfs) at last collapses and falls, fortunately crushing only a family of chickens. Farming seems to be left entirely to the peasants themselves, the master's supervision consisting only of sitting by the window and asking passing peasants what they are doing and why. Serfdom seems almost benign in this lazy atmosphere, but some ugly signs nevertheless appear. For instance, the fourteen-year-old Ilia lies on his back so that his servant, Zakhar, can put on his stockings and shoes. If something displeases him in the procedure, "he will let Zakharka have it on the nose with his foot."10 If Zakhar should complain, he will receive a "light blow with the fist"11 from Oblomov senior. Ilia Oblomov escapes
from Oblomovka to an abortive official career in St. Petersburg, but he cannot escape its spirit of inertia and dependence, which cripples him for life. Oblomov illustrates vividly a fundamental paradox about a serf society: the nominal masters or "parents" are often in effect children, and spoiled children at that, nurtured and cared for by their "parent" slaves.
The pastoral theme plays a prominent part in both of Lev Tolstoi's great novels. The action of War and Peace (1865-69) is of course projected back to a much earlier era, the age of Alexander I, when Russian society (at least in retrospect) had seemed much more stable, confident, and, as it were, morally valid, despite the presence of serfdom, its merits demonstrated by the great victory over Napoleon. All three major families in the novel own country estates, which, as in Gogol, metonymically reflect their owners' characters. Ilia Rostov epitomizes the irresponsibility of the archetypal Russian gentleman: mortgage your lands to the hilt, live lavishly, and hope your children can marry money (in this case they succeed). Pierre Bezukhov inherits vast holdings on which he intends to introduce far-reaching reforms. Few reforms, however, are actually accomplished, for Pierre lacks the perseverance and practical capacity to see to it that his orders are carried out. Old Nikolai Bolkonskii, a former general, has imposed on Bald Hills (Lysye gory) an eighteenth-century rationalist, quasi-military regime. His son Andrei, assuming ownership of an estate at Bogucharovo, exhibits some of the same rationalist traits, but with an admixture of new, liberal ideas. There he is able successfully to implement most of the reforms Pierre dreamed of in vain, including a scheme for peasant emancipation. Nevertheless, it is the Bogucharovo peasants who, seduced by strange superstitions, threaten to revolt when the French armies are at the gates and Princess Maria is alone in charge. Serendipitously, Nikolai Rostov arrives just in time to teach them who is boss, partly by strategic use of his fists.
Hunting is also a gauge of character in Tolstoi, as well as an opportunity for vivid narrative. Maintaining a lavish hunting establishment, Ilia Rostov still enjoys the excitement of the chase, though old age has diminished his physical powers and his judgment. His son, Nikolai, however, has all the dash and passion of the born hunter. And even Natasha, showing that her native Russianness is unspoiled by her aristocratic upbringing, enters fully into the spirit of the hunt and emits a squeal of exultation when she sees that the dogs have run down a hare.
In Anna Karenina we see Russian society at a much later period, the 1870s. Town and country are again vividly contrasted, always in favor of the latter, and with penetrating subtleties. True country people, epitomized by Konstantin Levin, have real roots in the soil. The country is their natural home; they belong there and live fully only there. But others, like Levin's
half-brother Koznyshev, Stiva Oblonskii, Vronskii, and Anna Karenina herself, are only visitors in the country; their real life is in the city. Stiva, in typical gentry fashion, is selling off the timber on his wife's lands for less than it is worth to merchants who know its value very well. Vronskii spends vast sums of money to recreate in the country all the luxuries of urban life and adds some supposed benefactions for the peasants. But his charities are felt as alien and out of proportion, like the cows he imports from Switzerland. He is simply playing "squire." And on Vronksii's estate Anna is only a guest, not the mistress, an alien body in an alien world.
The antipode to these unassimilated urban transplants is Konstantin Levin, Tolstoi's ideal country gentleman, a thoroughly engaged and committed full-time farmer. And Levin's apotheosis is the great mowing scene, when his physical strength enables him to wield a scythe with the best of the peasant mowers, thus obliterating the social distance between himself and the "people" and becoming one of them, at least for a day. In this sublime saturnalia of sweat he experiences real ecstasy, a total obliteration of self.
Later in his life Tolstoi advocated more drastic means for reconciliation of the classes: voluntary renunciation of their property by landowners. Though few gentlemen - not even Tolstoi - adopted this Utopian programme of their own accord, a great many in effect did so involuntarily, losing their lands through forced sale or foreclosure. The decline of the gentry in the nineteenth century remains a crucial sociological fact, most powerfully epitomized in literature in Saltykov-Shchedrin's The Golovlev Family (1880), surely one of the gloomiest books ever written.
Here the degeneration of the gentry is far more than economic; indeed, in the novel's early parts it is not economic at all, as if to demonstrate that there are worse forms of degradation than bankruptcy. The first-generation matriarch, Arina Petrovna Golovleva, is - atypically - a good, industrious manager and succeeds in adding to the family's assets. But it is all for naught. The family for whose sake she has toiled is in a state of catastrophic moral and psychological disintegration, incapable even of enjoying, let alone conserving their wealth. Her husband is a shiftless drunkard who mostly lies in bed writing obscene poetry. Their eldest son, Stepka, after squandering property devolved on him by his mother, returns to live like an animal in an outbuilding in the Golovlev estate, killing himself with vodka. Another son, Pavel, also drinks himself to death. A daughter, Anna, marries against her mother's will, is deserted by her husband and dies, leaving two orphaned daughters, the chief representatives of the third generation. But the ultimate specimen of moral decay - and the crowning glory of the novel - is the third son, Porfirii or "Iudushka" (little Judas), one of the most
unforgettably repulsive characters in literature: pointlessly, pettily acquisitive, impenetrably hypocritical and self-righteous, endlessly mouthing self-justifying moral aphorisms, untouched by any feeling of human connectedness. One of his sons commits suicide when his father disinherits him; the other embezzles government money and is sent to Siberia, where he dies, his father refusing to help him. The two orphan girls complete the process of degeneration. First running away to become provincial actresses, they sink into a mire of vulgarity, becoming virtual prostitutes. One ends by committing suicide, the other destroys herself in the good Golovlev way, with alcohol.