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I really wish Sonya was a more well-rounded character. There’s a lot of potential built into her, but she’s sort of wasted in the novel as just a sounding board to Natasha. One thing that is true, however, is that life is not fair and Sonya’s decision to put family honor ahead of Natasha’s feelings will have consequences.

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It’s easy to forget how this would torment a young woman who so desperately wants to love and be loved. She’s lived a sheltered life, she’s naive and inexperienced, and all this is a whirlwind. And since she really doesn’t yet know what real love is – that real love a person really feels for someone they really love – she’s caught by all this. She sins because she’s naive, not evil.

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Hélène and Anatole are such pricks, I don’t care how much we know about them and how much empathy we should have for either of them, they’re both adults and they are pretty much tag teaming Natasha because they know she’ll fall for it. And her father instinctively knows this society is bad for Natasha but he’s raised her so sheltered that she has no defense against people like this and he’s not much help.

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Tolstoy is digging into the mind of someone like Hélène. He shows her as being simply motivated by pleasure and truly just wanting to have a good time, both for herself and, here, Natasha. But we’re also getting insight into the mind of a stupid person, as Pierre has told us about and now we’re seeing, and how she doesn’t consider consequences for others at all. She’s cruel because she’s stupid, not evil.

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Tolstoy makes his case for us to sympathize a little with Anatole, but what stands out for me more is how Dolokhov seems to be a voice of reason. Hard to say exactly what Dolokhov is thinking, but my guess would be he doesn’t want to ruin his gambling opportunities by getting mixed up with a scandal.