War & Peace today. Sonya — able to bear her self-sacrifices, cheerfully even, because secretly she believes that it is not self-sacrifice, but deferred gratification, and that she will one day receive her reward (marriage to Nicholas Rostov). When she discovers, however, that that reward, too, must be sacrificed, the walls start closing in and, rather than seeming to herself, as formerly, a good and self-sacrificing person, she seems a person who’s never gotten anything of what she’s wanted. . . Yup.
Tolstoy locates her inclination toward secrecy in her financial dependency, but I wonder if that’s true of her self-sacrificing attitude also….Interesting that her rival for the love Nicholas Rostov, Princess Mary, who is herself a rich heiress, finds her “affected,” which I believe is the first time we hear a truly negative judgment made about Sonya’s personality, which even the Old Countess, who is annoyed by Sonya, doesn’t feel she can object to. (Sonya doesn’t really care, like Natasha does, that Prince Andrew is dying and the suffering this causes her, Princess Mary feels.)
.i`` * ^ / . . . . . ` `~ 