Two Dollies: The response to George Eliot’s Silas Marner in Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina

The character of Dolly Oblonskaya is one of the most understudied in Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. The paper attempts to prove that its creation was Tolstoy’s response to the reading of George Eliot’s Silas Marner (1861). He knew right well the English writer’s works. It seems certain that Tolstoy read all Eliot’s novels in the 1850-1870s. The mentions of her name in Tolstoy’s diaries and letters and the presence of her five novels in the writer’s own library prove it. The most apparent proof of Tolstoy’s knowledge of Silas Marner is the typological proximity of one of its secondary heroines and Dolly Oblonskaya. The coincidence of the moral-philosophical content of the characters and expressive means of its representation allow asserting that Mrs. Winthrop became the foretype of Dolly Oblonskaya and the reason why Tolstoy chose this name for his heroine. The peripheral position of Dolly Winthrop in the plot does not cancel her important role in the conception of the novel. Unlike the central character, Silas Marner, the weaver, who searches for the meaning of existence and the inner mainstay for long years, Dolly is a complete personality; she is not inclined to doubts, because she has strong beliefs and a faith in Providence. It is Mrs. Winthrop’s integrity and her ability to actively sympathize that become substantial for Marner in his return to people and faith. Tolstoy also makes these traits - moral integrity, absorption in the care of her family and a tender sympathizing heart - a core of his Dolly’s character. It is significant that Tolstoy duplicates epithets which accompany Eliot’s character (“mild”, “gentle”) in his characterization of Darya Oblonskaya. At the beginning the both characters are simple, unremarkable women, conscientious mothers and housewives only. But Tolstoy, like Eliot, subsequently demonstrates his character’s ability to be active for the sake of good. The paper analyses resemblance of the conversations of Dolly Winthrop with Silas Marner and the scenes of Darya Oblonskaya’s meetings with Karenin, Levin and Anna. The motive of inability to utter their thoughts and convince other people accompanies the both characters. However, both Dollies prove their rightness by their lives, affairs, skill to keep a good house and bring up children. The house, the nursery as natural surroundings for the both characters actualise the origin of their name: Dolly is a very simple, “home” English name. The research shows that the character of Dolly Oblonskaya became the result of Tolstoy’s creative recast and rethinking of Eliot’s character. Obviously, the writer took note of the plot twist, when a simple village woman, sincerely tender and with strong moral convictions, becomes a mentor of the hero who was in the situation of inner disorientation. Tolstoy was in need of such a character to counterbalance Levin and Anna, unhinged and suffering from a loss of inner mainstay.

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