Anatole Reincarnation In Tolstoy's The Awakening

This brings us back to the incident with Anatole. Anatole first meets Natasha at the opera and soon a “courtship” of sorts begins. Regardless of her engagement to Prince Andrei, Natasha begins to fall in love with Anatole Kuragin. She tries to reassure herself by saying, “So she knows I’m betrothed, so she and her husband, Pierre, the upright Pierre, have talked and laughed about it. So it’s nothing at all” (Tolstoy 571). But, she begins to feel that she is even more in love with Anatole Kuragin than she ever was with Boris, Denisov, or even Andrei. “Natasha feels a ‘sensation she had not experienced for a long time’ that eventually leads to a ‘state of intoxication’” (Lattin). Together, the two plan an elopement. Despite the fact that Anatole is already married, he
“Only while praying did she feel herself able to recall clearly and calmly both Prince Andrei and Anatole as people for whom her feelings were as nothing compared to her feeling of fear and reverence for God” (Tolstoy 662). As Lattin points out, “when she finally forgives herself and seeks forgiveness from God, she finds peace again.” Then, she experiences a sense of hope. Indeed, the “sense of the possibility for a new, clean life, and of happiness” replaced her former despair (Tolstoy). Next she began to feel shock and horror and what she had done and felt like she had sinned. In her opinion, all of society is evil and she again turns to God for comfort. This is when she stops going to balls and parties and cloisters herself from society women. Finally, Natasha begins to feel the full guilt in the wrongs that she committed against her family but she is still able to accept everything that has happened. “Through this tumultuous spiritual growth, Natasha matures from a willful, self-absorbed girl into a humble compassionate young lady. She develops a...sense of personal responsibility as a result of the crimes perpetrated by Anatole”