Yelena Vasilyevna Kuragina
Hélène, a society beauty
BOOK ONE
Part One
1 Jan: Chapter 1
Since Hélène came out in society, everyone has been enraptured by the beautiful daughter of Prince Vasili Kuragin. So says Anna Pavlovna.
2 Jan: Chapter 2
She arrives at Anna’s soirée to accompany her father to the English ambassador’s ball. Unlike Lise Bolkonskaya, she is dressed for an extravagant engagement, with her ball dress and badge of maid of honour.
3 Jan: Chapter 3
Outdazzling everyone in the room, Hélène appears “shy of her unquestionable and all too victorious beauty.” Faced with very much exposed bosom, even Andrei and Pierre feel compelled to comment: “very lovely”.
Book 1 Part 3
16 Feb: Chapter 1
Twice Pierre thinks of her marble beauty, which conjures up an image of cold stone, a Greek Goddess, perfect and bloodless. Pierre thinks her stupid and remembers a scandal involving her and her brother Anatole. Were they lovers? Anyway, she appears prepared to thrust her bust in his direction, make eyes at him, and make it clear that she may belong to him.
17 Feb: Chapter 2
She says very little, but what she does say is clear and simple. She has spent much time with Pierre these past few weeks, but they never talk of love. She is waiting, but Pierre seems incapable of doing what he must do. After her father announces their engagement, she gets Pierre to remove his glasses and lands a rather brutal kiss on his lips. There is something unpleasant about that moment. But it has been done.
BOOK TWO
Book Two, Part One
12 Mar: Chapter 6
After the duel, we learn that Pierre and Helene have spent very little time alone recently. She has been with Dolokhov. Anatole, her brother, kisses her naked shoulders, and she tells Pierre she is not a fool to have children, and certainly not with him. The next morning, she speaks sternly to him, telling him he is a fool and will be a laughingstock. Dolokhov is “a man who’s a better man that you in every way” and while other women would have taken lovers, “I have not done so.” Pierre threatens her, and she runs out of the room.
BOOK TWO
Book Two, Part Two
28 Mar: Chapter 6
When conversation turned on her husband Hélène assumed a dignified expression, which with charactersitic tact she had acquired though she did not understand its significance. This expression suggested that she had resolved to endure her troubles uncomplainginly, and that her husband was a cross laid upon her by God.
At Anna Pavlovna’s party, she makes eyes at Boris and invites him to come and see him, on Tuesday, between eight and nine. “It will give me great pleasure.”
29 Mar: Chapter 7
When Boris goes to Hélène’s “splendid salon,” she ignores him the whole evening. And then, with a “strangely unsmiling face”, tells him to come again. What are her motives? It seems like she is poaching Boris for her salon.
Book Two, Part Three
20 Apr: Chapter 8
Pierre sinks into depression. He is under pressure to return to his wife, but feels unable to make that step. He goes to see Bazdeev who is living poorly and suffering a great deal. Bazdeev tells him to focus on the improvement of the self. Pierre begins a diary and moves back in with his wife.
21 Apr: Chapter 9
Hélène’s salon has become the epicentre of Francophile intellectual life in Petersberg, much to the consternation of her husband. Pierre is regarded as a harmless, absent-minded crank whom no one takes seriously. Boris becomes an intimate friend of the household. Hélène calls him her pageboy and treats him like a child. Pierre believes his wife has given up “affairs of the heart” but feels a “strange antipathy” towards Boris.
24 Apr: Chapter 12
Against his better judgement, Boris starts visiting the Rostovs. A neglected Hélène sends him reproachful notes every day.
27 Apr: Chapter 15
At the New Years’ Eve ball she is described as “the Tsaritsa of Petersburg”, beautiful and clever. Everyone is mad about her.
28 Apr: Chapter 16
Hélène is the first to join the waltz, with the Master of Ceremonies.
2 May: Chapter 20
Hélène turns down an invite to Vera and Berg’s housewarming party, “considering the society of such people as the Bergs beneath her.”
4 May: Chapter 22
Hélène holds a reception with the French ambassador and a foreign Prince of the Blood at her house. Pierre is preoccupied, absent-minded, ashamed and humiliated.
Book Two, Part Five
29 May: Chapter 8
Mary Dmitrievna takes the Rostovs to the opera. There, we see the betrothed Julie and Boris, his mother and her head-dress. Dolokhov is back, styling himself as ‘The Persian’ and turning heads with his pal Anatole. Natasha finds all the attention ‘agreeable’ and ‘disagreeable’ and is distracted by an enchanting Hélène.
30 May: Chapter 9
Hélène offers to ‘amuse’ the Rostov girls in Moscow and invites Natasha into her box. Under the Kuragin spell, everything, including the bad opera, no longer appears strange but delightful.
31 May: Chapter 10
Anatole joins Natasha and Hélène in the box, and she introduces her brother to the young countess.
2 June: Chapter 12
Hélène visits, compliments Natasha and invites her to Mademoiselle Georges’ recitation. She tells Natasha that Anatole is ‘madly in love’ with her.
3 June: Chapter 13
Count Rostov chaperones his daughter at Helene's party, planning to leave as soon as Mademoiselle George's performance is over. But Natasha insists on staying. Hélène appears to engineer a situation where Natasha is alone with Anatole.
10 June: Chapter 20
Pierre finds Anatole with Hélène at his house. ‘Where you are, there is vice and evil!’ he says to her.
BOOK THREE
Book Three, Part Three
Chapter 6
In Petersberg, Hélène ‘found herself in a difficult position,’ negotiating two extra-marital affairs. Her solution is to convert to Catholicism, divorce Pierre and marry the young foreign prince. What else is religion for? She confesses and is admitted into the Church. The confessor eyes up her fortune and her bosom while finding the right words to tell her that her marriage vows remain binding.
Chapter 7
Dissatisfied by her new religious advisors, Hélène turns to society to work her case. Soon, high society is discussing which of her two suitors she should marry. Marya Dmitrievna calls Hélène a prostitute, and Bilibin recommends marrying the elderly magnate first. Her parents intervene in their separate ways, but Hélène has decided upon her course. She writes to Pierre, asking him to dissolve the marriage. But Pierre is at Borodino.
BOOK FOUR
Book Four, Part One
Chapter 1
Petersburg society learns that Hélène is ill and has brought in an Italian doctor. Publically, she is suffering from angina.
They all knew very well that the enchanting countess’s illness arose from an inconvenience resulting from marrying two husbands at the same time, and that the Italian’s cure consisted in removing such inconvenience; but in Anna Pavolvna’s presence no one dared to think of this or even appear to know it.
Chapter 2
After the battle of Borodino, we learn of Hélène’s death. The doctor had ‘prescribed small doses of a certain drug to produce a certain effect’, we assume to carry out an abortion. One of her lovers, the old count, suspects something (that she is pregnant with another’s child?) and, having not heard from Pierre, she overdoses on the medication. The doctor produces letters from her that prevent her father and the old count from prosecuting him.