Who was the real-life inspiration for Natasha Rostova in Leo Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace’?
"I took Tanya, blended her with Sonya and out came Natasha," explained the future classic writer about the origins of his heroine.
Sonya is Sofya Bers, formerly Tolstaya, the writer's wife. Tanya, meanwhile, is her younger sister, who lived in Yasnaya Polyana for extended periods before her marriage.
Tolstoy, however, did not distribute the traits of the two sisters equally. He based young Natasha's appearance and playful nature almost entirely on Tatyana. ‘War and Peace’ includes many scenes of everyday life that Tolstoy observed in the Bers family. One of the most striking and vivid is the scene of Mimi doll’s wedding.
Mimi was inspired by a huge doll given to Tatyana by her grandfather. The novel includes a scene where, at a birthday party, a 13-year-old Natasha laughingly announces to her mother that they are "marrying" her friend to a doll, asking him to "kiss Mimi". Tolstoy to this playful "wedding" scene almost verbatim from real life: Tatyana asked her cousin to kiss her doll.
It was precisely these childhood and adolescent photographs of Tatyana Bers that Tolstoy showed to the novel's illustrator when he demanded a portrait resemblance between his wife's sister and his heroine.
Natasha the mother, as the reader sees her in the novel's epilogue, is modeled after Sophia. By the time ‘War and Peace’ was coming to an end, the Tolstoys had already had their older children and the writer projected his wife's everyday care, dedication and family focus onto his heroine.
