Sex as Destructive Sin
The character of Pozdnyshev expresses some truly radical ideas and it is definitely worth nothing that by the time Tolstoy wrote the story, his views aligned squarely with those of his creation. For Pozdnyshev, the act of sex at all its levels—pre-marital, extracurricular and even within the sanctity of marriage vows—is nothing less than degradation of the soul. The routine commitment of this sinful act inevitably unleashes violent emotions and urges in people who move inexorably closer to acting upon these impulses with each passing day in which they submit to their most base primal instincts. Sex is therefore a metaphor for all violently sinful activity.
“Another's wife is a white swan, and ours is bitter wormwood.”
The incident which is at the heart of the narrative of the story is the murder of a wife by a jealous husband wrong suspecting her of impropriety. According to the character who says the line of dialogue quoted above, it is an old Russian proverb. Whether that is so or not, it is certainly an observation with a certain universality about it; so much so that it could be equally applied to husbands.
"It follows that physical love is a safety-valve.”
This metaphorical assertion represents Tolstoy’s position on the matter earlier in his life before his marriage had soured him on the entire subject of romance and sexuality. Indeed, the view that sex acts as release mechanism to forestall the acting out of pent-up frustrations through violent action was and still remains a widely-held conventional view. The working out of the story and the attempt to break through the conventional wisdom engendered by this metaphor can be directly traced to personal disappointment in the author’s real life.
"To talk of loving a man or woman for life is like saying that a candle can burn forever.”
If it can be accepted that the views toward love, sex and marriage expressed by the protagonist of this story reflect those of the author, then this particular simile indicates that Tolstoy had become a very unhappy and hopeless human being over the course of his life, indeed. Only a person fully believing in this view would likely even conceive of such a story, much less be capable of writing it with such passion and integrity.
Desire Is Bondage
The underlying precept of the protagonist’s argument that sex is a destructive sin which demeans and dehumanizes the participants is based on the proposition that from an early age all girls are educated to serve just one purpose: becoming desirable for men. All women are taught and treated as if they had just one use in life which is to become a means of enjoyment for men. Not only does this situate the woman as a metaphorical slave to the man, but it also implicates the man as the metaphorical slaveholder contributing to the exploitation of half the population of the world. And the only way to stop the cycle is to metaphorically abolish this peculiar form of slavery and the only means of accomplishing that is to change public opinion so that finally society “must admit that it is shameful to exploit one's neighbor, and, to make woman free, public opinion must admit that it is shameful to consider woman as an instrument of pleasure.”
