While 'The Kreutzer Sonata' caused a public sensation, Tolstoy's wife, Sonya, was hurt and furious that he should have enriched his scathing indictment of marriage with private details from their own life together. Tolstoy, during two years of obsessive unhappiness, had become convinced that the idea of a 'Christian marriage' was an impossiblilty. Here he lets loose all this frustration and disgust at human sexuality, and the humiliating, ungodly, sensual tie that binds men to women. The curious result, part self-lacerating confession, part Christian polemic, is moving, above all, as the story of a man whose sexual jealousy, inflamed by guilt, drives him to murder his wife.
