Darwin in the Novels: Tolstoy's Evolving Literary Response

Although Tolstoy was deeply critical of Darwin in his notebooks, diaries, letters, and essays, his literary imagination was profoundly influenced by Darwinian theory. Tolstoy's major novels are Darwinian in form–modeling his ideals of gradual development, chance, and interconnectivity–while rejecting Darwin in their explicit discussions of his ideas. War and Peace is set in a pre‐Darwinian world where only the author, not the characters, has access to the new worldview opened up by ideas of evolution, natural selection and the struggle for existence. In this work, Darwinian ideas are manifest in the way Tolstoy conceived of the struggle of nations and individuals at the heart of the book and also in the “Second Epilogue,” where he references Darwin directly to help explain and justify his theory of history. Anna Karenina , by contrast, unfolds in the new Darwinian age, where both the characters, as well as the author, engage with Darwin's theories. His influence can be felt in the structuring worldview of the author, which emphasizes chance over teleology and interweaves multiple plotlines. However, the characters' own engagements with Darwin are designed to undermine his ideas, vindicating faith over the new scientific worldview. Anna embraces the “struggle for existence” as natural law and ends her life, while Levin turns away from Darwin and is saved from despair.