In which the unhappy couple confers...
We get some quality time with Darya (Dolly) Alexandrovna, and she doesn't seem very shrewish! She wants to get away from Oblonsky, the cad, but she's remains in her room, where she's been. She feels obligated to stay for the sake of the children. She wants to do something to do something to "punish and humiliate him." Ominious by itself, but poor Dolly doesn't seem like the punishing and humiliating type. I may be wrong. It would not be first time I misread a woman's capacity for punishment and humiliation--
We learn that this is her home. It seems she's the richer one of the two. He's married into money. The timber thing from the last chapter, that would hint at that as well. She resents the good-natured personality for which her husband is known.
Oblonsky enters the room, and they quarrel. Verbally, that is. Oblonsky cries tears that come a little too easily. He protests for the sake of the kids. Dolly calls him out for being a jerk and a sometimes father.
After shouting that he is no more than a stranger to her, she leaves, and Oblonsky bemoans the situation as banal. It's one of those words that you read a lot but don't usually hear spoken. For the longest time I used to pronounce it as if it rhymed with anal. Wish I could go back and see the faces of the people I was talking to. Honestly, I needed a quick refresher on its definition...which is "devoid of freshness of originality; hackneyed; trite." I'm thinking this word is chosen partly to illustrate ole Oblonsky's caddishness, and maybe also for Tolstoy to admit that, yeah, this is pretty uninspired stuff so far. So far.
Oblonsky leaves home in a carriage. He leaves Dolly behind to replay their conversation in her mind and wonder why she didn't ask whether he was still seeing the woman. She still loves him. He's a likeable guy, French maid philandering and all...
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