The Awakening (The Resurrection)

# Museum Catalog Note

This 1900 Street & Smith edition presents Count Leo Tolstoy's novel The Awakening (translated as The Resurrection from the Russian), translated by William E. Smith. The opening chapters depict the contrast between spring's renewing beauty in a Russian city and the sordid reality of the county jail. The narrative introduces Maslova, a prisoner being brought to trial on April 28th—a woman of striking appearance, with dark sparkling eyes, whom guards transport through city streets. The subsequent chapters establish Maslova's history: born to an unmarried servant on a noble estate and raised by two elderly spinster landowners, she received education and relative gentility alongside servant duties. At sixteen she fell in love with her aunts' wealthy nephew; during his wartime visit, he seduced and abandoned her with money. Pregnant and ashamed, she abandoned her position, worked briefly as a servant before being harassed and dismissed by a lecherous commissary. She bore a son in a midwife's care—a child ultimately lost to a foundling asylum—and subsequently fell into destitution.