Female Characters And The Question Of Moral–Spiritual Freedom In The Works Of Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy

Abstract

This article offers a comprehensive analysis of the ethical-aesthetic, axiological, and psychopoetic layers of the female characters created by Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy. In the novels War and Peace, Anna Karenina, and Resurrection, the spiritual quests of the female subject, her inner psychological dynamics, and her socio-moral position in society are elucidated from the standpoint of the dialectic of freedom and conscience. The study employs a comparative-narratological approach and a hermeneutic interpretation grounded in the analysis of interior monologue and subtext; it identifies the moral content of female images, the discursive expression of their spiritual experiences, and their aesthetic synthesis in artistic perception. As a result, the normative, moral, and humanistic functions of the female concept in Tolstoy’s poetics are conceptualized on a scholarly basis.