Y'all trust your narrators too much. Like, for instance, I think one of the things people miss about Pierre Bezukhov is just how utterly self-centered he is. I think it can be easy to overlook, because it often presents in seemingly outward-facing ways, but his attempts at good deeds are always entirely focused on the cultivation of his own soul. He wants to feels meaningful. And like, don't we all, sure, but it's a mistake to paint him as altruistic and self-sacrificing when his motivation always, always circles back to himself.
And this isn't bad as a character trait, or as the set-up to his arc later in the book. It's just a flaw that people misinterpret as a virtue. And honestly, I believe that's largely because Pierre sees it as a virtue.
So now we've gotten to my real point. You do not have to trust Pierre. You do not have to take what he says at face value. He is not a neutral narrator, relaying facts with absolutely no bias. I think a great example to start thinking about how much you believe this man is when he starts complaining about Hélène's reputation as being intelligent and cultured, and how he knows the truth: she's tricking everyone somehow, and inside, she's really just stupid and vapid.
And maybe he's right. Or maybe, he doesn't like Hélène. We know he resents her. We know he feels like HE was tricked. Maybe he's projecting. Maybe he is not the one and only single person in Petersburg who is actually secretly right about Hélène. And then, in the very next paragraph, when he says that society misunderstands him, perceives him as stupid when really he is tortured, and thinking deeply, he shows his entire ass. He's saying, I extend a depth of soul to myself that I do not allow for my wife. It's fine for him to be misunderstood, because he is the POV character, and he can tell us. But his perceptions of Hélène are unquestionable.
Tolstoy does this a lot, actually. It continually strikes me how concerned he is with the nuances of human character, how willing he is to extend grace for faults of that character— and also, how entirely incapable he is of extrapolating that to women. But we can kill the author here, a little, as a treat, and imagine this is just Pierre's flaw alone. And from there, decide how much we trust him.
