The Socio-Cultural Background in Family Happiness by L. Tolstoy

In our study we try to show how Tolstoj's short novel Family Happiness is not only a reflection of the author's individual search for an answer to the question: 'what really is family happiness?' (a problem which persecuted Tolstoj throughout all his life), but also a mirror of the philosophical reflections and social changes which took place in Russian society in the first half of the 19th century and were prelude to the Great Reforms of the Sixties. In this way we can see how, thanks to the continuous interchange between literature and society, reality influences fiction which, in its turn, acts on mentalities, thus producing "effects of reality".