I just finished the movie and liked it a lot. I was just wondering what that ominous illness is, that Helene Kuragin got from that French (?) officer, these spots she discovered at her back. The next thing one heard from her was that she died.
shareyou can find some explanations on this if you check the messages under the post entitled "Anyone looking forward to this one"
shareIn the book, it doesn't go into too much detail about this desease, it only briefly mentions that it was "Syphilis".
shareWeird. In the book it mentions nothing about where Countess Bezukhov got her illness. It doesn't even cover it in great deal, or even any scenes with her while she is sick. It is merely others at a gathering talking about rumors that she is sick, then she suddenly dies.
shareTolstoy just killed her off so that Pierre and Natasha could be together.
share[deleted]
It's implied (and made more explicit in the BBC series) that she overdid the drugs trying to self-induce an abortion. Pierre could have divorced her without a penny if she was carrying someone else's child.
shareThat's exactly how I interpreted it (in the BBC version); I haven[t gotten that far in this version yet.
shareWhen she dies, it is from a botched operation to cure an illness that is not clearly described in the book, indicating that it might be an abortion: "They all knew very well that the enchanting countess' illness arose from an inconvenience resulting from marrying two husbands at the same time, and that the Italian's cure consisted in removing such inconvenience."
http://www.answers.com/topic/war-and-peace-novel-2