by Maria K.

Created on: September 18, 2011   Last Updated: September 19, 2011

Natasha Rostova is a character who changes the most through the course of the novel. One aspect of her change is purely natural, for she is little more than a child when she appears at the beginning of the book, and a grown woman, a wife and a mother at the end.

The most substantial changes, however, take place in her character. The magnitude of her transformation is emphasized when shown against the backdrop of the two core male characters - Andrew Bolkonski and Pierre Bezukhov. While the two men also undergo some degree of change as the events progress, they enter the narrative as adults, their characters already mostly settled. Granted, Tolstoy creates an illusion of change for them both, particularly for Pierre who is constantly in search of something. But it is that very search that demonstrates how little he alters as time passes by, for his ultimate goals - truth, justice and faith - remain the same throughout.

Natasha, however, is presented not as much as one person but rather as a series of different persons she becomes through the different stages of the story. She starts off as a child of a noble, although constantly financially challenged family, the youngest daughter and unquestionably her father's favorite. At thirteen-fourteen years old, Natasha is much like any teenage girl - her spirited and mischievous nature and love of games and pranks peacefully coexisting with her first puppy love for Drubetskoy; the lavish "society" education with European manners and study of French waging a war with her decidedly Russian surroundings and love of folk song and dance.

When we encounter her again in the midst of the dazzling Petersburg season, Natasha is much grown up. She is now a beautiful young lady and much aware of it herself. Extinguished are any remains of "boyishness" in her. She is ready to dazzle and be fallen in love with. With circumstances aligned just right, that is precisely what happens during her first big ball, for that is where Natasha is introduced by Pierre Bezukhov to the brooding and disenchanted Andrew Bolkonski.

To an objective viewer, theirs is an unlikely pairing from the onset. The matter lies not in the age difference or the gap in wealth and social position. Rather, it is a stark difference in their tempers. The very thing that draws Andrew to Natasha - her vivaciousness, her quick wit and desire to delight and be delighted by all - is also at the core of their mutual differences. So is Andrew's fierce intelligence and the

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