Helene Kuragin
Encyclopedia
Elena "Hélène" Vasilyevna Kuragina is a fictional character
in Leo Tolstoy
's novel War and Peace
and its various cinematic adaptations.
's socially ambitious and sexually alluring wife, who uses her sexual attractions to earn social power in high-society circles but eventually defeats herself and dies (it is implied in the book that she dies from drug overdose in an attempted abortion). Before her marriage to Pierre, which she undertakes purely for social and financial advantage, it is rumoured that Hélène has had an incestuous affair with her profligate brother, Anatole. After her marriage, Hélène has an affair with Dolokhov, whom Pierre fights in a duel
.
Fictional character
A character is the representation of a person in a narrative work of art . Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr , the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749. From this, the sense of...
in Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...
's novel War and Peace
War and Peace
War and Peace is a novel by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy, first published in 1869. The work is epic in scale and is regarded as one of the most important works of world literature...
and its various cinematic adaptations.
Biography
Hélène is Pierre BezukhovPierre Bezukhov
Count Pyotr "Pierre" Kirillovich Bezukhov is a central fictional character in Leo Tolstoy's novel War and Peace. He is the favourite of several illegitimate sons of the wealthy nobleman Count Kirill Vladimirovich Bezukhov.-Description:...
's socially ambitious and sexually alluring wife, who uses her sexual attractions to earn social power in high-society circles but eventually defeats herself and dies (it is implied in the book that she dies from drug overdose in an attempted abortion). Before her marriage to Pierre, which she undertakes purely for social and financial advantage, it is rumoured that Hélène has had an incestuous affair with her profligate brother, Anatole. After her marriage, Hélène has an affair with Dolokhov, whom Pierre fights in a duel
Duel
A duel is an arranged engagement in combat between two individuals, with matched weapons in accordance with agreed-upon rules.Duels in this form were chiefly practised in Early Modern Europe, with precedents in the medieval code of chivalry, and continued into the modern period especially among...
.