Resurrection
Translated by Louise Maude
Free public-domain edition — preview in your browser, no account required for the first chapter.
Preview free · sign up to save progress, download to your shelf, and sync with the apps
Already have an account? Sign in
Resurrection offers a profound and unflinching critique of social injustice while charting a deeply human journey toward redemption, making it as relevant today as when it was written.
Edition details
Book Summary
Prince Dmitri Nekhlúdoff undergoes a moral awakening after serving on a jury that wrongly convicts Katúsha Máslova, a woman he seduced and abandoned years earlier. His quest for redemption leads him to confront the injustices of Russian society, the hypocrisy of the legal system, and the possibility of spiritual rebirth.
The novel opens with Prince Nekhlúdoff, a wealthy aristocrat, awakening to guilt over his past seduction of the peasant girl Katúsha Máslova. When he encounters her on trial for murder, he realizes his actions set her on a path to ruin. Nekhlúdoff abandons his privileged life, follows Máslova to Siberia, and attempts to atone by offering marriage. Meanwhile, Máslova undergoes her own transformation, eventually finding purpose and love with the political exile Símonson. The narrative exposes the corruption of the Russian legal system, the brutality of prison life, and the vast chasm between social classes. Through Nekhlúdoff's journey—from giving his land to peasants to reading the Gospels in a prison cell—Tolstoy explores themes of moral awakening, social injustice, and the possibility of redemption through self-sacrifice and love.
Reading guide
Go deeper in Resurrection
Character guides, themes, chapter companions — plus Character Web, narrative arc, and theme heatmap teasers that unlock fully beside the text in BetterReads.
Narrative arc
Story tension across the book.
Prince Dmitri Ivanovich Nekhludoff
Nekhludoff moves easily through drawing rooms, courts, and prisons alike, a nobleman whose charm and rank open every door. Yet the trial of a woman he once seduced and abandoned splits him in two: the man who wants to do good and the voice whispering that she will only be a stone around his neck. His wavering resolve—whether to give her money and walk away or follow her into suffering—is the hinge on which the whole novel turns.
Katerina Maslova
Maslova survives prison by vodka, wit, and the hard bargains of a woman who has learned to make use of men before they use her. When Nekhludoff reappears, she feels the old world of feeling stir and immediately buries it in mist, half-luring him, half-hating him. Her refusal to simply be his redemption—her suspicion, her tears, her silence—keeps the story honest and makes her awakening the book's true center.
Voldemar Simonson
Simonson belongs to the world of prisoners who have traded comfort for principle, a man whose ascetic certainty sets him apart even among exiles. His devotion to Maslova is neither pity nor passion in the ordinary sense but a steady, undemanding commitment that asks nothing back. His presence forces Nekhludoff—and the reader—to ask whether atonement means possessing the person you wronged, or setting her free.
Missy
Missy moves through her mother's brilliant at-homes with the ease of a woman raised to be admired and matched well. She blushes when Nekhludoff appears, frowns when he is distant, and cannot understand why he is busying himself with prisoners instead of with her. Her wounded vanity measures the distance between the life Nekhludoff is leaving behind and the one he is choosing.
Mary Ivanovna (Mariette)
Mariette glides through the social world with the assurance of a woman who knows exactly what her smiles are worth. Her flirtation with Nekhludoff is casual, mutual, and dangerous precisely because it feels so natural—a reminder of the appetites he is trying to renounce. She embodies the pull of the old life, the one that made Katyusha possible and then discarded her.
Selenin
Selenin and Nekhludoff once shared youthful ideals; now one wears a uniform and prosecutes, while the other sits on juries and begins to see what the law conceals. Their friendship is warm, easy, and quietly damning—proof of how a decent man can serve an indecent system without noticing. He matters as the mirror Nekhludoff might have become had he never looked at Maslova's face.
Moral Awakening and Redemption
The central arc of Prince Nekhlúdoff's spiritual journey from a dissolute aristocrat to a man seeking atonement for his past sins, particularly his seduction and abandonment of Katúsha Máslova, drives the narrative and explores the possibility of personal transformation through repentance.
Injustice of the Legal System
The novel exposes the corruption, hypocrisy, and arbitrary cruelty of the Russian judicial system, as seen in the wrongful conviction of Máslova and the classification of prisoners into arbitrary categories, highlighting how the law serves the powerful rather than truth or justice.
Social Class and Inequality
Tolstoy contrasts the luxurious, idle lives of the aristocracy (Nekhlúdoff, the Korchágins) with the suffering and degradation of the poor, prisoners, and peasants, showing how social structures perpetuate exploitation and moral blindness.
Sexual Exploitation and Women's Position
Máslova's fall from innocence into prostitution and prison illustrates how women, especially those of lower classes, are objectified and victimized by men, while society blames them for their own degradation. Her internal justification of her role as a prostitute reflects a survival mechanism in a patriarchal world.