A strange and frequent occurrence plagues the flourishing youths of War and Peace. It is a mysterious illness with no biological cause that condemns them to months of bed rest. Sprouting from an unstable mind, the sickness takes root in the patient's reluctance to heal. Meet Natasha, a girl who shone like a brilliant ray of sunshine, illuminating the world around her. Underneath the innocent and joyous image hid her deep secret: her extremist views. Natasha prides herself on a red mark on her shoulder, she boasts, "'I burnt that to show her [Sonya] my love, I simply heated a ruler in the fire and pressed on it,' " (Tolstoy 269). Her tendency to resort to injury and pain as a form of emotional expression is a predisposition for mental illness that is also seen in Victor of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Victor gains a sense of power when he watches worms and insects feast on deceased creatures and he finds pleasure in "torturing living animals to animate the lifeless clay, " (Shelley 40). These omens engraved in the psyche of Victor and Natasha forecasts what will fall upon them.
The circumstances surrounding Natasha and Victor's sudden collapse are eerily similar. Both inadvertently use their condition as a form manipulation to delay the inevitable consequence of their irrational actions. Natasha's failed elopement with her lover Anatole, which compensated her engagement with a more fitting man, was met with disappointment from her father, disgrace from her guardian, and deprecation from her unconscious. Her ego activated a defense mechanism "escapism " which placed her shattered life on hiatus. This recess offered a convenient repercussion, it evoked the sympathies of those around her, making them more inclined to accept her distasteful life decisions. This hideous form of eluding responsibility is reenacted by Victor who upon seeing his horrific creation hover over his bed plunges into "a nervous fever which confines him for several months, " (Shelley 47).
