Mademoiselle Bourienne

Mademoiselle Bourienne is the French companion who lives with Princess Marya Bolkonskaya and Prince Nikolai Bolkonsky at Bald Hills. For years she forms part of the estate’s tightly regulated domestic world, alongside a household governed by Prince Nikolai Bolkonsky’s insistence on activity, intelligence, and exact routine. Her position is both intimate and precarious: she belongs to the family circle without possessing its authority, and her attractiveness, foreignness, and dependence make her especially exposed to the household’s rivalries and fantasies. She becomes important not because she controls events, but because the desires and resentments of others repeatedly gather around her.

Identity and Place in the Household

Mademoiselle Bourienne is presented as Princess Marya Bolkonskaya’s companion, sharing the isolated life of Bald Hills with the old prince and his daughter. The arrangement gives her daily access to the family’s private spaces while leaving her socially dependent on Princess Marya and her father. She is not merely a servant, yet neither is she an equal member of the Bolkonsky family. This ambiguous status helps explain why small gestures toward her acquire such force: affection may look like protection, favoritism may look like displacement, and attention from a socially powerful man may appear to promise escape.

Her presence also helps preserve the estate’s connection with fashionable society. When Prince Andrei Bolkonsky and his wife are expected at Bald Hills, Mademoiselle Bourienne meets Prince Andrei repeatedly in secluded passages, smiling with what the narrative describes as an ecstatic and artless expression. He responds with stern contempt, looking at her hair and forehead rather than at her eyes, and his silent rejection sends her away without a word. The scene establishes her as someone whose charm is active but whose position is vulnerable to the judgments of the family’s men.

The Arrival of Anatole Kuragin

The arrival of Anatole Kuragin and Prince Vasili Kuragin transforms Mademoiselle Bourienne’s ordinary role into the focus of a marriage plot. Princess Marya Bolkonskaya is agitated by the prospect of a suitor, while the little princess and Mademoiselle Bourienne prepare her appearance and discuss the handsome visitor. Mademoiselle Bourienne’s own toilette is subtly enhanced, making her fresh and pretty face more attractive. The household therefore treats the visit as a social and romantic spectacle in which the women’s appearances are immediately assessed and arranged.

Mademoiselle Bourienne is not simply calculating when Anatole Kuragin appears. Her imagination has long been shaped by a romantic story of a man who would rescue and marry her, and Anatole seems to step directly into that fantasy. She imagines him as a real Russian prince who might carry her away, while her imagined mother would reproach her for yielding before marriage. The future forms itself in her mind during the conversation about Paris; rather than weighing a practical plan, she instinctively tries to please him. Her behavior is consequently driven by romantic expectation as much as by social ambition.

Anatole Kuragin encourages the situation because his vanity is flattered by the power he seems to possess over the women around him. Although he usually presents himself as a man weary of female pursuit, he is drawn toward Mademoiselle Bourienne with a sudden, passionate, and dangerous physical impulse. At the clavichord, he appears to be watching Princess Marya Bolkonskaya as she plays, but his attention is actually fixed on Mademoiselle Bourienne’s foot, which he touches with his own beneath the instrument. Mademoiselle Bourienne looks toward Princess Marya with fearful joy and hope, while Princess Marya mistakes the signs of their attraction for evidence that Anatole loves her.

Exposure and the Broken Marriage Prospect

The deception collapses when Princess Marya Bolkonskaya, sent to consider Anatole’s proposal, sees him in the conservatory embracing Mademoiselle Bourienne and whispering to her. Anatole’s handsome face registers horror, but he does not immediately remove his arm from the Frenchwoman’s waist. Mademoiselle Bourienne, who has not yet seen Princess Marya, gives a scream when she realizes that she has been discovered and runs away. Anatole responds with a gay smile and a shrug, as though the scene were an odd joke in which Princess Marya might participate. His reaction exposes the moral emptiness beneath his charm and makes clear that the marriage negotiation has been entangled with his pursuit of Mademoiselle Bourienne.

The discovery does not turn Mademoiselle Bourienne into a simple villain in Princess Marya’s eyes. An hour later, when summoned to her father, Princess Marya finds the Frenchwoman weeping and holds her in her arms, gently stroking her hair. Mademoiselle Bourienne fears that she has permanently lost Princess Marya’s affection and assumes that a woman as pure as the princess must despise someone carried away by passion. Princess Marya instead tells her that she loves her more than before and will do what she can for her happiness. Mademoiselle Bourienne’s conduct has caused pain and humiliation, but the scene also reveals her dependence and shame, allowing the relationship to survive the exposure.

Favoritism, Jealousy, and Dependence

Mademoiselle Bourienne’s position becomes still more charged after Prince Nikolai Bolkonsky grows increasingly intimate with her. The old prince had once joked that if Prince Andrei Bolkonsky married, he himself would marry Mademoiselle Bourienne; the idea evidently pleased him, and he later turns it into a persistent display of favoritism. Princess Marya Bolkonskaya believes that her father uses these demonstrations to offend her and to punish her through visible affection for her companion.

The conflict becomes public when Prince Nikolai Bolkonsky kisses Mademoiselle Bourienne’s hand and embraces her affectionately in Princess Marya’s presence. Princess Marya flushes and leaves the room. Mademoiselle Bourienne then enters her room smiling and speaking cheerfully, but Princess Marya, unable to contain her distress, accuses her in broken, angry haste of taking advantage of weakness and orders her to leave. The next day the old prince intensifies the humiliation by ordering that Mademoiselle Bourienne be served first at dinner. When a footman begins by serving Princess Marya instead, he throws his stick at him and declares that Mademoiselle Bourienne is the first person in the house and his best friend. Her apparent elevation thus becomes an instrument of domestic domination, deepening Princess Marya’s jealousy and sense of dispossession.

The episode also clarifies that Mademoiselle Bourienne’s influence is conditional rather than secure. She depends on the household’s patrons, and the old prince’s favor can raise her above Princess Marya for a moment without giving her independent power. The same dependence that makes her receptive to Anatole Kuragin’s fantasy of rescue leaves her vulnerable to Prince Nikolai Bolkonsky’s possessive attention and to Princess Marya’s resentment.

Grief and Reconciliation

After Prince Nikolai Bolkonsky’s death, Mademoiselle Bourienne approaches Princess Marya in a black dress and mourning veils, softly calling her name and kissing her head. Princess Marya initially remembers their former disharmony and her own jealousy, as well as the way her father had changed toward Mademoiselle Bourienne. Yet she also recognizes that his conduct had been unjust and cannot bear to continue condemning the companion who has depended on her while living under her roof.

This moment marks a change in Princess Marya’s understanding of Mademoiselle Bourienne. Princess Marya remembers that she had kept her at a distance, but now imagines her position more vividly and feels pity for her. She also confronts her own guilt, since she had wished for her father’s death and therefore feels unentitled to judge another person harshly. When Mademoiselle Bourienne kisses her hand and makes herself a partner in the princess’s sorrow, the earlier rivalry gives way to shared mourning. Their reconciliation does not erase the history of flirtation, favoritism, and jealousy; it integrates those injuries into a relationship shaped by dependence, affection, and mutual vulnerability.

Narrative Function and Significance

Mademoiselle Bourienne’s importance lies in the way she exposes the instability of social appearances. Her prettiness is read as promise, her smiles as invitation, her proximity to the old prince as influence, and her romantic hopes as calculation. Yet the narrative repeatedly shows that these interpretations are incomplete. She can be vain and susceptible, but she is also dependent, imaginative, ashamed, frightened, and capable of grief. Her conduct with Anatole Kuragin reveals his recklessness and Princess Marya’s innocent misreading more decisively than any abstract judgment could.

She also embodies the gendered and social constraints of Bald Hills. As a woman without the authority of the family name, she must work through appearance, companionship, emotional intimacy, and the favor of powerful men. Her fantasy of being carried away by a prince expresses a desire for security that her actual position cannot provide. At the same time, her presence allows the novel to test Princess Marya’s moral development: Princess Marya moves from jealousy and wounded humiliation toward pity, forgiveness, and a more complex recognition of another woman’s compromised freedom. Mademoiselle Bourienne therefore remains a figure of romantic illusion, but also of dependence and survival within a household where affection itself is repeatedly used as power.