Why exactly is sudden transformation according to a model impossible? The same question can be asked about individuals: why can’t someone just become what she admires? Disgusted with her life, Tolstoy’s Kitty, as we have seen, finds models in the philanthropic Madame Stahl and her ward Varenka, and winds up doing more harm than good. The reason, she recognizes, is that what is natural for Varenka is for her “all pretense and not from the heart . . . it was all a fake! A fake! A fake! (pritvorstvo).” At first Kitty petulantly resolves to stop helping others entirely—“I’ll be bad, but anyway not a liar, a cheat”—but she eventually comes to a wiser decision. Instead of changing everything at once, she will change one small habit at a time. Instead of becoming Varenka, she will become a better version of herself—not by imposing a model but by beginning where she is.
–Gary Saul Morson, Wonder Confronts Certainty: Russian Writers on the Timeless Questions and Why Their Answers Matter
