Fyodor Ivanych Lavretsky is the child of a distant, Anglophile father and a serf mother who dies when he is very young. Lavretsky is brought up as a nobleman, at his family's country estate home, by a severe maiden aunt. He pursues an education in Moscow, and while he is studying there, he spies a beautiful Varvara Pavlovna at the opera. They fall in love, marry, and move to Paris, where Varvara P...