In the nineteenth-century, the ratio between women to men was 1.5:1 which meant that women outnumbered the men. What this also meant was limited chances of marriage for women. At that time, marriage was the only escape for women from a life of poverty and dependency. Their great advantage however, was that men were also behind the idea that women’s purpose in life was marriage and kids. The characterization of women in nineteenth-century literature was based on this belief, as well. In the two texts we have read- Leo Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Ilych” and John Keats’ “La Belle Dame sans Merci”- the image of women was portrayed as only having one “right way” of life which was being in love, getting married and conceiving children.

In “The Death of Ivan Ilych” Leo Tolstoy creates a society that is superficial, materialistic, non-sympathetic, but still very family-oriented. His theme was to show us that the “right life” is one that consists of marriage and kids and at the time of death, one’s material belongings don’t seem to matter anymore. Since a very young age, Ivan Ilych greatly admired those of higher social standing and was willing to change his behavior and values to what they believed would bring a meaningful life. Some of those things included having a family, which did not really interest Ivan. It was only as an adult, when Ivan became very ill, that he realized how isolated he made himself become from his family and the world. The text in Leo Tolstoy’s story that best reveals Ivan’s dilemma and Tolstoy’s values is when Ivan says: “Maybe I did not live as I ought to have done,” it suddenly occurred to him. “But how could that be, when I did everything properly?” The fact that Ivan is only now, on his death bed,  looking back on his life and questioning whether it was the correct way to live is showing his growing awareness to what Tolstoy actually believes is the true meaning of life.

The knight in John Keats’ story was in a very similar situation as Ivan Ilych was. The story starts by describing the knight as looking pale and alone on a hillside, being in an environment where “no birds sing” which means it is not a pleasant environment. The gloomy setting mirrors the knight’s condition of suffering and misery. This knight falls in love with a lady he meets who he describes as being beautiful like “a fairy’s child”. The knight is overpowered by the physical pleasures, which is evident as he only describes her appearance. He soon becomes so infatuated with the fairy he becomes almost blinded. The knight spends the whole day with the fairy on his horse, the fairy singing to him “a fairy’s song”. He did not understand what she was saying but his obsession made him believe that she was saying “I love thee true”. When the fairy put the knight to sleep, he had a dream, “I saw pale kings, and princes too, pale warriors, death-pale were they all.” In this part of the text, John Keats was trying to show that the knight is now like the pale, starving kings because he has gotten himself involved with an impossible love and the desire for something he cannot attain. This behavior matches that of Ivan Ilych. The fairy ends up abandoning him, and the knights refusal to let go of his superficial attitude ends up destroying his life.

In both “The Death of Ivan Ilych” and “La Belle Dame sans Merci”, Leo Tolstoy and John Keats show the difference between the ideal and real life. Both Ivan Ilych and the Knight give in to the dream of the ideal and therefore destroy their lives by giving up the fulfillment’s of the real world. Without feeling meaning, one cannot have true happiness and that is why Ivan Ilych gets ill and why the Knight feels so miserable and alone.