The condition of the family towards the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century is subjected to a series of socially related changes, which were the direct consequences of the First Wold War and the Bolshevik Revolution. Love, the key element of human nature, was meant to flourish within the boundaries of a family; otherwise it was considered adulterous and libertine. John Galsworthy’s novels, the Forsyte Saga series, and Mihail Sholokhov’s vast novel On the Quiet Don take into discussion different social and cultural milieu, the urban so- ciety of the high English bourgeoisie, on the one hand, and the rural community of the Cossacks on the Don, on the other. In both cases, marriages are carried out on the initiative of the family; the girls learn how to take care of home while men occupy the central position in society, assuming freedoms totally banned to women. Inevitably, the personal, individual plan intersects the historical one, and, consequently, family relations are under constant change.