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Anna Karenina
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Anna Karenina (1876) (edit title/settings)

by Leo Tolstoy (Author) (edit contributors)

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Anna Karenina (Russian: Анна Каренина; Russian pronunciation: <ˈanə kɐˈrʲenʲɪnə>) (sometimes Anglicised as Anna Karenin) is a novel by the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, published in serial installments from 1873 to 1877 in the periodical The Russian Messenger. Tolstoy clashed with its... read more

Summary edit see section history

The novel is divided into eight parts. Its epigraph is Vengeance is mine, I will repay, from Romans 12:19, which in turn is quoting from Deuteronomy 32:35.

The novel begins with one of its most oft-quoted lines:
“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)

The novel is divided into eight parts. Its epigraph is Vengeance is mine, I will repay, from Romans 12:19, which in turn is quoting from Deuteronomy 32:35.

The novel begins with one of its most oft-quoted lines:
“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Part 1

The novel opens with a scene introducing Prince Stepan Arkadyevich Oblonsky ("Stiva"), a Moscow aristocrat and civil servant who has been unfaithful to his wife Darya Alexandrovna ("Dolly"). Dolly has discovered his affair with the family's governess, and the household and family are in turmoil. Stiva's affair and his reaction to his wife's distress show an amorous personality that he cannot seem to suppress. In the midst of the turmoil, Stiva informs the household that his married sister, Anna Arkadyevna Karenina, is coming to visit from Saint Petersburg.
Meanwhile, Stiva's childhood friend, Konstantin Dmitrievich Levin ("Kostya"), arrives in Moscow with the aim of proposing to Dolly's youngest sister, Princess Katerina Alexandrovna Shcherbatskaya ("Kitty"). Levin is a passionate, restless, but shy aristocratic landowner who, unlike his Moscow friends, chooses to live in the country on his large estate. He discovers that Kitty is also being pursued by Count Alexei Kirillovich Vronsky, an army officer.
Whilst at the railway station to meet Anna, Stiva bumps into Vronsky who is there to meet his mother, the Countess Vronskaya. Anna and Vronskaya have traveled and talked together in the same carriage. As the family members are reunited, and Vronsky sees Anna for the first time, a railway worker accidentally falls in front of a train and is killed. Anna interprets this as an "evil omen." Vronsky, however, is infatuated with her. Anna is uneasy about leaving her young son, Sergei ("Seryozha"), alone for the first time.
At the Oblonsky home, Anna talks openly and emotionally to Dolly about Stiva's affair and convinces her that Stiva still loves her despite the infidelity. Dolly is moved by Anna's speeches and decides to forgive Stiva.
Kitty, who comes to visit Dolly and Anna, is just eighteen. In her first season as a debutante, she is expected to make an excellent match with a man of her social standing. Vronsky has been paying her considerable attention, and she expects to dance with him at a ball that evening. Kitty is very struck by Anna's beauty and personality and becomes infatuated with her just as Vronsky is. When Levin proposes to Kitty at her home, she clumsily turns him down, believing she is in love with Vronsky and that he will propose to her, and encouraged to do so by her mother who believes Vronsky would be a better match.
At the big ball Kitty expects to hear something definitive from Vronsky, but he dances with Anna, choosing her as a partner over a shocked and heartbroken Kitty. Kitty realises that Vronsky has fallen in love with Anna and has no intention of marrying her despite his overt flirtations. Vronsky has regarded his interactions with Kitty merely as a source of amusement and assumes that Kitty has acted for the same reasons. Anna, shaken by her emotional and physical response to Vronsky, returns at once to Saint Petersburg. Vronsky travels on the same train. During the overnight journey, the two meet and Vronsky confesses his love. Anna refuses him, although she is deeply affected by his attentions to her.
Levin, crushed by Kitty's refusal, returns to his estate, abandoning any hope of marriage. Anna returns to her husband Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin, a senior government official, and her son Seryozha in Saint Petersburg. On seeing her husband for the first time since her encounter with Vronsky, Anna realises that she finds him unattractive, though she tells herself he is a good man.

Part 2

The Shcherbatskys consult doctors over Kitty's health, which has been failing since Vronsky's rejection. A specialist advises that Kitty should go abroad to a health spa to recover. Dolly speaks to Kitty and understands she is suffering because of Vronsky and Levin, whom she cares for and had hurt in vain. Kitty, humiliated by Vronsky and tormented by her rejection of Levin, upsets her sister by referring to Stiva's infidelity, saying she could never love a man who betrayed her. Meanwhile, Stiva visits Levin on his country estate while selling a nearby plot of land.
In Saint Petersburg, Anna begins to spend more time in the inner circle of Princess Betsy, a fashionable socialite and Vronsky's cousin. Vronsky continues to pursue Anna. Although she initially tries to reject him, she eventually succumbs to his attentions. Karenin reminds his wife of the impropriety of paying too much attention to Vronsky in public, which is becoming the subject of gossip. He is concerned about the couple's public image, although he believes that Anna is above suspicion.
Vronsky, a keen horseman, takes part in a steeplechase event, during which he rides his mare Frou-Frou too hard—his irresponsibility causing her to fall and break her back. Anna is unable to hide her distress during the accident. Before this, Anna had told Vronsky that she is pregnant with his child. Karenin is also present at the races and remarks to Anna that her behaviour is improper. Anna, in a state of extreme distress and emotion, confesses her affair to her husband. Karenin asks her to break it off to avoid further gossip, believing that their marriage will be preserved.
Kitty and her mother travel to a German spa to recover from her ill health. There, they meet the wheelchair-bound Pietist Madame Stahl and the saintly Varenka, her adopted daughter. Influenced by Varenka, Kitty becomes extremely pious, but becomes disillusioned by her father's criticism when she learns Mme Stahl is faking her illness. She then returns to Moscow.

Part 3

Levin continues working on his estate, a setting closely tied to his spiritual thoughts and struggles. He wrestles with the idea of falseness, wondering how he should go about ridding himself of it, and criticising what he feels is falseness in others. He develops ideas relating to agriculture, and the unique relationship between the agricultural labourer and his native land and culture. He comes to believe that the agricultural reforms of Europe will not work in Russia because of the unique culture and personality of the Russian peasant.
When Levin visits Dolly, she attempts to understand what happened between him and Kitty and to explain Kitty's behaviour. Levin is very agitated by Dolly's talk about Kitty, and he begins to feel distant from Dolly as he perceives her loving behaviour towards her children as false. Levin resolves to forget Kitty and contemplates the possibility of marriage to a peasant woman. However, a chance sighting of Kitty in her carriage makes Levin realise he still loves her. Meanwhile, in Saint Petersburg, Karenin refuses to separate from Anna, insisting that their relationship will continue. He threatens to take away Seryozha if she persists in her affair with Vronsky.

Part 4

When Anna and Vronsky continue seeing each other, Karenin consults with a lawyer about obtaining a divorce. During the time period, a divorce in Russia could only be requested by the innocent party in an affair and required either that the guilty party confessed—which would ruin Anna's position in society and bar her from re-marrying—or that the guilty party be discovered in the act of adultery. Karenin forces Anna to hand over some of Vronsky's love letters, which the lawyer deems insufficient as proof of the affair. Stiva and Dolly argue against Karenin's drive for a divorce.
Karenin changes his plans after hearing that Anna is dying after the difficult birth of her daughter, Annie. At her bedside, Karenin forgives Vronsky. However, Vronsky, embarrassed by Karenin's magnanimity, unsuccessfully attempts suicide by shooting himself. As Anna recovers, she finds that she cannot bear living with Karenin despite his forgiveness and his attachment to Annie. When she hears that Vronsky is about to leave for a military posting in Tashkent, she becomes desperate. Anna and Vronsky reunite and elope to Europe, leaving Seryozha and Karenin's offer of divorce.
Meanwhile, Stiva acts as a matchmaker with Levin: he arranges a meeting between him and Kitty, which results in their reconciliation and betrothal.

Part 5

Levin and Kitty marry and start their new life on his country estate. Although the couple are happy, they undergo a bitter and stressful first three months of marriage. Levin feels dissatisfied at the amount of time Kitty wants to spend with him and dwells on his ability to be as productive as he was as a bachelor. When the marriage starts to improve, Levin learns that his brother, Nikolai, is dying of consumption. Kitty offers to accompany Levin on his journey to see Nikolai and proves herself a great help in nursing Nikolai. Seeing his wife take charge of the situation in an infinitely more capable manner than if he were without her, Levin's love for Kitty grows. Kitty eventually learns that she is pregnant.
In Europe, Vronsky and Anna struggle to find friends who will accept them. Whilst Anna is happy to be finally alone with Vronsky, he feels suffocated. They cannot socialize with Russians of their own class and find it difficult to amuse themselves. Vronsky, who believed that being with Anna was the key to his happiness, finds himself increasingly bored and unsatisfied. He takes up painting and makes an attempt to patronize an émigré Russian artist of genius. However, Vronsky cannot see that his own art lacks talent and passion, and that his conversation about art is really pretentious. Increasingly restless, Anna and Vronsky decide to return to Russia.
In Saint Petersburg, Anna and Vronsky stay in one of the best hotels, but take separate suites. It becomes clear that whilst Vronsky is still able to move freely in Russian society, Anna is barred from it. Even her old friend, Princess Betsy, who has had affairs herself, evades her company. Anna starts to become anxious that Vronsky no longer loves her. Meanwhile, Karenin is comforted by Countess Lidia Ivanovna, an enthusiast of religious and mystic ideas fashionable with the upper classes. She advises him to keep Seryozha away from Anna and to tell him his mother is dead. However, Seryozha refuses to believe that this is true. Anna visits Seryozha uninvited on his ninth birthday but is discovered by Karenin.
Anna, desperate to regain at least some of her former position in society, attends a show at the theatre at which all of Saint Petersburg's high society are present. Vronsky begs her not to go, but he is unable to bring himself to explain to her why she cannot attend. At the theatre, Anna is openly snubbed by her former friends, one of whom makes a deliberate scene and leaves the theatre. Anna is devastated. Unable to find a place for themselves in Saint Petersburg, Anna and Vronsky leave for Vronsky's own country estate.

Part 6

Dolly, her mother the Princess Scherbatskaya, and Dolly's children spend the summer with Levin and Kitty. The Levins' life is simple and unaffected, although Levin is uneasy at the "invasion" of so many Scherbatskys. He becomes extremely jealous when one of the visitors, Veslovsky, flirts openly with the pregnant Kitty. Levin tries to overcome his feelings, but eventually succumbs to them and makes Veslovsky leave his house in an embarrassing scene. Veslovsky immediately goes to stay with Anna and Vronsky at their nearby estate.
When Dolly visits Anna, she is struck by the difference between the Levins' aristocratic-yet-simple home life and Vronsky's overtly luxurious and lavish country estate. She is also unable to keep pace with Anna's fashionable dresses or Vronsky's extravagant spending on a hospital he is building. In addition, all is not quite well with Anna and Vronsky. Dolly notices Anna's anxious behaviour and her uncomfortable flirtations with Veslovsky. Vronsky makes an emotional request to Dolly, asking her to convince Anna to divorce Karenin so that the two might marry and live normally.
Anna has become intensely jealous of Vronsky and cannot bear it when he leaves her even for short excursions. When Vronsky leaves for several days of provincial elections, Anna becomes convinced that she must marry him in order to prevent him from leaving her. After Anna writes to Karenin, she and Vronsky leave the countryside for Moscow.

Part 7

While visiting Moscow for Kitty's confinement, Levin quickly gets used to the city's fast-paced, expensive and frivolous society life. He accompanies Stiva to a gentleman's club, where the two meet Vronsky. Levin and Stiva pay a visit to Anna, who is occupying her empty days by being a patroness to an orphaned English girl. Levin is initially uneasy about the visit, but Anna easily puts him under her spell. When he admits to Kitty that he has visited Anna, she accuses him of falling in love with her. The couple are later reconciled, realising that Moscow society life has had a negative, corrupting effect on Levin.
Anna cannot understand why she can attract a man like Levin, who has a young and beautiful new wife, but cannot attract Vronsky as she did once. Her relationship with Vronsky is under increasing strain, as he can move freely in Russian society while she remains excluded. Her increasing bitterness, boredom, and jealousy cause the couple to argue. Anna uses morphine to help her sleep, a habit she had begun while living with Vronsky at his country estate. She has become dependent on it. Meanwhile, after a long and difficult labour, Kitty gives birth to a son, Dmitri, nicknamed "Mitya." Levin is both horrified and profoundly moved by the sight of the tiny, helpless baby.
Stiva visits Karenin to seek his commendation for a new post. During the visit Stiva asks Karenin to grant Anna a divorce (which would require him to confess to a non-existent affair), but Karenin's decisions are now governed by a French "clairvoyant" recommended by Lidia Ivanovna. The clairvoyant apparently had a vision in his sleep during Stiva's visit and gives Karenin a cryptic message which is interpreted that Karenin must decline the request for divorce.
Anna becomes increasingly jealous and irrational towards Vronsky, whom she suspects of having love affairs with other women. She is also convinced that he will give in to his mother's plans to marry him off to a rich society woman. They have a bitter row and Anna believes the relationship is over. She starts to think of suicide as an escape from her torments. In her mental and emotional confusion, she sends a telegram to Vronsky asking him to come home to her, and then pays a visit to Dolly and Kitty. Anna's confusion and vengeful anger overcome her, and in a parallel to the railway worker's accidental death in part 1, she commits suicide by throwing herself under the carriage of a passing train.

Part 8

Levin's brother's latest book is ignored by readers and critics and he joins the new pan-Slavic movement. Stiva gets the post he desired so much, and Karenin takes custody of Vronsky's and Anna's baby Annie. A group of Russian volunteers, including the suicidal Vronsky, depart from Russia to fight in the Orthodox Serbian revolt that has broken out against the Turks. Meanwhile, a lightning storm occurs at Levin's estate while his wife and newborn son are outside, and in his fear for their safety Levin realizes that he does indeed love his son as much he loves Kitty. Kitty's family is concerned that a man as altruistic as her husband does not consider himself to be a Christian, but after speaking at length to a peasant, Levin has a heartfelt change of mind. He concludes that he does truly believe in the Christian principles taught to him during his childhood and no longer questions his faith. He realizes that each person must decide for himself what is acceptable concerning their own faith and beliefs. He chooses not to tell Kitty about the change which has occurred in him, and is initially displeased that his change of thought does not bring with it a complete transformation to righteousness. However, at the end of the story Levin comes to the conclusion that despite his newly accepted beliefs, he is human and will go on making mistakes. His life can now be meaningfully and truthfully oriented toward righteousness.

Characters edit see section history

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Quotes edit see section history

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Setting & Locations edit see section history

1873–1877; the estate of Yasnaya Polyana, near Moscow
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First Sentence edit see section history

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Table of Contents edit see section history

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8

Glossary edit see section history

  • poudre de riz: face powder
  • vinaigre de toilette: cheap vinegar perfume (in this context, he doesn't like the scent she is wearing).Perfume (if it is pleasant smelling) in French is: parfum; what we consider body spray or cheap perfume would be eau de toilette which literally means toilet water
  • Himmlisch ist's, wenn ich bezwungen Meine irdische Begier; Aber doch wenn's nich gelungen Hatt'ich auch recht huebsch Plaisir: It is heavenly when I have masteredMy earthly desires;But when I have not succeededI have also had right good pleasure!
  • Corps of Pages: A military academy in Imperial Russia, which prepared sons of the nobility and of senior officers for military service.
  • Honi soit qui mal y pense: Shamed be he who thinks evil of it
  • belle-soeur: sister in law
  • vous filez le parfait amour.: you are whisked away by the perfect love
  • Tant mieux, mon cher, tant mieux: So much the better, my dear, so much the better
  • paper knife: A paper knife or letter opener is a knife-like object used to open envelopes or to slit uncut pages of books. When a book is printed the pages are laid out on the plate so that after the printed sheet is folded the pages will be in the correct sequence. Books used to not be completely trimmed down after printing, so a paper knife was required to cut through the folds holding the outside of the pages together. This would leave the book with uneven edges on the unbound side of the pages
  • whether this game were worth the candle: not sure whether the returns from an activity or enterprise warrant the time, money or effort required
  • reactionist: extremely conservative
  • farinaceous: starchy
  • There was a king in Thule: Der König in Thule, "The King in Thule", is a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, written in 1774. It was later used by the poet as a brief passage of his masterwork, the tragedy Faust (Part I, lines 2759-82).There was a king in Thule,So faithful to the grave.His love, when she was dying,a goblet of gold him gave.He used to love it deeply,And always drank from it.His eyes they filled with tearsWhenever he emptied it.And when his time to die cameHe counted all his wealth,And everything gave to his heirs,But only kept that cup.He sat at the royal banquet,With all his knights around,In his forefathers' lofty hallThere in his castle by the sea.There stood the old carouser,And drank life's final glow,Then threw the holy goblet farDeep down into the waves.He watched it fall, and drinkingit sank deep into the sea.He closed his eyes forever,And never drank a drop more.
  • Bonne chance: Good luck
  • mon cher: my friend / dear / good fellow
  • Fürst: A German title of nobility, usually translated into English as Prince.The term refers to the head of a principality and is distinguished from the son of a monarch, who is referred to as Prinz. English uses the term Prince for both concepts.
  • sammt Gemahlin und Tochter: together with wife and daughter
  • Fürstin: female form of furst
  • engouements: infatuation / fad / craze
  • sa compagne: his wife / girlfriend / companion
  • Il ne faut jamais rien outrer: One should never overdo
  • Erlaucht, Durchlaucht: My lord, your grace
  • primesautière: impulsive
  • les sept merveilles du monde: the seven wonders of the world
  • Kammerjunker: valet
  • faire la lessive: do the laundry
  • lessive: laundry
  • Tout ça est une blague: It's all a joke
  • Cela n'est pas plus fin que ca: This is not finer than that
  • carte blanche: Full Powers, term in international law referring to the authority of a person to sign a treaty or convention on behalf of a sovereign state
  • fardeau: burden
  • terre-à-terre: earth to earth
  • betrothal ring: engagement ring, less ornate than rings used today
  • tabula rasa: The term in Latin equates to the English "blank slate" (or more accurately, "erased slate") (which refers to writing on a slate sheet in chalk) but comes from the Roman tabula or wax tablet, used for notes, which was blanked by heating the wax and then smoothing it to give a tabula rasa.
  • metayer: One who cultivates land for a share (usually one half) of its yield, receiving stock, tools, and seed from the landlord.
  • Il faut le battre: We must beat/strike
  • le fer: iron
  • le brayer: tar pitch
  • le petrir: knead
  • la constatation d'un fait: a finding of fact
  • la piece de resistance: referring to the best part or feature of a meal, a showpiece, or highlight.
Show all 41 glossary entries

Themes & Symbolism edit see section history

  • Social Change in Nineteenth-Century Russia: Tolstoy sets his tale of adultery and self-discovery against the backdrop of the huge historical changes sweeping through Russia during the late nineteenth century, making the historical aspects of the novel just as important as the personal and psychological aspects. In the Russia ofAnna Karenina, a battle rages between the old patriarchal values sustaining the landowning aristocracy and the new, liberal—often called “libre penseur,” or freethinking, in the novel—values of the Westernizers. The old-timer conservatives believe in traditions like serfdom and authoritarian government, while the Westernizing liberals believe in technology, rationalism, and democracy. We see this clash in Levin’s difficulty with his peasants, who, refusing to accept the Western agricultural innovations he tries to introduce, believe that the old Russian ways of farming are the best. We also see the confusion of these changing times in the question of the zemstvo, or village council, in which Levin tries to participate as a proponent of democracy but which he finally abandons on the grounds that they are useless. The guests at Stiva’s dinner party raise the question of women’s rights—clearly a hot topic of the day, and one that shows the influence of Western social progress on Russia. That Dolly and Anna suffer in their marriages, however, does not bode well for the future of feminism in the world of the novel. Courtship procedures are equally uncertain in the world of Anna Karenina. The Russian tradition of arranged marriages is going out of fashion, but Princess Shcherbatskaya is horrified at the prospect of allowing Kitty to choose her own mate. The narrator goes so far as to say plainly that no one knows how young people are to get married in Russia in the 1870s. Taken together, all this confusion created by fading traditions creates an atmosphere of both instability and new potential, as if humans have to decide again how to live. It is only in such a changing atmosphere that Levin’s philosophical questionings are possible.
  • The Philosophical Value of Farming: Readers of Anna Karenina are sometimes puzzled and frustrated by the extensive sections of the novel devoted to Levin’s agricultural interests. We are treated to long passages describing the process of mowing, we hear much about peasant attitudes toward wooden and iron plows, and we are subjected to Levin’s sociological theorizing about why European agricultural reforms do not work in Russia. Yet this focus on agriculture and farming fulfills an important function in the novel and has a long literary tradition behind it. The idyll, a genre of literature dating from ancient times, portrays farmers and shepherds as more fulfilled and happy than their urban counterparts, showing closeness to the soil as a mark of the good life. Farmers understand growth and potential, and are aware of the delicate balance between personal labor and trust in the forces of nature. In Anna Karenina, Tolstoy updates the idyll by making his spokesman in the novel, Levin, a devoted farmer as well as an impassioned philosopher—and the only character in the novel who achieves a clear vision of faith and happiness.For Levin, farming is a way of moving beyond oneself, pursuing something larger than one’s own private desires—a pursuit that he sees as the cornerstone of all faith and happiness. His days spent mowing the fields bring him into closer contact with the Russian peasants—symbols of the native Russian spirit—than anyone else achieves. Other characters who harp on the virtues of peasants, such as Sergei, rarely interact with them. Levin’s connections with farmers thus show him rooted in his nation and culture more so than Europeanized aristocrats like Anna. He is in closer touch with the truths of existence. It is no accident that Levin finally finds faith by listening to his peasant Fyodor, a farmer. Nor is it accidental that Levin’s statement of the meaning of life in the novel’s last paragraph recalls agriculture. Levin concludes that the value of life is in the goodness he puts into it—just as, we might say, the value of a farm lies in the good seeds and labor that the farmer puts into it. Ultimately, Levin reaches an idea of faith based on growth and cultivation.
  • The Blessings of Family Life: Tolstoy intended Anna Karenina to be a recognizable throwback to the genre of “family novels” popular in Russia several decades earlier, which were out of fashion by the 1870s. The Russian family novel portrayed the benefits and comforts of family togetherness and domestic bliss, often in a very idealized way. In the radically changing social climate of 1860s Russia, many social progressives attacked the institution of the family, calling it a backward and outmoded limitation on individual freedom. They claimed that the family often exploited children as cheap labor. Tolstoy wrote Anna Karenina in part as his personal statement on the family debate. The first sentence of the novel, concerning the happiness and unhappiness of families, underscores the centrality of this idea.Tolstoy takes a pro-family position in the novel, but he is candid about the difficulties of family life. The notion that a family limits the freedom of the individual is evident in Stiva’s dazed realization in the first pages of the novel that he cannot do whatever he pleases. This limitation of freedom is also evident in Levin’s surprise at the fact that he cannot go off to visit his dying brother on a whim but must confer with his wife first and respond to her insistence that she accompany him. Yet despite these restrictions on personal liberty, and despite the quarrels that plague every family represented in Anna Karenina, Tolstoy portrays family life as a source of comfort, happiness, and philosophical transcendence. Anna destroys a family and dies in misery, whereas Levin creates a family and concludes the novel happily. Anna’s life ultimately loses meaning, whereas Levin’s attains it, as the last paragraph of the novel announces. Ultimately, Tolstoy leaves us with the conclusion that faith, happiness, and family life go hand in hand.
  • Adultery: Anna Karenina is best known as a novel about adultery: Anna’s betrayal of her husband is the central event of its main plotline. There was a surge of interest in the topic of adultery in the mid-nineteenth century, as evidenced by works such as Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850) and Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (1857). Although the guilty party in these works is always a woman who meets a bad end as a result of her wrongdoing, the nineteenth-century adultery novel is actually less religiously moralizing than we might expect. Anna Karenina is a case in point. Although the novel is loaded with biblical quotations issuing from the mouths of characters and from its own epigraph, its moral atmosphere is not overwhelmingly Christian. Indeed, many of the novel’s devout Christian characters, such as Madame Stahl and Lydia Ivanovna, are repellent and hypocritical. Tolstoy rarely mentions the church in the novel, and even occasionally gently mocks it, as when Levin rolls his eyes at the confession he must undergo to get married. The religious stigma on adultery is certainly present but it is not all that strong.The more important condemnation of adultery in Anna Karenina comes not from the church but from conventional society: adultery is more a social issue in the novel than a moral or religious one. Karenin’s chief objection to Anna’s involvement with Vronsky is not that adultery is a sin, or even that it causes him emotional anguish, but rather that society will react negatively. Karenin thinks of propriety and decency, looking good to the neighbors, over anything else. It is for this reason that he is so willing to overlook Anna’s affair as long as she does not seek a separation or divorce. He does not care so much about the fact that his wife loves another man; he cares only that she continue to appear to be a good wife. This restrictive power of social convention is what Anna comes to loathe and tries to escape—first in Italy, then in seclusion in the countryside. As such, adultery in Anna Karenina is a side effect of the stifling forces of society, making the novel a work of social criticism as much as a story of marital betrayal.
  • Forgiveness: The idea of Christian forgiveness recurs regularly in Anna Karenina and is clearly one of Tolstoy’s main topics of exploration in the novel. If the central action of the plot is a sin, then forgiveness is the potential resolution. And if Anna is a sinner, then our attitude toward her and toward the novel depends on whether and how much we can forgive her. Tolstoy establishes forgiveness as a noble ideal when Dolly exclaims to Anna, who is helping the Oblonskys through their marital difficulties, “If you forgive, it’s completely, completely.” This ideal form of pardon amounts to a total erasure of the sin “as if it hadn’t happened,” as Anna puts it. Yet Tolstoy does not mindlessly accept forgiveness as a noble Christian virtue, but instead forces us to consider whether forgiveness is possible and effective. The very epigraph to the novel—“Vengeance is mine; I will repay”—values vengeance, the opposite of forgiveness. This opening thought haunts the entire novel, suggesting that perhaps forgiveness is not the ultimate virtue after all.Moreover, the characters’ attitudes toward forgiveness are sometimes compromised. Dolly ends up forgiving Stiva, but we wonder whether her pardon amounts to her simply shutting her eyes to reality, as we know that Stiva continues his womanizing with unabated enthusiasm afterward. In Dolly’s case, forgiveness looks like gullibility or resignation. Forgiveness is even more dubious in other instances. When the seemingly dying Anna begs Karenin’s forgiveness and he grants it, both are sincere. But the forgiveness has little effect: Anna continues to love Vronsky and loathe Karenin as much as ever, and though Karenin is more amenable to the idea of divorce, his treatment of Anna does not change much. In another novel we might expect the Karenins or Oblonskys to renew their marital vows and live happily ever after, but for Tolstoy forgiveness does not have this fairy-tale effect. Karenin forgives Anna, but afterward their emotions remain the same as before. At the end of the novel, Anna begs forgiveness of God just before killing herself. Indirectly, she also begs it of us readers, for it is up to us to determine whether our emotional attraction to Anna outweighs our moral judgment of her life. Ultimately, for readers, forgiving her may be less important than identifying with her.
  • The Interior Monologue: Though Tolstoy has a reputation for being a simple and straightforward writer, he was in fact a great stylistic innovator. He pioneered the use of a device that is now commonplace in novels but was radically new in the nineteenth century—the interior monologue. The interior monologue is the author’s portrayal of a character’s thoughts and feelings directly, not merely in paraphrase or summary but as if directly issuing from the character’s mind. Earlier writers such as Shakespeare had used the monologue in drama, writing scenes in which characters speak to the audience directly in asides or soliloquies. In narrative fiction, however, writers had rarely exploited the interior monologue for extended passages the way Tolstoy does in Anna Karenina. The interior monologue gives the reader great empathy with the character. When we accompany someone’s thoughts, perceptions, and emotions step by step through an experience, we inevitably come to understand his or her motivations more intimately.In Anna Karenina, Tolstoy gives us access to Levin’s interior monologue at certain key moments in his life: his experience of the bliss of love when Kitty accepts him as husband, his physical ecstasy at mowing with the peasants, and his fear when Kitty is suffering in childbirth. But Tolstoy uses the device of interior monologue far more extensively and movingly in his portrayal of Anna’s last moments, on her ride to the station where she dies at the end of Part Seven. Without access to her thoughts, we would have a much flimsier understanding of what drives Anna to suicide. Without it, her death would be just another casualty on the long list of women in Russian literature who kill themselves over love. Reading Anna’s monologue, however, we see the liveliness and even humor that make her such a vivid individual in the novel, as when she interrupts her gloomy meditations to comment on the ridiculous name of the hairstylist Twitkin. We also see the extent to which Anna has become a burden to herself—she dreams of getting rid of Vronsky “and of myself.” The interior monologue shows us her suicide not as a glamorous cliché but as a simple and heartbreaking attempt to rid herself of the very self she once attempted to liberate.

Series & Lists edit see section history

This is book 48 of 93 in Newsweek's Top 100 Books: The Meta-List. (authoritative list)
This is book 107 of 195 in Shelfari Most Popular (December 2011). (authoritative list)
This is book 112 of 194 in Shelfari Most Popular (December 2010). (authoritative list)
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Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Leo Tolstoy (Author)

Other Contributors:

  1. Aylmer Maude (Author)
  2. Alfred Molina (Reader)
  3. Louise Maude (Translator)
  4. Constance Garnett (Translator)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: Russian
Publisher: The Russian Messenger
Country: Russia
Publication Date: 1876
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 1121

Awards edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

  • Library of Congress: PG3366 .A6
  • Dewey: 891.733

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Reading Level: Young Adults

Excellent example of Russian epic literature.

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

  • Project Gutenberg: Free e-book, full text
  • Librivox: Free audio book
  • Folio Society: As early as 1870 Tolstoy had the idea of writing about ‘a married woman of high society who lapses morally’ and three years later, moved by the suicide of a neighbouring landowner’s mistress who had thrown herself under a train, the author of War and Peace embarked on what would be his second great masterpiece. Anna’s story is simple and timeless – bored by her calculating husband and eager to live life, rather than read about it in books, she falls in love. In Moscow and Petersburg, such scandals are the stuff of gossip, not tragedy, but Anna refuses to play society’s game: hers is a high passion, and though she tries to insist that her lover, Count Vronsky, share it, he begins to dread the very word ‘love’ and to hanker after simpler pleasures.
  • Book and Film Review: Is this the greatest love story of them all? In a sense, I suppose I must answer yes, for, unless you count Gatsby or Ulysses as love stories (and I don’t), then there is no novel left on the list above this one that is a love story. So there we go. But, on the other hand, perhaps not. Because is love really the story here? Or perhaps love is the story here, but not the love story that casual observers (and certainly not those who have only encountered the book through its film adaptations) were expecting to find. For, do we really want to say that this is the story of love between Anna and Count Vronsky? Could it perhaps be the story of love between Kitty and Leven? Or the love of Leven for Kitty that eventually grows, through fondness, into love from Kitty? Because aren’t they the real story haunting the edges of the novel, the reason that it has never been made into a truly satisfactory film (until now)? Certainly Lemony would think so. And I’m inclined to agree with him.

Movie Connections edit see section history

  • Anna Karenina (1914 film): a Russian adaptation directed by Vladimir Gardin.
  • Anna Karenina (1915 film), (IMDb): an American version starring Danish actress Betty Nansen.
  • Love (1927 film) (IMDb): an American version, starring Greta Garbo and directed by Edmund Goulding. This version featured significant changes from the novel and had two different endings, with a happy one for American audiences.
  • Anna Karenina (1935 film) (IMDb): the most famous and critically acclaimed version, starring Greta Garbo and Fredric March and directed by Clarence Brown.
  • Anna Karenina (1948 film) (IMDb): starring Vivien Leigh, Ralph Richardson and directed by Julien Duvivier.
  • Anna Karenina (1953 film): a Russian version directed by Tatyana Lukashevich.
  • Anna Karenina (1967 film) (IMDb): a Russian version directed by Alexander Zarkhi.
  • Anna Karenina (1974 film): a Russian version directed by Margarita Pilikhina.
  • Anna Karenina (1985 film) (IMDb): a TV Movie starring Jacqueline Bisset and Christopher Reeve, directed by Simon Langton.
  • Anna Karenina (1997 film) (IMDb): the first US version to be filmed on location in Russia, directed by Bernard Rose and starring Sophie Marceau and Sean Bean
  • Anna Karenina (2005 film): a Russian mini-series by Sergei Solovyov.
  • Anna Karenina (2012 film) (IMDb): an upcoming English version by Joe Wright and starring Keira Knightley.
Show all 12 movie connections

More Books Like This edit see section history

   
  • Madame Bovary
  • Shadows on the Grass
  • Far from the Madding Crowd
  • Stories of Anton Chekov
  • Resurrection
  • The Idiot
  • Six Records of a Floating Life
  • Blood and Guts in High School
  • A Passage to India
  • The Torrents of Spring
  • War and Peace
  • Effi Briest
  • Jane Eyre

Books Influenced by This Book edit see section history

   

Books That Cite This Book edit see section history

   
  • After the Quake
  • The Know-It-All

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