Anna Karenina

By Lev Tolstoy

A Classic

• Considered one of the world’s greatest novels• At least nine film and TV film versions, plus

theatrical dramatizations• Opening sentence famous, frequently quoted:“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is

unhappy in its own way.”• Commonly seen simply as a novel about an extra-

marital affair that ends in suicide (cf Flaubert, Madame Bovary)

• In fact a complex interweaving of themes and characters

The product of its age

• Novel written and published from 1873 to 1877 in “thick journal” Russky vestnik (The Russian Messenger).

• Journal refused the last part, so that the instalment version ended with Anna’s suicide. Refused mainly because of Tolstoy’s sarcastic depiction of the Russian volunteers going to fight in Serbia.

• Definitive book version appeared in 1879.

Background: Alexander II’s reforms

• Period of rapid change in Russian society• Complication of the situation of the Russian nobility

(дворянство)• The liberation of the serfs: the emergence of the

future “kulaks”• The rise of a new business class – partly Jewish• The creation of zemstvos: local democracy• Railway as symbol of the new industrialized Russia

in the making

Levin as Tolstoy

• Position of Tolstoy the conservative thinker expressed by Levin

• Clearly autobiographical figure: shares details of Tolstoy’s own life

• The invisible narrator-author shines through in Levin – cf Nikolenka in Childhood

• Direction of sarcasm (e.g. description of Obolensky at the restaurant) is clearly felt by the reader to be that of Tolstoy.

Social changes reflected in plot

• Opening sentence states the theme: happy and unhappy families

• Polemic with the radical/nihilistic thinking about free love

• The changing nature of marriage: Princess Shcherbatskaia does not know how to arrange her daughter’s marriage

• Shifting social attitudes towards divorce and the family

More social changes reflected in plot

• The clash of values: imported, Western values

• French, English influence marked as negative

• Hostility towards foreign languages

• The question of faith: how can an educated nobleman believe the way the simple peasant believes?

• The polemic with rationalism, Western social theories

Marriage among the upper class in the 1870s

• In transition from the arranged marriage, towards one based on love

• Anna is in an arranged marriage (considered an abomination by the radicals)

• The older couple Shcherbatskys almost certainly in well-arranged marriage

• • Why did Stiva Oblonsky marry Dolly? – For her money.

• Officially the woman’s wealth remains her property in marriage

Divorce in Tsarist Russia

• Divorce is difficult and usually the result of fake evidence about who is “guilty.”

• “Guilty” party loses parental rights

• Tolstoy shows the hypocrisy surrounding extra-marital affairs and depicts the complicated procedures for divorce.

• Does he disapprove or approve of society’s norms?

A paradigm of couples

• Tolstoy creates a spectrum of couples in the text, who illustrate the varieties of relationships possible, and the outcomes.

• The plot weaves back and forth from one couple to another.

• Certain “affinities” are detected between individuals outside the couples: e.g.,Vronsky and Kitty, Levin and Anna

• The real heart of the novel is the Anna – Levin – Dolly triangle

Spatial and temporal organization

• Takes place from February 1872 to July 1876• At one point the time of Vronsky-Anna is over a year

ahead of Levin-Kitty• Action shuttles spatially from place to place• Moscow – perceived as the good, patriarchal heart

with true Russian values• St Petersburg: the centre of a cold bureaucracy with

imported, foreign values• The Russian countryside• Western Europe: German spa Solden and Italian town

Vronsky and Anna(Vasily Lanovoy from film by Aleksandr Zarkhi 1967

and Greta Garbo 1935 dir. Clarence Brown)

The adulterers

• Prime dramatic focus of the novel: seen intimately, right down to their emotions and dreams, but ultimately viewed from the perspective of Levin/Tolstoy

• Anna is married to Aleksei Karenin, some 20 years older than her (NB Vronsky’s name is also Aleksei.)

Stiva and Dolly Obolensky

• Stiva Oblonsky is Anna’s brother. Both were brought up by an aunt. Stiva is a bon vivant, and the novel begins with the news of his affair

• Dolly is Kitty Shcherbatsky’s older sister.

• Along with Levin, Dolly serves as one of the moral foci of the novel. She is the devoted mother of her children.

(left: Aleksandr Abdullov as Oblonsky)

Levin and Kitty

• Levin’s first proposal is rejected because of Vronsky

• The ritual of the second proposal and the wedding taken from Tolstoy’s own life

• Kitty is a junior version of her sister Dolly: a coper and someone devoted to family values

Minor couples

• Nikolai Levin (Konstantin’s brother) and his common-law wife Marya Nikolaevna or Masha

• Sergei Ivanovich Koznyshev (Levin’s half-brother and Varenka – to whom he nearly proposes.

• Aleksei Karenin and Countess Lydia Ivanovna, who becomes his confidante after the break-up of his marriage

Lev Tolstoy in 1873

The real drama in Anna Karenina: a strong virile man with a powerful sex drive, who is in conflict with his own puritanical outlook on sex. The book can be a seen as an attempt to come to terms with this contradiction.