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.
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