Anna Karenina

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Anna Karenina

• By Lev Tolstoy

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A Classic

• Considered one of the worlds 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

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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 Annas suicide.
  Refused mainly because of Tolstoys sarcastic
  depiction of the Russian volunteers going to
  fight in Serbia.
• Definitive book version appeared in 1879.

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Background Alexander IIs reforms

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

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Levin as Tolstoy

• Position of Tolstoy the conservative thinker
  expressed by Levin
• Clearly autobiographical figure shares details
  of Tolstoys 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.

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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
  daughters marriage
• Shifting social attitudes towards divorce and the
  family

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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

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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 womans wealth remains her
  property in marriage

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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 societys norms?

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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

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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

12
Vronsky and Anna(Vasily Lanovoy from film by
Aleksandr Zarkhi 1967 and Greta Garbo 1935 dir.
Clarence Brown)
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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 Vronskys name is also
  Aleksei.)

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Stiva and Dolly Obolensky

• Stiva Oblonsky is Annas 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 Shcherbatskys 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)

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Levin and Kitty

• Levins first proposal is rejected because of
  Vronsky
• The ritual of the second proposal and the wedding
  taken from Tolstoys own life
• Kitty is a junior version of her sister Dolly a
  coper and someone devoted to family values

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Minor couples

• Nikolai Levin (Konstantins brother) and his
  common-law wife Marya Nikolaevna or Masha
• Sergei Ivanovich Koznyshev (Levins 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

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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.