Is “Anna Karenina” too romantic?
Still—if you know and love the novel, something about the movie just doesn’t feel right. The problem, I think, is that it’s too romantic. The film, as Wright promised, is all about love, but Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina” isn’t a love story. If anything, “Anna Karenina” is a warning against the myth and cult of love.
Who are the main characters in Anna Karenina?
A list of all the characters in Anna Karenina. Characters include: Anna Arkadyevna Karenina , Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin , Alexei Kirillovich Vronsky, Konstantin Dmitrich Levin, Ekaterina Alexandrovna Shcherbatskaya (Kitty) and more.
What kind of character is Anna Arkadyevna Karenina?
Character List Anna Arkadyevna Karenina - A beautiful, aristocratic married woman from St. Petersburg whose pursuit of love and emotional honesty makes her an outcast from society. Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin - Anna’s husband, a high-ranking government minister and one of the most important men in St. Petersburg.
What kind of person is Betsy in Anna Karenina?
A wealthy friend of Anna’s and Vronsky’s cousin. Betsy has a reputation for wild living and moral looseness. A former prostitute saved by Nikolai Levin, whose companion she becomes. A seemingly devout invalid woman whom the Shcherbatskys meet at a German spa.
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Did Vronsky love Anna at the end?
Vronsky's devotion to Anna appears to wane in the later chapters of the novel, but much of this appearance stems from Anna's paranoid fears that he has fallen out of love with her. On the contrary, no indisputable evidence indicates that Vronsky loves Anna any less at the end.
Does Anna Karenina love her husband?
Anna abandons her son, but never allows herself to stop suffering over her decision. She declares her undying love for him, but also states, “I love those two beings only, and the one excludes the other” (Tolstoy 580).
Does Vronsky cheat on Anna?
Recognizing this, Anna becomes increasingly paranoid and '' insanely jealous'', obsessed with the idea that Vronsky is seeing other women or is in love with another woman. Despite this, there is in fact no evidence that Vronsky has been unfaithful to Anna.
What does Anna Karenina say about love?
“I've always loved you, and when you love someone, you love the whole person, just as he or she is, and not as you would like them to be.”
Who cheated in Anna Karenina?
By consummating their affair, Vronsky has changed Anna, irrevocably, from a morally upstanding woman to a morally reproachable one. Yikes.
Why did Anna Karenina not love her daughter?
Anna loves her son Seryozha more than her daughter: whereas she feels real passion for her son, Anna does not have the same emotional connection with her daughter and is out of touch with her needs and desires. Though Anna lavishes Annie with every material comfort, she does not give her true love.
What happens to Vronsky after Anna died?
After Anna's death, Vronsky is so caught up in despair that, for several weeks, he cannot function at all. At Anna's funeral, Vronsky gives up his daughter, Annie, to Karenin. Vronsky joins the volunteer soldiers heading to Serbia to fight against the Ottoman Empire on the side of the Slavs.
What disorder did Anna Karenina have?
borderline personality disorderAnna Karenina clearly has borderline personality disorder, Holden Caulfield seems to have been abused as a child, Raymond Carver's characters wouldn't have these problems if they'd just go to AA. Perhaps it's an obvious direction for students to take, given the information society provides them.
How did Anna Karenina end?
In desperation, Anna drives to Dolly's to say goodbye, and then returns home. She resolves to meet Vronsky at the train station after his errand, and she rides to the station in a stupor. At the station, despairing and dazed by the crowds, Anna throws herself under a train and dies.
Why did Anna Karenina marry Karenin?
Answer and Explanation: Anna initially marries Alexi Karenin out of a sense of social obligation. He is an aristocrat who is generally liked by everyone and he is educated, affluent, respected, and skilled in navigating social norms, but he is also completely passionless.
Is Anna Karenina a true story?
Anna Karenina, fictional character, the tragic heroine of Anna Karenina (1875–77) by Leo Tolstoy. The character has been notably portrayed by Greta Garbo (1935; she also starred in a 1927 adaptation, Love) and by Vivien Leigh (1948). This article was most recently revised and updated by Kathleen Kuiper.
What kind of woman is Anna Karenina?
Anna Arkadyevna Karenina A beautiful, aristocratic married woman from St. Petersburg whose pursuit of love and emotional honesty makes her an outcast from society. Anna's adulterous affair catapults her into social exile, misery, and finally suicide.
Why did Anna Karenina marry Karenin?
Answer and Explanation: Anna initially marries Alexi Karenin out of a sense of social obligation. He is an aristocrat who is generally liked by everyone and he is educated, affluent, respected, and skilled in navigating social norms, but he is also completely passionless.
What is the moral of Anna Karenina?
Anna Karenina encourages us to grasp how we miss things right before our eyes. Tolstoy is always showing us this truth: We do not see the world, we overlook it. He wants to re-educate us to perceive the world differently, so that we are capable of understanding what passes before our eyes hidden in plain view.
How do the ideals of love and marriage come into conflict in Anna Karenina?
The title character's adulterous affair is the main drama of the novel. Because Anna can't find love inside her marriage, she looks for it outside, which ultimately leads to her suicide. Familial love—especially Anna's love for her son—comes in conflict with her passionate romantic feelings for her lover, Vronsky.
What happens to Count Vronsky at the end of Anna Karenina?
At the end of the novel, Vronsky, now realizing his guilt at Anna's death, faces a life made tragic by his own limited nature.
What happens when Levin visits Dolly?
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 realize he still loves her. Meanwhile, in St. 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.
Why does Stiva visit Karenin?
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 that he interprets in a way such that he must decline the request for divorce.
What does Anna talk about in the Oblonsky house?
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.
Why does Anna leave the theatre?
Anna, desperate to regain at least some of her former position in society, attends a show at the theatre at which all of St. 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 St. Petersburg, Anna and Vronsky leave for Vronsky's own country estate.
What is Dolly struck by when she visits Anna?
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.
How old is Kitty when she visits Dolly and Anna?
Dolly is moved by Anna's speeches and decides to forgive Stiva. Kitty, who comes to visit Dolly and Anna, is just eighteen.
How many pages are there in Anna Karenina?
A complex novel in eight parts, with more than a dozen major characters, Anna Karenina is spread over more than 800 pages (depending on the translation and publisher), typically contained in two volumes.
What is the first sentence of Anna Karenina?
In Anna Karenina (1875–77) Tolstoy applied these ideas to family life. The novel’s first sentence, which indicates... The narrative centres on the adulterous affair between Anna, wife of Aleksey Karenin, and Count Vronsky, a young bachelor. Karenin’s discovery of the liaison arouses only his concern for his own public image.
Who wrote Anna Karenina?
Anna Karenina, novel by Leo Tolstoy, published in installments between 1875 and 1877 and considered one of the pinnacles ...
What is the movie Anna Karenina about?
Meanwhile, he said, his new movie, “Anna Karenina,” was about love, and about all the ways in which love makes us human. Wright and his actors slipped out a side door, and the movie began.
What is the thing about Levin?
The thing about Levin is that, through some accident of temperament and circumstances, he ends up figuring things out. He struggles and shapes his own destiny just enough to be happy, while never going out of bounds, and ending up like Anna, or like his brother Nikolai, a political radical, who dies impoverished and angry. Somehow, over the course of the book, Levin achieves everything he wants: he is married to Kitty, and they have a beautiful family. And yet, he senses, he has not really improved himself in his soul, and he has done nothing to deserve his happiness. He still feels powerless, pointless, useless. “Happy in his family life,” Tolstoy writes, “a healthy man, Levin was several times so close to suicide that he hid a rope lest he hang himself with it, and was afraid to go about with a rifle lest he shoot himself.” In the end, he is carried along by the flow of life, and keeps on living. He finds his way to a diffuse kind of faith. There will be no radical transformations, he realizes, either romantic or religious. What is, is. He will try his best to be a good person, within the constraints that his circumstances and nature have placed upon him, and that will be good enough:
What happens after Anna dies?
After Anna dies, much of the end of the novel is devoted to Levin, who struggles to come to terms with the very small role he has played in his own happiness . Levin is likable, thoughtful, and sincere, but he is not particularly wise, experienced, or brilliant. (Tolstoy’s wife, Sonia, told Tolstoy that Levin was “you, without the talent.”) He is like Anna, in that he spends much of the novel debating, in a more overt and deliberate way, the same questions that Anna faces. Should he try to force the people and institutions around him to change, so that he can live in accordance with the dictates of his soul (for example, by remaking his farm along “modern” lines, politically and agriculturally)? Or should he submit to one of the pre-determined possibilities his world offers him and become a completely conventional gentleman farmer? Because he’s a rich, independent man, the stakes for him are lower than they are for Anna, but they’re still substantive: Levin feels that none of the usual ways of life will be meaningful for him, and he doesn’t want his life to be meaningless.
Why was Levin able to find this peace, while Anna was not?
In “The Hedgehog and the Fox,” Isaiah Berlin writes that, for Tolstoy, wisdom consists in the ability “to grasp what human will and human reason can do, and what they cannot.” The only way to find those limits is to struggle against them, but gently, with the goal of finding and accepting them. You can’t think your way to the limits. You have to feel your way, learning through experience and suffering. And there is a risk in experimenting with what will and will not work in life, which is that it might not work. You might move to New York to pursue your dreams, and end up with no career to speak of. You might think you can wait to find the perfect spouse, but wait too long, and end up alone. You might think you can have that affair and still have the love of your spouse and children—but you may be mistaken about what’s possible, and lose everything.
What is Tolstoy thinking about love?
Tolstoy, when he wrote the novel, was thinking about love in a different way: as a kind of fate, or curse, or judgment, and as a vector by which the universe distributes happiness and unhappiness, unfairly and apparently at random. Those thoughts aren’t very romantic, but they are Tolstoyan.
What is the Jewish grandmother saying about Anna Karenina?
The laws were unfair, but they were still laws. As my Jewish grandmother says: “What is, is.” “Anna Karenina” is preceded by an unsettling, unattributed epigraph quote: “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.”. That’s the sentiment, to some extent, behind Anna’s suicide.
When did Tolstoy say "Be happy if an assassin can be happy"?
Be happy, if an assassin can be happy. If you like you can see my corpse on the rails at Yasenki.”. That was January 4, 1872. The following day Tolstoy had gone to the station as a spectator, while the autopsy was being performed in the presence of a police inspector.
What is the character of Vronsky?
A wealthy and dashing military officer whose love for Anna prompts her to desert her husband and son. Vronsky is passionate and caring toward Anna but clearly disappointed when their affair forces him to give up his dreams of career advancement. Vronsky, whom Tolstoy originally modeled on the Romantic heroes of an earlier age of literature, has something of the idealistic loner in him. Yet there is a dark spot at the core of his personality, as if Tolstoy refuses to let us get too close to Vronsky’s true nature. Indeed, Tolstoy gives us far less access to Vronsky’s thoughts than to other major characters in the novel. We can never quite forget Vronsky’s early jilting of Kitty Shcherbatskaya, and we wonder whether he feels guilt about nearly ruining her life. Even so, Vronsky is more saintly than demonic at the end of the novel, and his treatment of Anna is impeccable, even if his feelings toward her cool a bit.
What does Karenin read in the book?
There is something empty about almost everything Karenin does in the novel, however: he reads poetry but has no poetic sentiments, he reads world history but seems remarkably narrow-minded. He cannot be accused of being a poor husband or father, but he shows little tenderness toward his wife, Anna, or his son, Seryozha.
What is Karenin's motivation?
Karenin’s primary motivation in both his career and his personal life is self-preservation. When he unexpectedly forgives Anna on what he believes may be her deathbed, we see a hint of a deeper Karenin ready to emerge. Ultimately, however, the bland bureaucrat remains the only Karenin we know.
What is Anna's brother's relationship with Anna?
Anna’s brother, a pleasure-loving aristocrat and minor government official whose affair with his children’s governess nearly destroys his marriage. Stiva and Anna share a common tendency to place personal fulfillment over social duties. Stiva is incorrigible, proceeding from his affair with the governess—which his wife, Dolly, honorably forgives—to a liaison with a ballerina. For Tolstoy, Stiva’s moral laxity symbolizes the corruptions of big-city St. Petersburg life and contrasts with the powerful moral conscience of Levin. However, despite his transgressions, the affable Stiva is a difficult character to scorn.
Who is Levin in Tolstoy's novel?
Levin is intellectual and philosophical but applies his thinking to practical matters such as agriculture. He aims to be sincere and productive in whatever he does, and resigns from his post in local government because he sees it as useless and bureaucratic. Levin is a figurehead in the novel for Tolstoy himself, who modeled Levin and Kitty’s courtship on his own marriage. Levin’s declaration of faith at the end of the novel sums up Tolstoy’s own convictions, marking the start of the deeply religious phase of Tolstoy’s life that followed his completion of Anna Karenina.
Who is Levin in Anna Karenina?
Levin is a figurehead in the novel for Tolstoy himself, who modeled Levin and Kitty’s courtship on his own marriage. Levin’s declaration of faith at the end of the novel sums up Tolstoy’s own convictions, marking the start of the deeply religious phase of Tolstoy’s life that followed his completion of Anna Karenina.
Who is Kitty in Tolstoy's life?
A beautiful young woman who is courted by both Levin and Vronsky, and who ultimately marries Levin. Modeled on Tolstoy’s real-life wife, Kitty is sensitive and perhaps a bit overprotected, shocked by some of the crude realities of life, as we see in her horrified response to Levin’s private diaries. But despite her indifference to intellectual matters, Kitty displays great courage and compassion in the face of death when caring for Levin’s dying brother Nikolai.
How does Anna's downfall relate to Tolstoy's moral philosophy?
The specific machinery of Anna's downfall derives from Tolstoy's basic moral philosophy: Unselfish seeking of goodness obtains a state of grace, whereas a predatory self-assertion results in damnation. We see how Anna becomes cruel, vindictive, and self-destroying as she exists according to her single goal — to maintain her love relationship. This becomes harder to maintain as Anna loses, one by one, the outside values of the social order which structure not only her existence, but Vronsky's as well. Shut off from her son, her friends, her protective status, Anna's love provides her with the only source of vitality. Under the pressure to live only through her love, she denies her femininity as the vehicle of bearing children; her charms have become the singular weapon of the witch. Thus we see why Vronsky shrinks from her heightened beauty: It is to her witchlike metamorphosis that Vronsky responds so coldly, driving Anna, in her turn, to a state of jealous desperation which further repels him.
What is the meaning of Anna in Tolstoy's dual scheme?
Anna, the other part of Tolstoy's dual scheme, symbolizes the effects of an urban environment on Tolstoy's "natural man." Like Levin, Anna seeks a personal resolution between spontaneous, unreflecting life and the claims of reason and moral law. Being a woman, however, whose human destiny is to raise children and be mistress of her household, Anna is more victimized by culture and society than her male counterpart and is more sensitive to the social restrictions on her quest for personal meaning. Because she is claimed primarily by her position in an advanced — therefore corrupt — society, Anna is doomed at the outset.
What is Anna's love?
Shut off from her son, her friends, her protective status, Anna's love provides her with the only source of vitality. Under the pressure to live only through her love, she denies her femininity as the vehicle of bearing children; her charms have become the singular weapon of the witch.
What is the character of Vronsky?
The novel depicts Vronsky as a handsome, wealthy, and charming man who is as willing as Anna is to abandon social standing and professional status in pursuit of love. His commitment to his hospital-building project also shows a Romantic passion for carrying out an individual vision of good.
Does Vronsky love Anna?
On the contrary, no indisputable evidence indicates that Vronsky loves Anna any less at the end. Certainly he cares for her more than ever: he outfits his country home luxuriously and elegantly, largely (it seems) in an attempt to make Anna happy. His commissioning of Anna’s portrait and his prominent display of it in their home suggests that he is still enraptured by her. Vronsky occasionally feels the pang of thwarted ambition, especially after meeting his school chum who is now highly successful, but at no point does he hold Anna responsible for his failures. He accommodates her whims and endures her paranoid fits with patience. These actions may be mere solicitude— or “duty,” as Anna calls it—on Vronsky’s part, rather than true love. But since the novel rarely shows us Vronsky’s thoughts as he shows us Anna’s, we simply cannot know for sure.
Does Vronsky hold Anna responsible for his failures?
Vronsky occasionally feels the pang of thwarted ambition, especially after meeting his school chum who is now highly successful, but at no point does he hold Anna responsible for his failures.
Is Vronsky a Romantic hero?
His thinning hair, his error in judgment in the horse race, his thwarted ambitions of military glory all remind us that Vronsky is not a Romantic hero but a man like any other.
Overview
Plot introduction
Anna Karenina consists of more than the story of Anna Karenina, a married socialite, and her affair with the affluent Count Vronsky, though their relationship is a very strong component of the plot. The story starts when she arrives in the midst of her brother's family being broken up by his unbridled womanizing—something that prefigures her own later situation.
A bachelor, Vronsky is eager to marry Anna if she will agree to leave her husband Karenin, a seni…
Main characters
• Anna Arkadyevna Karenina (Анна Аркадьевна Каренина): Stepan Oblonsky's sister, Karenin's wife and Vronsky's lover.
• Count Alexei Kirillovich Vronsky (Алексей Кириллович Вронский): Anna's lover, cavalry officer.
• Prince Stepan "Stiva" Arkadyevich Oblonsky (Степан "Стива" Аркадьевич Облонский): civil servant and Anna's brother, man about town, 34 years of age. (Stepan and Stiv…
Summary
The novel is divided into 8 parts and 239 chapters. Its epigraph is "Vengeance is mine; I will repay", from Romans 12:19, which in turn quotes from Deuteronomy 32:35. The novel begins with one of its most oft-quoted lines:
Все счастливые семьи похожи друг на друга, каждая несчастливая семья несчастлива по-своему. Vse schastlivyye sem'i pokhozhi drug na druga, kazh…
Style and major themes
Tolstoy's style in Anna Karenina is considered by many critics to be transitional, forming a bridge between the realist and modernist novel. According to Ruth Benson in her book about Tolstoy's heroines, Tolstoy's diaries show how displeased he was with his style and approach to writing in early drafts of Anna Karenina, quoting him as stating, "I loathe what I have written. The galleys of Anna Karenina for the April issue of Russkij Vestnik now lie on my table, and I really don't have th…
Historical context
The events in the novel take place against the backdrop of rapid transformations as a result of the liberal reforms initiated by Emperor Alexander II of Russia, principal among these the Emancipation reform of 1861, followed by judicial reform, including a jury system; military reforms, the introduction of elected local governments (Zemstvo), the fast development of railroads, banks, industry, telegraph, the rise of new business elites and the decline of the old landed aristocracy, …
Translations into English
• Anna Karénina, translated by Nathan Haskell Dole (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., 1887)
• Anna Karenin, translated by Constance Garnett (London: William Heinemann, 1901). Still widely reprinted
• Anna Karénin, translated by Leo Wiener (Boston: The Colonial Press, 1904)
Adaptations
The novel has been adapted into various media including opera, film, television, ballet, and radio drama. The first film adaptation was released in 1911 but has not survived.
• 1911: Anna Karenina (1911 film), a Russian adaptation directed by Maurice André Maître
• 1914: Anna Karenina (1914 film), a Russian adaptation directed by Vladimir Gardin