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Sukriti Kapoor (S183LEN37)

Bodh Prakash

March 8, 2019

The Human Condition

Anna Karenina-​ An Apology for Family

Leo Tolstoy’s nineteenth century text ​Anna Karenina​ is so dense that it can be made into

anything a reader wants to make of it- a story about family life, a romance, a psychological novel

dealing with questions of the human condition, a pre-modern text with modern moorings etc.

This paper, however, is concerned with the human quest to attain happiness and gauge the

meaning of life, as portrayed in the novel. To write this paper, the notions of individual

fulfillment of various characters are discussed. Tolstoy’s method is one of interconnections and it

is impossible to look at characters in isolation. This is why, though characters are analysed one

by one, a comparative reading with other characters also takes place simultaneously. To

understand the notions of individual fulfillment in characters, we will also look at their principle

defects. This idea has been derived from the argument Socrates poses in Plato’s ​Symposium​, a

treatise on Eros. People can not, he says, desire what they already have. In looking at

deficiencies of characters, we can understand what they lack and their respective derivative

individual desires.

Though the novel deals with multiple notions of ‘fulfillment’, ‘happiness’, ‘contentment’

and ‘vocation,’ it is not easy to characterise or define them individually. This is because Tolstoy

has not provided a normative understanding of these concepts to fall back on. While some
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characters are on a serious and self-conscious quest to identify the purpose of life through the

attainment of individual fulfillment, the notion, we see, has become corrupted in the Russian

society represented. For Stiva Oblonsky, fulfillment means only the appeasement of carnal

desires, even at the cost of his family. Vronsky likes flirting with Kitty because it makes him feel

good, but the idea of proposing to her does not even occur to him. Such notions of fulfillment are

baser desires which, in all characters but one (the incorrigible Stiva), give way to worthier

notions. The novel makes a distinction within these desires and it is this difference which this

paper seeks to explore.

In a society of “idle men” (as Levin calls high society city males), those belonging to the

aristocracy grapple with problems which arise from a dearth of work. Even those who can work,

like Stiva, view official duties only in terms of annual income. Though it is expected that a 19th

century aristocratic woman in Russia would not have access to professional venues, the

desperation with which men look for a vocation comes as a surprise. This desperation has been

brought out most obviously in Vronsky’s character. We see him trying to live his life hopping

from one distraction to the next- theater, parties, balls, hallroom conversations, painting, farming,

rural elections, hospital construction etc. However, nothing he does gives him real satisfaction.

At the beginning of the novel, he is introduced as a handsome, ambitious man with a great career

in the regiment. Vronsky is a thorough society man and in spite of his rejection of conventional

life, he can not give up his connections to be with Anna. This inability to live fully in society or

immerse himself completely in his estate is what causes a chism, between his own self as well as

his relationship. His need to go back to society troubles the exiled Anna who does not have the

same option.
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The horse-racing scene and Frou-Frou’s death has been read as a symbol in various

different ways. Though Tolstoy is not really a symbolist and rather works through imagery, there

is no denying the fact that it is important to understand this event to understand the

Anna-Vronsky relationship. Such a reading will aid us in the process of analysing his character

to understand his personal failures and longings. Vronsky’s desire to control Frou-Frou could be

seen as symbolic of his desire to control Anna and his failing to respond correctly to events,

especially in times of crisis. However, it would be more accurate to read this event as a means to

chalk out a bigger picture of his character rather than in context of one relationship. Vronky’s

failings are therefore these- inability to trust his partner, wanting to rush to the finish despite

knowing otherwise, keeping an eye on the competition even at the most momentous events of

life. Vronsky desires the control of a husband, a father and a respectable man. Vronsky’s

character determines the outcome of the race. However, circumstances are to be blamed as well1.

All characters in the novel are a synthesis of their circumstance as well as their self. The

surroundings determine the character as much as the character determines the surroundings.

Therefore, the failings of the characters can not be excused because of their upbringing, social

conditions or circumstances. Every past decision, conscious or not, goes into the making of the

characters as they currently are.

This notion is visible also in Karenin’s characterisation. Karenin is a highly respected

social individual with an important role to play in the Russian society. Though we are given a

brief background of this character to understand his emotional detachment, Tolstoy does not let

1
Various factors could be said to lead to Frou-Frou’s death, none of which was Vronsky’s fault. It had
rained before the race. The track was especially muddy when it was Frou-Frou’s turn to race. Also,
Gladiator had knocked the final hurdle and it had changed its position slightly. In a sport for which animals
are trained by the centimeter, such a development could have failed the racehorse’s calculations.
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him off the hook. He uses Karenin to show how necessary dynamism and change is. Though

Karenin does everything a feeling man should- looks after his wife and son, reads poetry and

historical treatises, indulges in debates etc.- we see that nothing touches him and all he does is

superficial. Familial care is practiced as an obligation rather than out of love, he reads to

understand current trends in society rather than to feel, even his belief in Christianity is not

heartfelt. There are moments in the novel where a reader begins to pity him,2 however, Karenin

is a static character who does not undergo even a momentary evolution.3 What Anna despises the

most in him is his mechanic conventionality. Creating a facade of a flawless family man, he lives

a life of obligations devoid of feelings. The only avenue through which Karenin seeks happiness

is through his professional life. Completely focused on his success in important boardrooms, he

spends each moment constructing arguments and counter arguments. His notion of fulfillment is

rooted in the desire for social and professional promotion. Marriage and family, for him, is

important only as long as it helps maintain his image of a good aristocratic family man.

Konstantin Levin is another individual who is shown to be always thinking. However, his

characterisation is very different from Karenin’s. Always at odds with the world, he despises the

Russian city life and actively contemplates about individual fulfillment. Konstantin is always

tentative about his ideas but it is not because of his lack of confidence; it is his need to be honest

in all situations which drives his responses. A few critics like Goodman (1958) believe that the

purpose of Levin’s life is his marriage. Levin, Goodman says, found happiness and satisfaction

2
Karenin’s concern for Anna’s illegitimate daughter and utter despair at not having anyone to share his
pain with are two moments when his emotions seem real and accessible.
3
In the first scene referred to, we realise later that his concern was driven by this need to be a saint in
front of Anna. The second scene, though it could evoke pity, is a situation caused by his inability to be
emotionally attached to any human. It is a situation created out of his own superficiality which tortured
Anna.
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in his marriage because he wanted on a personal level to fulfill the demands of marriage. Such a

claim may be refuted since he too, by the end, finds a rope to hang himself with. Though he

spends a few happy months with Kitty, he once again drowns himself in metaphysical despair.

What can instead be said of him, is that family, attained through marital ties, is his nucleus of

fulfilment; his realisation of the care and love he feels for his son near the end supplants this

claim.

‘Happiness’ is not the same as the idea of ‘personal fulfillment’ in the text. Though Levin

is still happy with his marriage, he despairs that this relationship can not answer his questions

about existence, life and death. Marriage is not what he thought it would be. This, though, does

not mean that Tolstoy does not uphold the idea that family is the source of all fulfillment.

Marriage is important because it is through marriage that one finds a family. Familial

relationships in the text include parents, children, loving relatives and peasants who know one’s

ancestral history. Karenin is able to find Christian forgiveness4 through despair only through

Countess Ivanovna's kind words. Dolly and Stiva are able to go back to living a normal life

because of Anna’s support. It is through a simple interaction with a peasant that Levin finds

peace in the end. Though it is easy to characterise fulfillment as an individual not a collective

idea because of the multiplicity of the variants in the text, each notion is informed by external

reality. Levin’s idea of fulfillment through ethical Christianity derives from the peasant couples

he encounters, Vronsky’s ideas are propelled by the professional advancement he sees in his

peers and Kitty is greatly influenced by Varenka’s idea of sacrifice and altruism.

4
It is bogus spirituality which ultimately lends him support when neither personal nor professional
relationships do so.
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Going back to Levin’s idea of individual fulfillment, we realise that all his negotiations

between his internal and the external world are temporary. At the end of the novel, we encounter

a Levin thoroughly enthralled by the traditional faith of the peasants. A mushik’s simplestic

assertion that man ought to live "for the sake of God and the soul" so influences him that he

almost instantly becomes a believer and accepts all Christian dogmas and superstitions. Actively

on the quest to unearth the meaning of life, he finds fulfillment in living for the soul. However,

having learnt of Levin’s nature, a reader would not bet on his adhering to the primitive beliefs of

the peasants his entire life. Levin will once again change his position but will find a common

ground between personal aspirations and social responsibilities the way he always has. Tolstoy

visibly has a soft corner for Levin and happiness, if not fulfillment, is forever reserved for him.

Levin’s character, it seems, has been created to contrast Anna’s trajectory. While Levin

becomes increasingly assimilated within society, readers witness Anna’s exclusion book after

book till the climax of her death. Anna is a character who is very similar to Levin’s. However,

she can not occupy the same position as Levin in spite of she being the supposed eponymous

protagonist. Her quest for happiness, containment or fulfillment is not given quite the same

weight. Though Anna too is extremely well read, she does not think of her despair the way Levin

does. Levin has the vocabulary to word his concerns. He understands what affects him are the

larger questions of human life and condition. Anna too is troubled by the same questions but for

her, they are personal conflicts. Though Levin understands them as universal questions relevant

to everyone and tries to answer them by interacting with individuals with different ideas (the

baptist, his brother, leading academicians and scholars), Anna must keep her concerns repressed

within herself. She feels as deeply as Levin does but neither happiness nor individual fulfillment
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is to be attained by her. Anna, not for a single moment in the novel, is shown to to completely

happy. Even as she romances Vronsky, she realises she is in the eye of the storm. Gary Browning

(2000) sees the peasant of her nightmares as a conflation of Karenin and Vronsky. That which

haunts her till the very end of her life must be the reason for her unhappiness. Her tragedy lies in

the fact that she depends on the men in her life for happiness (as any 19th century Russian

women must). However, Anna’s unhappiness has been seen by many critics as a fault of her

character. Ivanov-Razumnik5 justifies Anna’s end by conceding that her passion for Vronsky is

not what was problematic, it was her readiness to build a happy relationship out of someone

else’s sorrow. Such a reading ignores Karenin’s thoughtlessness to build a successful social life

pawning Anna’s happiness. Newton (1983) is another critic who goes to great lengths to

understand Anna’s “moral depravity” as a reason of “the lack of a moral center” in her. It is

galling how critics have chosen to wear such a myopic view in analysing Anna while allowing

Karenin and Stiva all liberties.

Anna’s tragedy is that, contrary to critic’s beliefs, the source of her fulfillment is a happy

marriage and motherhood. It is because marriage is sacrosanct to Anna that she tortures herself

with guilt till the very end. Appeasement of passion or lust is not Anna’s notion of fulfillment.

This, the novel supplies in showing her to be suicidal while in a supposedly perfect setting with

her lover. Anna’s notion of self fulfillment is a conflation of societal respectability and love. She

seeks her happiness through the social roles of a wife and a mother. However, it is because of

Tolstoy’ tragic characterisation of Anna that such a misogynistic reading of Anna, wherein she is

to be blamed for her pathetic end, is possible. From the beginning of the text6, we are told that

5
As mentioned by Gorodetzky (1948).
6
Betsy and Stiva are two characters we hear mentioning this characteristic.
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Anna will never be happy. There is something in her character which does not accept happiness.

Anna’s tragic vision, the text tells us, is her defect which ultimately does not let her attain

personal fulfillment.

We are more aware of Anna’s defects than we are of any other character. Karenin, Stiva,

Vronsky, Levin all have deficiencies. While Stiva’s infidelity and unfaithfulness is attributed to

his jovial and carefree nature, the over-thinking Levin is endeared to the reader through an

extremely sympathetic portrayal. Though Karenin’s!characterisation has been done with a

harsher hand, it is Anna who bears the brunt of Tolstoy’s vengeance. This is why, though

everyone in the novel can achieve their notions of individual fulfillment, Anna must not. While

Levin, her character twin, attains bliss at the end, Anna must die unfulfilled as other characters

move on with their lives. Levin’s idea of ethical Christianity then, is upheld as an ideal means to

attain individual fulfillment. It is also true that the ideas of individual fulfillment of women

characters are not as important as the male ideas. Though Dolly does not take a step as radical as

Anna’s, her almost tangible imagining of potential lovers and complete identification with Anna

show her to be a strong character. Individual fulfillment is not in her lot as she is condemned to

live her life with an unfaithful husband. However, she does find contentment and a certain

degree of happiness through her role of a mother. Kitty, pressured by society, firsts rejects Levin

though she instinctively knows that she would be happy with him. Socially constructed notions

of containment and happiness force her to chose the man she is not totally comfortable with.

Notions of individual fulfillment and happiness, therefore, are informed by conventional norms

too. What characters imagine to be their source of fulfillment is rarely proven true.
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Is it at all possible to be totally happy? Is the ethical always at odds with the pleasurable?

Does happiness mean the same as fulfillment? Are notions of individual fulfillment completely

divorced from external reality? These are some of the questions which do not have any straight

answers. The novel, however, in presenting multiple routes allows the reader to make her own

conclusions. ​Anna Karenina​ closes with a blissful image of the Levin household. Tolstoy, in

more ways than one, rationalises the contentment to be found in marriage and integrates it with

ideas of ethical Christianity. It is a combination of the two institutions which seems to be upheld

as the ideal source of individual contentment.

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Works Cited

Browning, Gary. (2000). Peasant Dreams in Anna Karenina. The Slavic and East European

Journal, Vol. 44, No. 4, pp. 525-536. American Association of Teachers of Slavic and

East European Languages. Accessed March 7, 2019, from:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3086282

Goodman, Nathaniel. (1958). Anna Karenina Revisited. Social Work, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 26-28.

Oxford University Press. Accessed March 8, 2019, from:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/23707272

Gorodetzky, Nadezhda. (1946). The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 24, No. 63. pp.

121-126. Accessed March 8, 2019, from: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4203734.

Newton, K. M. (1983). Tolstoy's Intention in "Anna Karenina". The Cambridge Quarterly, Vol.

11, No. 3, pp. 359-374. Oxford University Press. Accessed February 11, 2019 from:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/42966509