Anna Karenina Review

Review of Anna Karenina 

By: Leo Tolstoy

            Despite the title, Anna Karenina is not the main character of this epic story, but the second main character to Tolstoy’s stand-in Constantine Levin.  Levin is a farmer, who is in love with Kitty, but she is in love with Count Vronsky, Anna’s lover.  Anna wants to divorce her Karenin so she can be with Vronsky, but Karenin won’t allow it and he wants guardianship of their son Serazha. Meanwhile, Kitty’s sister Dolly’s husband, and Anna’s brother, Oblonsky has a mistress and finds his family getting in the way of his independence.

            This classic story is quite a soap opera, but obviously is so much more than that as this is a story is about life during a tumultuous time in Russia.  Tolstoy juxtaposes Levin’s life with Anna’s as we read about the choices, they make to give them happiness.  Levin chooses a more traditional, for Russia, life path, and cares about what is going on in the country.  He has a happy life in the end, and Tolstoy uses Levin for a sounding board on his political, philosophical, and social beliefs.  One of the aspects of the novel that makes it a long, tedious read that people resent is the endless tangents on agriculture, politics, and philosophical debates on God and the meaning of life that Tolstoy express through Levin.  I took them as they came through on page, but they did get tiresome.  His character is endearing and lovable, but frustrating as he is insecure and easily jealous.  Anna, on the other hand, takes a more immoral path having an affair and eventually having to reveal to her stick-in-the mud husband when she ends up pregnant with Vronksy’s child.  In fact, she resents the baby girl, because her birth took her away from her son, and led her to her unhappy life, though she is allowed to be with Vronsky.   My feelings about the characters are complicated for I had a love/hate relationship with them.  I easily got frustrated and lost patience with them, and down right hated at least two of them. I pitied them as well.  I hated Oblonsky and was glad Levin didn’t listen to him when he said he should take a mistress.  Anna was the character my feelings were most complicated about.  At times, I pitied her, especially with her losing her son, but other times I wanted to shake her and remind her she made her own bed, she must lie in it.  It was unfair how society treated her, but I also know that’s how it was.  What the upper class did mattered to the public, like how we feel about celebrities.  Anna overtime, became paranoid and had spiraling thoughts, thinking Vronsky no longer loved her and was cheating.  Dolly and Kitty had spiraling thoughts too, but they weren’t as bad as Anna’s.  Due to when this was written we have female characters that were sweet and supportive wives and mothers, but didn’t do a lot, though Dolly did occasionally have opinions on the current government.    They also came off as incredibly needy and easily jealous, especially Kitty and Anna with each other.    The novel is a product of it’s time.    I was intrigued by the political discussions, but I must admit a lot of went over my head.  I wouldn’t feel confident in having a discussion on those aspects.  I get a sense that Anna’s storyline was a commentary on western views through Anna, just as through Levin we Tolstoy’s views.  This isn’t a classic for everybody, but I loved it.