I am
being unfair to Tolstoy in implying that the novel is a slog. Despite its stature
as a literary monument (door-stop length, ‘one of the most famous opening lines
in literature,’ etc. etc.), it’s a surprisingly easy read. Anna Karenina is
a novelist’s novel: the sort of book that other writers point to to demonstrate
what can be done, but it wears its ideas lightly. In spite of its length, it
never feels aimless or meandering, and while it has a cast of characters which
would make Dickens feel crowded (and, thanks to Russian naming conventions, all
of them with at least three different monikers to remember—thank goodness for
my edition’s dramatis personae at the front!), each one of them feels
distinctly drawn and psychologically ‘rounded’, and Tolstoy has absolute
empathy for all of them.
This
empathy is what carries Anna Karenina beyond being a ‘Fallen Woman’
novel, which seems to be what Tolstoy originally set out to write. True we have
a woman who betrays her husband and is ultimately punished for it; we have a
contrasting ‘good’ woman—Kitty—who initially falls for the same love interest
(compare Eustasia and Thomasin in Thomas Hardy’s Return of the Native:
another late 19th century entry in the ‘Fallen Woman’ genre where
the writer’s empathy and nuance prevents a simple moralistic reading). However, Tolstoy allows Anna to follow through on her intentions,
not just as a physical fling—which seems permissible in some corners of the
novel’s elite Russian capital-S Society provided that the parties are
discreet—but in leaving her husband and child to live with the rakish cavalry
officer, Count Vronsky[1].
By
following their relationship across a long period of time and several
locations, Tolstoy shows us the precariousness of Anna’s new situation. While
Vronsky has to resign his commission, ending a promising military career, he is
free to try on new personas in each place that the couple find themselves: a
bohemian painter in their rented Italian villa, a benevolent lord of the manor
in his country estate, and he can almost effortlessly pick up his old socialite
hat when they return to city life. In each case Anna is entirely dependent on
him. In Italy as ‘artist’s muse’ and on Vronsky’s estate as a sort of
unofficial lady of the manor. Here she is at her happiest, involving herself
almost as an equal partner in Vronsky’s project to build a new hospital, but in
both locations there is a shadow: Anna knows her position can only last as long
as Vronsky’s affection. She becomes jealous of his attention, creating tension
between the two. In the city her position is worse: excluded from polite
society her world shrinks down to a hotel suite and a small cadre of servants.
When
Anna first leaves her husband, she views it as an act of freedom. Other women
comment on her liberation or even fantasise about their own. But her liberation
mirrors and even surpasses her marriage bonds. In tying herself to Vronsky,
Anna has neither the legal and financial protections that a marriage would
offer or the social status that a ‘good match’ provides. Worse, she now finds
herself at the mercy of two men: Vronsky, who she fears she may lose, and the
husband she has humiliated: the only person who can grant her the divorce that
would allow her to shore-up her new relationship.
I’ll
turn now to Kitty’s story. It begins with a ball and a choice between suitors
(the aforementioned Count Vronsky, and Levin: too awkward and bookish to be a
society-figure, too rugged and too invested in his agricultural labours to be a
respected public intellectual). Kitty turns down Levin’s proposal in
anticipation of one from Levin. When that doesn’t transpire, she plummets into
a depression, tries on a new persona as a pious healer who gives all her
attention to others, and ultimately finds balance and fulfilment in marriage to
Levin (the ‘right’ suitor who she should have married from the start). All very
conventional. But just as he does with Anna and Vronsky, Tolstoy carries the
story beyond where other writers might have finished it. We see the
difficulties of early marriage. The tentative steps in which we learn to live
with someone—the humdrum practicalities which go beyond romance. The two get
along fine left to their own devices, but when surrounded by other, they lose
equilibrium and a beset by jealousies and misunderstandings. Just as with Anna
and Vronsky, there is a dichotomy between the country/private and the
city/public realms, but here it is the male partner who is suffers in the city.
Levin’s attentions are pulled outwards in the city and when trying to do his
duty in regional politics he is left confused and feeling inadequate. In both
cases he loses something of himself.
Unlike
their counterparts, Levin and Kitty are given a happy ending. They settle in
the country, surrounded by friends. Levin has a spiritual awakening which puts
him more in line with Kitty’s sincere religiosity, but even this is undercut:
after a page or two of mentally embracing the Orthodox Church, Levin’s usual
intellectualism cuts in. He may now feel there is more to this world than can
be empirically measured and tested by science, but why should he see the church
as the one true way of looking at things just because he happens, by accident
of birth, to have been raised under its confessional tradition.
This
theme—the difficult of understanding and being understood—runs throughout the
novel. Yes, on one level it can be read as both a socially progressive critique
of late-19th century Russian marriage laws, and as a socially
conservative demonstration of why it is better to be married than not, but the
perils of communication runs through all of the relationships on display. Tolstoy
deftly uses free focalisation to show the gap between the idea that one
character meant to express, and how it is received by others. Romantic partners
fear losing the interest of their paramour and cannot reassure one another.
Levin feels distant with both of his brothers. Telegrams go astray, are not
received in time. We are left with the uneasy sense that, between the
inadequacy of language and our own fear of exposure, we can never truly be
know, even by those who are closest to us. At least Kitty and Levin give hope
that, through love and respect, we can transcend that gap, even if we can never
really bridge it.
[1] As
an aside, Tolstoy is surprisingly frank about sex. I don’t mean to suggest that
he was writing an early, Eastern European Bridgerton, or even that there
are ‘bedroom scenes’ at all, but just in acknowledging that his protagonist has
been physically intimate with Vronsky, and that it is something she has
enjoyed, Tolstoy is in a different milieu to his British contemporaries. He is
open about other bodily functions too: his depiction of the lurid, sickly
atmosphere of Levin’s brother’s death-bed, and at the opposite end of the
scale, Kitty’s labour both stand out. The latter is particularly remarkable for
the empathy and understanding he is able to show as a male writer.
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