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Women, Character, and Society in Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" Author(s): Gayle Greene Reviewed work(s): Source: Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Spring, 1977), pp. 106-125 Published by: University of Nebraska Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3346113 . Accessed: 27/11/2011 09:01
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WOMEN, CHARACTER, AND SOCIETY IN TOLSTOY'S ANNA KARENINA Gayle Greene

I am not the first reader of Anna Karenina to react with of Anna, nor will treatment and indignation at Tolstoy's outrage to consider I be the last. Thus it may be instructive why so and why Tolstoy of her fate, the injustice many of us have felt The purpose of this study is to explore her. had to kill of in Tolstoy's treatment and inconsistencies contradictions which are the confusions in Anna Karenina, women and marriage of character in view of his understanding more remarkable in view of his genius at portraying and especially generally, of perception These failures to society. in relation character are of a piece with his level on a personal, psychological and of the social the implications to confront failure finally he raises. issues damaging to They are particularly political of the novel because marriage coherence the moral and ideological the saving grace and ballast an ideal, as so central is posited social of a crumbling and confusions the uncertainties against order. and political on the is an easy target of course, In some sense, Tolstoy are no worse than those of most His failures of women. subject what is surprising, male or female; novelists, nineteenth-century Of all nineteenththem so well. is that he understands in fact, Anna Karenina is the one most novels written by men, century most with women, the one which attempts concerned centrally of their them in all aspects to confront and honestly thoroughly can imagine-as Tolstoy at least in as many aspects lives--or There is much insight to a great extent. and it does succeed, of women in this novel. and positions the characters into in fiction, one of the great female characters Besides creating of lesser a brilliant offers Anna herself, array Tolstoy

her Ph.D. from Columbia University. Gayle Greene received and is and Brooklyn College She has taught at Queens College Calif. in Claremont, at Scripps College teaching presently Greene has published articles on language in Shakespeare, and is working on a book on linguistic in the plays of skepticism She is currently an anthology of feminist Shakespeare. compiling of Shakespeare. criticism literary

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and portraits, including Dolly, Varenka, and the aging princesses countesses who hover about the edges of the novel, turning in their old age to spirituality or promiscuity, or into an "enfant terrible." outlived the necessity of functioning as Having can finally afford the courage of their sexual objects, they convictions.1 Indeed, there is in Anna Karenina more understandmore honest ing of certain aspects of women's lives, certainly of physicality--motherhood, confrontation sexuality, aging--than in all the works of Austen, Eliot, and the Brontes. As a Russian and a man, and because of the greater depth and daring of his vision, Tolstoy can afford to confront things which women cannot.2 But what is remarkable is that he is English of such profound insight and empathy--in the portrayal capable of Dolly, for example--and yet, simultaneously, as with Anna, is of a failure which of understanding and sensitivity guilty so much, we expect more. since he offers verges on the cruel: that I wish It is this peculiar mixture of insight and blindness of women, a to explore. We can see, in Tolstoy's treatment genius grappling with a problem with his full force, yet falling back into stereotyped because emotional needs and conceptions interfere with understanding and sympathy, and cause investments him to retreat into simplistic solutions unworthy of his understanding. That there is nothing "natural" about "human nature," that a person's character is largely the product of shaping social to is a sense we have long had in relation forces and values, to grasp in man, but one which has been somewhat more difficult the understanding relation to woman. In fiction, that, as George Eliot says, "there is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it," has its origins in the novel, a bourgeois form concerned and finds its fullest with people in their social milieu, It is an idea novel.3 in the nineteenth-century expression both male and female, have been quicker to apply that writers, and in fact, because of strong to men than to women, in fiction investments which both sexes have in preserving psychological notions of the nature of woman. (It is agonizing, traditional as Simone de Beauvoir says, for any being to assume responsibiland woman is sanctioned, encouraged, ity for its own destiny,
such responsibility to relinquish and pressured [pp. by society wrote The Second Sex to argue this De Beauvoir 278, 606].) xxi, a woman. "one is not born, but rather becomes, idea of woman: the or economic fate determines No biological, psychological,

figure

that

the human female presents

in society;

it

is civili-

There this creature" as a whole that produces zation (p. 249). in which may be called traits are indeed certain "feminine," and which do indeed women generally, that they characterize but these to man as an autonomous being; render her inferior than the shape of a bound foot. are no more inherent traits and tradiof learning "Woman" is the product of a long process that work and expectations, a whole complex of assumptions tion,

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Greene in the on her from the moment of birth, finally resulting we know as woman--feminine, creature instinctive, passive, and crippled as a selfemotional, undeveloped intellectually, That this idea still determining functioning individual.4 needed to be argued in 1949 (indeed, is not yet fully understood), says much; but that it was not beyond the scope of a is shown by Stendhal, who male novelist nineteenth-century offers as an analogy for the way women are understood the Gardens who example of the man walking in the Versailles concluded that "judging from all he saw, the trees grow ready trimmed. "5 There is no novelist greater than Tolstoy at understanding of the individual life to that of the community. the relation best understood humans novelists, He, of all nineteenth-century to a relation and portrayed them in integral as social creatures social system and hierarchy which is thoroughly rendered and is as central a subject of this novel as any. Tolstoy is relentless in his exposure of a decadent and declining civilization, are defined in terms his male characters and without exception, On all levels--personal, in it. and positions of their functions on is a society ripe for scourging, and political--this social, of We see the cynicism and shallowness the edge of the abyss. the sham of its convenits personal and sexual relationships, in which adultery is only this is a society tions and morality; The same hypocrisy that condemned if it is not kept casual. lives pervades their political characterizes people's personal views, for example: political Oblonsky's self-serving beings-institution "The Liberal Party said that marriage was an obsolete and family life really gave Oblonsky to be reformed; which ought forcing him to tell lies and dissemble, pleasure, very little We see the which was quite contrary to his nature" (p. 6). its distance from the of the czarist bureaucracy, complacency in dealing with the and insensitivity people, its ineffectuality the more comfortably Generally speaking, problems of Russia. into this society a character is, the higher in its integrated hierarchy and the more accepting of its assumptions and values, Those who accept man--he is for it. the less a human being--or or work, are lost; what society deals them by way of values from external to free oneself manhood is measured by the ability and to define the self and and social conventions strictures
to find signifiManhood is the ability one's work from within. by the individual, cant work, work which can only be created is demeaning. offers since what society positions, Karenin and Koznyshev occupy the most prestigious and are the in the novel, circles social move in the highest of love. and least capable removed from their furthest feelings in which he the "paper world"6 Karenin takes seriously his work, consisting bureaucracy; functions, high in the czarist on reports of reports (p. 337), is as far removed from the He has sacriproblems of the people as he is from his heart. and it is dead, to professional ambition, ficed his inner life

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as he rises to a blessed state of true to be revived briefly and forgiveness of Anna in the scene where she seems feeling to die. But this new life of the heart cannot be reborn likely have because the Christian virtues of compassion and forgiveness no place in the life of this society, and Karenin's new feelings earn him only laughter and contempt. The course of his developthan any other ment after this scene demonstrates more clearly the crushing weight of social opinion and convention character's, and less a on a human life. Koznyshev, more an intellectual bureaucrat than Karenin, cuts a more independent path in applying of Russia's problems, but again, he his mind to the solution a in both his personal and professional life, demonstrates, What makes dominance of the head over the life of the heart. is that his notions Levin uncomfortable about his half-brother of "the people," like his ideas about nature and the country, that this is what makes all come from the head; Levin realizes him uncomfortable about social reformers generally--their or not feeling endeavors are the result of reasoned principles, of Koznyshev's The futility direct experience of the people. endeavors is clear at the end of the novel, in the intellectual fate of his book which nobody notices ("the result of six years' related to his failure labor . . . " [p. 695]), and is integrally of feeling with regard to Varenka. Summoning all the reasons he can for why he should marry her, he cannot make them add up to a feeling of love, and he fails at the crucial moment. Oblonsky dabbles in the same work Karenin takes seriously, but because he only dabbles in it, he is better than Karenin. with which he approaches his work and Though the superficiality views is of a piece with his casual adulholds his political such work salvages the refusal to take seriously still, teries, it he practices for him a certain integrity. deception, Though is repugnant to his nature, whereas Karenin, steeped in social does not know the difference convention and artificiality, falsehood is the very stuff of his and truth; between deception "a very fine sample of the gilded youth of nature. Vronsky, Petersburg" (p. 36), also moves in the highest social circles and again, his low on the human scale; and is proportionately does--or does not do. A human stature is one with the work he he passes the time in peacetime gambling, soldier, professional code and behavior His unprincipled and drinking. horse-racing, men are what they do. are one with his idleness: Levin is the only character in the novel who does man's he works directly for his estate, work. Assuming responsibility with the people, reads, experiments; refusing to accept prescribed ways of doing things, he sets out to find new methods and to apply them to the problems of his estate and society. on defining his work and himself from within, Because he insists a he is a social misfit, principles, according to original country rustic who is awkward and uncomfortable in urban society The and who does not know how to pass his time in the city. scene in which Karenin nearly throws him out of his railway

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compartment, mistaking him for a peasant in his sheepskin coat, and as relations to society, is emblematic of their respective human stature, Levin's diminishes his Karenin's conventionality nonconformism augments his, and assures his survival as a human of the There is in Tolstoy a sense of the integration being. and parts of a man's life that is an aspect of the health a sense of a striving for integrity, wholeness of his vision: not A man's position--but of the parts of a life. the relation a woman's--in society, his work, is his life, love, and mind. There is evidence in the novel that on some level, Tolstoy of behavior which shape men's grasped that the same principles that a woman is what she characters apply to women's as well: and expectations lives up or down to the functions does: assigned her; and what is expected of her, feels even more heavily than man the weight of social pressures which work on and warp character. Dolly is one of the most brilliantly in the novel-portrayed and thoroughly understood characters probably because Tolstoy has less emotional investment in her and needs neither to than in the central female characters We know her embrace her as ideal nor kill her as adulteress. She is, though Tolstoy does not stress this, the thoroughly. mother who prefers the a silly true daughter of her parents: as suitor for Kitty over the solid Levin, and dashing Vronsky her father, the old Prince Shcherbatsky, who is at least able to the most casual know a cad when he sees one, though he expresses of women's rights toward women in the discussion condescension We know of the at the Oblonsky's dinner party (pp. 353-56). she tells Anna, "You know how narrowness of Dolly's education; I was married. With the education Mamma gave me, I was not You will hardly I knew nothing. naive but silly. merely .... but up to now I thought I was the only woman he had believe it, We see her now, "nothing but an excellent ever known" (p. 62). "worn exhausted from repeated pregnancies, mother of a family," and in no way no longer pretty, out, already growing elderly, remarkable, in fact, quite an ordinary woman" (p. 3) for her Her husband, though a year older than years in the nursery. in turning to younger women. justified she, feels perfectly in terms is clearly understandable That she is not "remarkable" "victim of the she is, as de Beauvoir terms it, of her life;
with regard to understands, Tolstoy reproductive cycle."7 that a woman is what she does, that what this woman does Dolly, but while he as an individual; her development has prohibited it. he approves shows sympathy for her plight, at the Oblonsky's In the argument over women's rights issues the social articulates Pestov dinner party (pp. 353-55), he nor she makes the neither plight--though Dolly's underlying that He claims between his views and her miseries. connection and if she were of her education, woman is what she is because for which she is she could occupy positions taught differently, on Pestov also argues that the most unfair now unfit. pressure of morality, by which woman is woman is the double standard

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Greene more harshly than man, both by punished for sexual transgression law and opinion. The novel gives abundant evidence of this double standard, as seen in Vronsky's code before he becomes involved with Anna, which holds that one may lie to a woman but treatment of Anna after not to a man (p. 278), and in society's she becomes involved with Vronsky. Tolstoy demonstrates other pressures women have to endure, including men's attitudes with toward them, in the predatory quality of Vronsky's trifling contempt of even a Kitty (p. 55), and the casual and unfeeling One also sees, in the unhinged kindly man like the old Prince. quality of the older women in this novel, what becomes of aging their sexual women in a leisured society when they have outlived roles and have no other.8 of the social But it is at this point, at an understanding dimension of woman's "nature," that Tolstoy draws up short, Though the social factors behind refusing to go further. are everywhere suggested, women's lives and characters Tolstoy a sense of woman's refuses to bring to full consciousness He refuses to as socially determined. character and situation and withdraws of his insights follow through on the implications Anna is at the most crucial places: and understanding sympathy Thus doomed and Levin able to live and find meaning. tragically for all his highly developed sense of man's character in relation of the warping and deadening weight of to work and position, with social convention on the life of a man, Tolstoy insists, to women, that "the trees grow clipped." regard which vary greatly among and function in society, Position are defined uniformly for women: they are wives men, Tolstoy's If a woman is not fortunate enough to marry, her and mothers. in is to do the same work, caring for others, one alternative has learned from her brush with someone else's Kitty family--as of such The humiliation and from knowing Varenka. spinsterhood is something Kitty understands and communicates to a situation Levin (p. 361), but while Tolstoy shows sympathy for Varenka's life is not easy--he approves of the social and plight--her Womenare another order of moral scheme that determines it, but closer to the animal and on the one hand, being, idolized on the other hand--never quite people, never underinstinctive that they have It is just barely realized stood from within. concern their men or inner lives at all, and their only thoughts about anything children. Only once does a woman philosophize
more general--Anna's pronouncements annihilating to show as desperately is concerned which Tolstoy remark about Koznyshev is without irony--"I Levin's not women" for him they are simply human beings, can believe himself that Tolstoy it is remarkable has when he himself "women," not "human beings," this trend. who belie at the end, mistaken. that feel (p. 507)--and they are several created

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Greene ii as in other nineteenth-century There is often in Tolstoy, a discrepancy novelists Dickens and Dostoevsky), (most notably, intends to do and what he between what the writer seemingly which may be traced to a discrepancy actually accomplishes, between what the mind can accept and approve and what the I am not the and renders artistically. imagination apprehends the to sense this in Tolstoy; in a way, I am following first who also expressed line of criticism begun by D. H. Lawrence, of Anna, on somewhat the same at Tolstoy's treatment indignation had to kill the the moralist grounds as my own--that Tolstoy so lovingly.9 the artist woman that Tolstoy had created Tolstoy of for this approach because himself provides justification he once said remarks he made about his way of writing: certain own and went their of their assumed lives that his characters them.10 of his initial intentions own ways, regardless regarding from how she evolved We know of the changes Anna went through, into a far more winning and an evil (and ugly) adulteress, knew how to accommodate to than Tolstoy character sympathetic his intital smashing her way through his moral scheme, plan, this creative for it. In some sense, process though destroyed is capable is true to his sense that feeling of apprehending a truth than reason, and we owe the greatness of his higher in this matter at least. to his consistency novels is open to this criticism Interestingly enough, Tolstoy critic The Soviet from a number of different Bychkov angles. of out the implications to follow him for his failure attacks about society.11 his perceptions Having exposed the decadence cut are criminally in which the upper classes of this society, he has his hero turn his back on these off from the people, in the country: salvation and find a purely personal problems element of the Slavonic of the importance "These considerations with what in comparison so insignificant seemed to him [Levin] to the solution The obvious was going on in his soul" (p. 736). of society is a radical reorganization portrays problems Tolstoy his imagination such as would actually grasps and occur; is the obvious to which revolution answer, problems presents these implicabalks short of confronting his understanding but for all his Levin can come up with, The best solution tions. of concord and is "an ideal thought and concern for the people, revolution universal brought about by a "bloodless brotherhood," the same structure, should retain but immense" (p. 314). Society be good (p. 85); should work harder, but everyone spend less, those who have should be kinder to their workers, landlords it more gently. power should exercise and ethical-On all grounds--personal, social, political, are and criticisms retreats. Though his perceptions Tolstoy into traditional simplisoffering values, he withdraws radical, in the He retreats, tic answers to complex, questions. far-ranging

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and changing to ancient face of a bewildering institusociety, both literally and figuratively, tions and attitudes; he are to the country. even railroads, retires cities, Factories, of slavophilism.12 as Turgenev says, the book reeks, pernicious; to the nineteenth that Russia is an exception insists Tolstoy he and rejects western methods and values (pp. 312-14); century or stop it at if he could, would undo the Industrial Revolution, bewilderment at changing the Russian borders. mother's Kitty's so is Levin's as well; customs is Tolstoy's bemoaning marriage and the order and values of the loss of the old agrarian to them (pp. and railroads to take people emergence of cities a The moral scheme of the book involves 595-96). 439-40; The epigraph, values. into conventional similar retreat of at the beginning repeated repay," "Vengeance is mine, I will that the of Book II, suggests Book I and again at the beginning is more than a social law Anna dies for violating law; it is in the actual and divine. absolute working of the (Although, and what we see her die for is social world of the novel, from of social retribution--the opinion pressure psychological like damnation, from within.) and guilt Salvation, without, and Christian also involves traditional values--love, faith, and feel to forgive The ability compassion nearly forgiveness. an and Levin's revelation at the end involves saves Karenin, love of God. Christian doctrine, entirely shows more than he knows, and turns On all levels, Tolstoy on all levels, of comprehension; his back just short imagination but the mind and range of problems, a dazzling renders complexity than on based more on desire solutions to conventional withdraws And we are of his genius. the full grasp and comprehension it is he who has because dissatisfied in feeling justified had he offered in the first raised these problems less, place: less. we would expect the same retreat It is not surprising, then, to encounter of of what he knows in his treatment from the implications of a changing the confusions here. Against women--especially as a bulwark. is posited of home and family the ideal society, and make of the to his country estate is to retire ideal Levin's But him (p. 86). did before as his parents home a whole world, and make the home a to the country to retire it is difficult for a while this Levin tries whole world if one is alone in it; and he fails his proposal, ience, after miserably. Kitty refuses of matrimony and in the blessing needs to believe Tolstoy The ideal needs to see woman as he does. depends on a children, to being happy in this suited of woman as a creature conception home and hearth, and raising children, tending bearing place, Thus when in the way. when needed and disappearing appearing women in the way he underto understand cannot afford Tolstoy his them as independent stands men, to confront beings; need. of the "nature" of women is dictated by conception of what it because is doomed precisely But this ideal not allow her human it does of the woman, because requires

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or acknowledge her existence as an independent being. status, There are numerous parallels between the marriage which is both the posited as the ideal and the other two relationships, on by Oblonsky and Dolly and the tragic compromise settled adultery of Anna and Vronsky, which cast a shadow on the ideal. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion, though Tolstoy himself seems to have avoided it, that the same elements which turn one to compromise and the other to tragedy will undermine the ideal. But even closer to home, there are weaknesses within the what we see happening to Kitty and Levin in marriage itself: the course it will after their marriage indicates the first days backin their ages, educations, There are differences take. which already, within the novel, and intelligence grounds, to the result in a parting of the ways, and point the direction end. No writer is sharper than Tolstoy in understanding men's to understand women--and at exposing male obtuseness inability in and self-serving. None of the male characters as deliberate because they see Anna Karenina understands women, precisely to women as it suits their purposes. Oblonsky's insensitivity so he thought" (p. 2) Dolly, is motivated by the the "simple, he assumes the right need not to confront his own immorality; man. an attractive because he is still to her forgiveness to the "mysterious" type-Oblonsky's tastes in women incline he the mystery of woman to her human reality--and preferring takes special pleasure in the mystery of fallen women (p. 148). Karenin's refusal to confront Anna as an independent being is to consider the human being within her, self-serving; similarly to question whether she is capable of loving another, would to love and understand force him to confront his own failure Events of Then there is Vronsky's failure. her (pp. 129-31). and amoral him of his simplistic the novel succeed in stripping of his the complexities code, leaving him no way of confronting life. Vronsky's problem is that he becomes involved with a and woman more complex and various than he could have predicted, to her nature causes him awkwardly and ineptly his insensitivity to destroy her--as he does his mare. He encounters a human code, with being who cannot be accounted for by his superficial that somewhat the same way, actually, its double standards--in
Poor Vronsky is in some sense a more tragic does. Tolstoy at the end, with his than Anna, since he is left victim living hers.13 is, actually, vengeance aching teeth; and Vronsky are unable--or Thus Karenin, Oblonsky, understand woman, to see her as a being who exists unwilling--to the only or desires. wishes (Significantly, apart from their not who does see women as "simply human beings, male character The attitudes of loving incapable women"--Koznyshev--is them,) willin illusion, are steeped of most of the male characters somehow, Levin is exempted from the however, blind; fully we see the same But when we look to Levin, rule. general as in the others-the same self-serving stereotypes confusions,

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Greene because Levin is the moral center of only the more disturbing, the book, and because we suspect that Tolstoy is not very clear about his confusions. Enraptured by Kitty's whole family, Levin is not very particular about which of the sisters he finally to the mystery of Like Oblonsky, Levin is attracted marries. not the fallen kind; in fact, he woman, though of the innocent, is repelled by fallen women, and cannot understand Oblonsky's him to Kitty is her childlike to them. What attracts attraction women are to him an "enchanting and holy ideal" (p. 26); quality (p. 87), "wrapped in some mystic poetic veil" behind which he perfection" and every possible feelings imagines "the loftiest His abhorrence of fallen women is belied by his 19-20). (pp. response to the actual "fallen woman" he meets toward the end of Like Vronsky, in his one encounter with Anna, a the novel. code is proved inadequate by the complexity of an simplistic actual woman--the same woman. However, this is something he gives no thought to in those final musings about the meaning of which, for all the love of humanity they show, are life, Again, we can see the same contradiction impersonal. strangely men, who loved mankind more than individual in Tolstoy himself, and also did not give much thought to what Anna's character and he states a rule actions implied for the scheme of the novel: but does not seem to she proves a remarkable exception, to which does not modify the rule. and certainly take notice, Kitty is posited as the ideal creature with whom Levin will retire to the country to live out his days in relative happiness-though he will not make the error of seeking all his fulfillment from her, as she will from him. He will have much else besides-work, God, philosophy; she, in turn, will have him and the children. The ideal she represents is best displayed in her behavior at Nicholas' deathbed. Levin is astonished at what she than she, that he knows knows; he knows he is more intelligent more about death philosophically, but she knows just what to do to make the dying man comfortable and cares for him with instinctive nurturunderstanding and compassion. Life-giving, to birth and death, she is one kind of being ing, administering and he is another; to separate and unequal spheres relegated of existence, one aspires to meaning and God and the other is bound to the perpetuation of the species. In de Beauvoir's while the other is terms, one aspires to "transcendence," confined to "immanence" (p. 58).
We know quite a bit about Kitty, from what we know of partly in soul as well as in blood, Sisters Dolly. they have the same same silly mother and condescending father--the parents--the same backgrounds and educations. more Kitty is presumably mature than Dolly when she marries; she has been through the with Vronsky, which has forced her into some soulexperience There is supposedly some volition and self-knowledge searching. in her choice of marriage as a life--but hers is hardly the of Levin or Anna, and her self-knowledge harrowing struggle is the one option consists that marriage only of understanding 115

Greene she accepts the second, Jilted by her first suitor, open to her. and moves from the home of her father to the home of her husband. her only musings concern She is nearly without inner life; husband and home. When her "mystic poetic veil" is lifted, Levin finds not the exalted nature he had expected, but a limited creature whose divide them: she reads no books, has preoccupations irrevocably no interests other than housekeeping, and her childlike delight in sweets and puddings has a limited charm, even to him. He is He blames this, impatient with her in a matter of months. on her education: "It was the fault of her bringing rightly, and frivolous" up, which was too superficial (p. 441). Tolstoy excuses it on the grounds that she is awaiting "the greatest event in a woman's life" (p. 640), "where at one and the same time she would be her husband's wife, the mistress of the house,
and a bearer and nurturer and educator of her children
.

. . she

Levin's mystical notion of knew it instinctively" (p. 442). is proved inadequate-a shock--again, a stereotype woman suffers his idea of woman to fit the human but rather than readjusting in the last pages, turning to other we see him instead, reality, to God and his work. Already within the novel Kitty matters, and Levin are growing apart, as she becomes immersed in motherAt the end of the hood and he continues his search for meaning. he turns into the meaning of life, novel, after his new insights to Kitty intending to communicate them, but seeing that she is silence occupied with arranging the nursery, keeps silent--a Nor would this be so serious a problem in which is eloquent. another novel, but so much depends upon marriage in Anna Karenina, where the ideal of marriage and the family is the one marriage, saving grace--and so much depends upon this particular this flaw is the ideal represented by Kitty and Levin--that serious indeed. between this The ideal is further undermined by parallels and the inevitable and the other two relationships, marriage will that the elements which doom two relationships implication between Kitty The main difference doom the third. ultimately and Dolly is Kitty's youth and luck in a husband (and it is since she would have chosen Vronsky). Dolly, musing on luck, to see Anna in the country, own sad lot the day she travels her that in one of the most poignant passages in the book, reflects even pretty little Kitty was looking older and worn after her
not be much to differentiate there will in ten years, pregnancy; this Given their them. prevent then, what will similarities, of the from becoming like the compromise marriage marriage of is in the moral stature The only real difference Oblonskys? a roll when one has Levin sees no reason to steal the husbands: fallen (p. 37), and sees no charm in mysterious ample dinner and mysterious women. But Kitty is still young, beautiful, disenchantment at this early and if Levin experiences herself, he feel when she is Dolly's what will age, worn out with stage, duller and narrower in her preoccupations, repeated pregnancies,

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Greene and fretted to nervous hysteria by numerous children? We can only imagine that even if Levin does hold to his monogamous he will spend more time out of the house, as Tolstoy ideals, The author finally himself did. fled, in the hope that death would "release us both from the dreadful atmosphere in which we have been living and to which I will not return."14 Thus Tolstoy offers as his solution to the problem of women the same benign paternalism he offers as a solution to the social problem: those who have power should exercise it more and be good. As landlords should be kinder to their gently workers, husbands should be nicer to their wives. Tolstoy presents ample evidence within the novel that this ideal will not work, but he does not modify the ideal to fit the reality. He refuses to apply what he knows about one marriage to an to the tragic plight of Anna understanding of the other--or herself. there are answers within the novel to the Although to the issues he raises, he fails questions he- poses, solutions to bring the strands of his thought together. iii Even more incriminating than the parallels between the ideal marriage of Levin and Kitty and the compromise of Oblonsky and Dolly are the parallels between the ideal marriage and the of Anna and Vronsky. The adulterous relationship tragic, between the first opening chapters of the second book alternate Kitty and Levin's wedding, honeymoon, days of each relationship; and first months of marriage are presented with Anna and to show a contrast between Vronsky's trip to Italy--presumably some striking similarities. the two, but actually revealing Just after their love is consummated, Anna tells Vronsky of her Remember that" dependence on him ("I have nothing but you left. Ip. 136]), and the story of their love is the working out of the of this dependence and its crushing weight. tragic implications in At first, they delight just after they escape to Italy, one another; then he, and even she, begins to be possessing restless. Vronsky needs something to do; he dabbles in art, she misses her son. fails at that; They return to Russia, but confined to one things are no better there, since they are still another's they company. Hoping to find freedom and fulfillment,
is the monotony of theirs boredom and confinement; find instead an increasingly an eternal stifling atmosphere--the honeymoon, of the man, and of the woman, the restlessness dependence on his desiie to escape. everything Concentrating finally she has no other means of Anna demands too much; Vronsky, in the face of her irrational fulfillment. Vronsky is helpless "I am growing passionate and and though she realizes, jealousy, on him, and he is growing away" centers My life egocentric. to make a whole Their attempt it. she cannot control (p. 690), fails. world of one another but Levin: "the like Anna, also has nothing But Kitty,

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and hopes, were concentrated all her desires whole of her life, for every bit shows potential on this one man" (p. 411). Kitty as Anna; her first and dependence as much possessiveness quarrel than he with Levin occurs when he stays away half an hour longer of anything other than had promised. Neither woman can conceive a vicarious fulfillment. After the third month of idleness, to get back to work, and blaming her Levin is irritable, chafing The scene in which they are sitting to do so. for his inability on to concentrate in the evening with Levin trying together on the back of his neck in order work, and Kitty concentrating she to get him to turn around and look at her, is brilliant; and he needs work but him and the house, of nothing thinks to make a world of But Kitty and Levin are allowed besides. have she will because the home and to find legitimate work, be stifled will whereas Vronsky and leave him alone, by babies she is not bearing a woman who is desperately unhappy because children. and raising and saving work Kitty is worthy of life Quite simply, and Anna is not wife and mother, she is a legitimate because to have no more decision she acts upon the conscious because the motive which Tolstoy Besides condemns, her desire children. dread of bringing she has an understandable to keep her looks, has amply himself into the world; children Tolstoy illegitimate But her in this world. of illegitimacy the horrors demonstrated off from the herself do not seem to count: motives cutting off from woman's she has cut herself of children, conception from life and finally, to life, real work and relationship only her and meaningless Anna is doomed to sterility activity; itself. an endeavors include, significantly, philanthropic (which as Vronsky's, of women) are as futile in the education interest and architecFrench novels Able to discuss but more unnatural. and versatalented a dazzlingly she has made of herself ture, and intellicondemns her learning but Tolstoy tile individual, her And in fact, gence along with her morphine and riding. a and charm does not constitute of her intelligence cultivation for but is only a strategy of character, fulfillment genuine Vronsky. keeping there is fear in to Tolstoy; Her beauty seems "devilish" her black, glittering of her unruly black hair, his descriptions He can be and unfailing shoulders elegance. her sculpted eyes, female but here is the fear of untrammeled kinder to poor Dolly, Sonata. in The Kreutzer which he was to acknowledge sexuality with becomes more deeply involved Tolstoy But, like Vronsky, turns and she herself this woman than he could have expected, like and, out to be deeper than he could have planned; Her with her. in dealing his codes prove inadequate Vronsky, at a glance--at to the other women is evident superiority second glance when he turns from Kitty to her without Vronsky's to approve of wishes and at ours. Although Tolstoy thought, at Anna's their meeting lot in the scene in which (after Dolly's to it is difficult home content, she returns house) country

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Greene approve of Dolly over Anna. Tolstoy blundered by creating a of woman, a woman who could not woman who belied his conceptions be accommodated by the moral scheme of the novel, and whose is a function of precisely those qualities which superiority make Levin superior--a refusal to sacrifice to convenintegrity tion and deceit, to be ground down by the society Tolstoy himself condemns. But precisely those qualities which enable Levin to live and find the light doom Anna to darkness and self-destruction. Insidious exist between the two characters which parallels undermine the very contrast Tolstoy means to suggest. She has the same determination to "find a purpose in my life," "not to deceive myself," to "love and live" (pp. 266-67), and the same determination to assume control of her life, to live according to the rule of love and the heart, refusing to accept the lot As a woman, she has a narrower range of society assigns her. whereas we see Levin as a lover, husband, and activities; parent, dealing with problems of death, God, and meaning, we see Anna only as a lover, wife, and mother. Her inner life is restricted; similarly again, as a woman, her thoughts concern the very last. Her options primarily men and children--until are more narrow; her choice is between one man and another, and it is her tragedy that she cannot conceive of another option. But she can hardly be blamed for her failure, since no fulfillis ever imagined for a woman in ment other than the vicarious the nineteenth century, even by a woman like George Eliot.15 Her rebellion can only be expressed by moving from the home of one man to the home of another--and either way, she is doomed. We see her at the beginning of the novel in a marriage to a man twenty years older than herself, into which she was manipuher life and lated when quite young, a marriage which stifles in the recurrent imagery of the novel, quenches and, vitality, The marriage is intolerable, the light in her. yet she cannot a moral law for which she must die, and leave without violating and forever put as a result of this choice, her light is finally is acute about the sense of dissimulation out. Though Tolstoy she feels with her husband, even before she meets Vronsky of (p. 95), he does not seem to take into account the sacrifice involved if she were to obey this "moral law"; dead integrity Whereas men have the choice between or alive, she cannot live.
in their or deception,with being crucial integrity integrity to obey or disobey. women have only the choice moral stature, of social in defiance for Levin lies convention, Though salvation but merely to her humanity, to achieve a woman must submit--not in a way, though Or perhaps one should say, to survive survive. terrible a grinding, is a submission, life submission, Dolly's Anna imagines as the mutilation of the individual as destructive le broyer, le le fer, in her nightmare ("il faut le battre, in life as in death. Astute terrible [p. 329])--as petrir" as Tolstoy double standard of society's critic was, what is this like Anna's brother, Men in this society, but the same standard?

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do not die for adultery; even women do not, if they keep it casual, like the Princess Tverskaya. Only Anna must die, because she does not keep her adultery casual, because she is a woman who refuses to submit and live the shallow, unfeeling life Tolstoy himself so thoroughly condemns. The contrast between Anna's route to death and Levin's to life is emphasized, again by alternating in the final episodes, Anna's final state of despair, hatred, alienation from pages. to humanity, and her final plunge into darkness, are contrasted Levin's new-found faith, and discovery of love as the light, law of life: whereas Anna must die for violating a divine law, Levin is allowed to live and fulfill a divine law. While Levin overhears the words which unlock the meaning of life from a peasant ("he lives for his soul and remembers God" [p. 719]), the peasant functions in Anna's nightmares as an image of nemesis her alienation from humanity is contrasted (pp. 324, 399, 695): to Levin's sense of community, and the peasant is thus an Yet it is to be noted that, in appropriate image of revenge. terms of the society Tolstoy has shown us in the novel, Anna's are correct, and the only way to deny them is to perceptions the society itself--which Levin does, by leaving it. The deny church bells do mask hate, as Lydia Ivanovna's spiritualism self-interest and confused hostility; the society we disguises have seen in the novel is not ruled by love, but by greed and Anna is more accurate, with her bright, competition. searching than Tolstoy can admit; light, again, she raises disturbing issues by no means resolved or refuted by Levin's final illumiwhich end the novel on a note of wish-fulfillment and nations, far from adequate to the questions which she, question-begging, or Tolstoy, has posed. But Tolstoy must kill her in a state of of these insights, thus despair which negates the validity of Levin's final perceptions. Levin affirming the validity to the country with an ideal of love and community--not retires to be with people, but to be alone. actually (What he says of his brother applies as well to him; it is the idea of the him more than their company or friendship.) people that attracts His salvation is finally not even communicated quite solitary, to his wife. What would Tolstoy have Anna do? What is she, a vital, energetic, and principled woman, who needs to live and love with
to do? Stay with her husband and die, or leave with integrity, other alternatives are suggested. Vronsky and die--no Naturally we do not expect but we do feel most tragic solutions, easy err by willfully some reasonably figures rejecting acceptable not that they are caught between two equally possibility, who are caught, It is victims and we alternatives. unacceptable do not experience Anna as a victim, but as a fighter, with a and determination to live. her to that (Contrast life-energy other nineteenth-century Emma Bovary: Anna never adulteress, submits to self-delusion; her clear-sightedness she retains in fact; and although through to the end and becomes clearer,

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Greene in the role she is she never loses herself desperately acting, It is Dolly who is a victim, it is Dolly who is playing.) yet allowed to live, whereas Anna is abandoned by her author, left in the dark to stumble off to tragedy, a fallen woman who has a moral law; because Tolstoy cannot confront the violated of her existence--that Anna is a human being equal implications to Levin, and if Levin can attain his humanity only by defying the same principles society, apply also to her. the same sense of There is, finally, the same irresolution, on the question of women in the novel incompleteness, disturbing as a whole as there is in the argument at the Oblonsky's dinner that women's rights are Pestov asserts party (pp. 353-56). related to their education--if women were educated differently they would be capable of more ("like the Negroes before emancithat women's desire for new responsibilities, pation")--and is understandable to Prince Shcherbatsky, incomprehensible because responsibilities Karenin, absorbed in his bring honor. is not in the mood to admit that women are capable grief, creatures. Oblonsky applies the question only to his latest mistress, wondering what will happen to a woman with no family; Dolly, suspecting which woman he is wondering about, is forced position regarding her own sex by jealousy into an uncharitable Kitty is (though she shows compassion for women elsewhere). able to understand something of what Pestov is saying because she has had to contemplate what it would be like to be single, dissolves into as she tells Levin. But the whole discussion at the old Prince's quips that women's hair is long and laughter their wits short, that if women were treated as equals, he should then feel discriminated against because he could not be admitted as a nurse at the foundlings' Underlying his humor is hospital. from a concept of woman and woman's function not very different issues are raised in this or Tolstoy's. Levin's, Disturbing no discussion--and they are the central issues of the novel--but no one follows through or makes connecone hears, no one learns, and nothing is resolved. tions, iv In some sense, of course, it is not Tolstoy who kills Anna, it may be argued that we cannot but Anna who kills herself:
for the world he portrays, hold Tolstoy responsible personally assumed Freud's nor for history. Though I have to some extent in characters and kills as one who creates view of the artist it is also true that, given the character fulfillment, fantasy her in, what he of Anna, given the circumstances Tolstoy places is the world he portrays shows happening would have happened; he would have falsified it. the picture, and had he altered true, on for a tract Anna Karenina, (Nor would we trade this novel, "on the of women, for the sake of having Tolstoy the subject if not for However, we may hold him responsible, side.") right in for consistency to his own premises: the world he portrays,

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of standards for women which he so completely condemns approving is false for men, he to his own insights, inconsistent within and guilty of the same confusion his own terms, and hypocrisy And he himself which he condemns in his society. basis provides for such criticisms, since he was to see these issues quite in The Kreutzer a work twelve years later, Sonata, differently more clearly in its lack of detachment, than which, corresponds sense of art. Anna Karenina to Freud's In this work, Tolstoy to a number of the problems returns of Anna Karenina: and woman. the family, adultery, marriage, the The author has learned since Anna, however; something each "like two convicts husband and wife of this story, hating Childout the ideal. other and chained have lived together,"16 but as a curse, and by ren are now no longer seen as a blessing, the ennui of being married to another this time, he understands In a strange whom one cannot talk to (p. 138). order of being, or an this work has the sound of a cry of anguish way, though asceticism which perof the fanatical and in spite invective, of woman's more understanding it offers vades it, considerably of education as a function and society. character and position of social forces on now understands better the effect Tolstoy of them: of which is men's expectations not the least women, is exactly what it has to be in view of our "Their education of The education about women. real, opinion general unfeigned, woman will always correspond to men's opinions about them ...
Woman is an instrument of enjoyment . . . and she knows this"

and law women in universities (p. 151). "They emancipate of enjoyment. to regard her as an instrument but continue courts, as such, and she to regard herself as she is taught, Teach her, Woman's posiwill (p. 152). being" always remain an inferior on women, a change in men's outlook tion "can only be changed by themselves" and women's way of regarding (p. 152). is clearly in Anna Karenina, The fear of woman, implied wife teaches After the doctor here. Pozdnyshev's expressed "She and she stops having children, methods of contraception a provocative kind of beauty which made people restdeveloped and excited She was in the full vigor of a well-fed less. Her appearance children. who is not bearing woman of thirty
a fresh, . She was like . . disturbed people. has been removed whose bridle nessed horse, harwell-fed, And I felt . ..

Since woman has been was frightened" this--and (p. 166). had been brought up in the as a sexual being--"she defined belief that there was only one thing in the world worthy of of freed from the necessity attention--love" (p. 167)--when A strong incentive she becomes dangerous. repeated pregnancies, is thus revealed. disabled her physically for keeping in which the a situation Once again, the author offers since it the act is more direct, woman is killed, though here, than her husband, who kills is the male protagonist, her, rather in which she must kill a situation who structures the novelist occurs at her most revealing But Tolstoy's herself. insight

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Greene deathbed. When, turning to Pozdnyshev, she asks, "Why did it all happen? Why?" he responds with a startling realization: "for the first time I forgot myself, my rights, my pride, and saw a human being within her. And so insignificant did all that had offended me, all my jealousy appear , . . that I wished to fall with my face to her hand and say, 'Forgive me!'" (p. 208). "the human Here is Tolstoy at his best, struggling to recognize being within her," though perhaps only capable of the attempt after she is dead. It was a tragically yet simple realization, of the nineteenth one beyond most inhabitants century, that women are people too.

NOTES Countess Lydia Ivanovna, Princess Elizabeth Fedorovna The latter, Tverskaya, and the Princess Myagkaya, respectively. as a woman who, the "enfant terrible," is most interesting ceased listening to her husband, understands having finally "If our husbands didn't talk we should see certain things: and it's my opinion that Karenin is things as they really are; Does this not make everything quite clear? simply stupid. ... Formerly, when I was told to consider him wise, I kept trying to, and thought I was stupid myself because I was unable to perceive his wisdom; but as soon as I said to myself, he's
stupid . . . it all became quite clear!" Anna Karenina: A

Norton Critical ed. George Gibian, trans. Aylmer Maude Edition, to (New York: Norton, 1970), p. 123. All further references Anna Karenina are to this edition and are included in the text. of the constraints the effects 2Virginia Woolf describes imposed by the narrowness of women's lives upon their writing. As she notes, the novels of the Brontes, Austen, and Eliot "were written by women without more experience of life than could Womenare trained enter the house of a respectable clergyman." but do not question of character and society, in the observation A Room of One's Own (1928; the world's basic assumptions. rpt. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1957), p. 73. Simone de Beauvoir lack metamakes similar observations: "They [women writers] they resonances," "they do not ask the world questions, physical The Second Sex (1949; do not expose its contradictions," rpt. New York: Bantam Books, 1970), ch. 25, "The Independent Woman," to The Second Sex are to this p. 669. All further references edition and are included in the text. 3Middlemarch (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), p. 612. "It might be A passage in Dombey and Son is also relevant: sometimes, to inquire what Nature is, and how men worthwhile, so work to change her and whether, in the enforced distortions Dickens is it is not natural to be unnatural." produced, 123

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of poverty about the effects and deprivation on the speculating and this inquiry human spirit, be extended to the "nature" might of woman, though he does not so extend it. (Middlesex: Penguin, For a discussion of the origins of the novel in 1975), p. 737. relation to bourgeois see lan Watt, The Rise of the society, Novel (Berkeley: of California 1957. University Press), See especially 562 ff. ch. 21, "Woman's Situation and Character,"

pp.

De Beauvoir cites Quoted in de Beauvoir, p. 224. as the only male novelist ever fully who has projected into the mind and situation of woman.

Stendhal himself

6Levin applies this term to Oblonsky's work, when he visits in Moscow: him in his office "How can you take it seriously?" "We're really overwhelmed with work," and Oblonsky replies, for that sort Levin answers, "Oh paper. Ah well! You've a gift of thing" (p. 18). 7See ch.
8

1,

"The Data of

Biology." to the to Old

types Age,"

the older women in this novel correspond In fact, in ch. 20, "From Maturity described by de Beauvoir pp. 451 ff.

of the Unconscious Martin Secker, (London: 1930), views on Anna Karenina are discussed by pp. 175-76. Lawrence's Gifford and Raymond Williams, "D. H. Lawrence and Tolstoy: Henry A Critical Critical 1, No. 3 (1959) and 2, Debate," Quarterly, Nos. 1 and 2 (1960). do things sometimes my heroes and heroines 10"Ingeneral, do what they which I would not have wanted them to do: they to the way things would have to do in real life, are, according to G. A. not just the way I would want them to be," Tolstoy Bases of Anna Karenina," "The Social in S. P. Bychkov, Rusanov, ed. V, V. Golubkov (Moscow, 1965), L. N. Tolstoy v shkole, pp. 159-77; p. 834. rpt. Norton Anna Karenina,
11

9 Fantasia

Ibid,

pp.

822-35. quoted in Henry Troyat, 1967), p. 390. are able to rise to of retribution. concerns Anna dies is the as "cruelly described on Vronsky. revenge which what actually

12 Tolstoy

to Polonsky, Letter May 13, 1875; (Garden City, N, Y,: Doubleday,

13There are those in the novel who and those who are caught in forgiveness in which of the state A final indication her death, on her face after expression she dies exacting vindictive" (p. 707); is hers is another way in That vengeance

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happens in the novel intentions, 14Letter, Oct.

diverges 29, 1910.

from Tolstoy's

professed p, 705. admits that substantive the life of a wife and was in her Oxford

Quoted in Troyat,

15In the finale of Middlemarch, George Eliot many who knew Dorothea "thought it a pity that so and rare a creature should have been absorbed into as another, and be only known in a certain circle But no one stated exactly what else that mother. power she ought rather have done" (p. 611). 16The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Tales Press, 1973), p. 163. University

(London:

125