Rereading Anna Karenina: Parts 4 and 5

1/ In Part 4 chapter 12, in the dinner scene, Tolstoy has a minor character called Pestsov say “inequality in marriage lay in the fact that a wife’s infidelity and a husband’s infidelity were not punished equally, either by the law or by public opinion”. Tolstoy himself demonstrates it in the novel—through Anna’s infidelity and her brother Stepan’s infidelity. He also shows later that society’s doors continue to be open for Vronsky but closed to Anna. 

The dinner scene is very good: there are a few debates, and again Tolstoy has voices and counter-voices, as in Shakespeare, and conveys everyone’s personality. Oblonsky (Stepan Arkadyich) for example is the genial host, who gets all the different guests to mingle (which his wife hasn’t been able to do before his late arrival) and who always knows when to intervene when the conversation touches a sore point of anyone present. Sergey Ivanovich Koznyshev (Levin’s half-brother) is intellectual and has his own opinions, but has the talent to tell a joke to make everyone laugh and end a serious discussion. 

In the same room are Levin and Kitty, but they’re in their own world.

“… he felt that he and Kitty were the only people who existed, not just in that room, but in the whole world. He felt he was at such a high altitude that his head was spinning, while somewhere far away down below were all those nice, good Karenins, Oblonskys, and the rest of the world.” (P.4, ch.9) 

That is like Anna and Vronsky in the ball scene: 

“[Kitty] could see they felt they were on their own in the crowded ballroom.” (P.1, ch.13)

(Translated by Rosamund Bartlett)

The story moves seamlessly between different groups of characters in the same room, and different moods—it is magnificent, especially when Tolstoy moves from Karenin and Dolly, a scene of suffering and sympathy, to the scene of Levin and Kitty, who feel they’re the happiest in the world. The Anna strand and the Levin strand act as counterpoint to each other and it’s most obvious in these chapters: as Karenin is planning for divorce, Levin gets engaged to Kitty.

2/ Tolstoy is brutally “honest” about Karenin’s thoughts on the way to Anna after her “Am dying” telegram: 

“He could not think about it, because when he imagined what might happen, he could not dispel the idea that her death would at one stroke undo all the difficulty of his position. Bakers, closed-up shops, night cabbies, street-cleaners sweeping the pavements flashed in front of his eyes, and he observed all of this, trying to stifle within himself the thought of what awaited him and what he dared not wish for, but nevertheless did wish for.” (P.4, ch.17) 

Uncertain about whether Anna’s request is genuine or a trick, but not wanting others to condemn him in case she dies, Karenin hurries home, and gets told that she safely gave birth the day before.

“Alexey Alexandrovich stopped and turned pale. He now clearly understood how intensely he had wanted her to die.

‘And how is she?’

Korney came running down the stairs in his morning apron.

‘Very poorly,’ he answered. ‘There was a doctors’ consultation yesterday, and the doctor is here now.’

‘Take my things,’ said Alexey Alexandrovich, and feeling slightly relieved at the news that there was still a hope she might die, he went into the hall.” (ibid.) 

This is a man who talks about God and religion. This is a man who talks about love and duty and forgiveness. 

But everything changes when Karenin sees Anna, as she’s close to death. There is something here, something I can’t explain. Anna and Karenin and Vronsky seem to enter a heightened state of consciousness, and do things they themselves don’t understand and can’t rationalise. It is sublime. 

3/ Part 4 is where Karenin becomes more magnanimous and dignified whilst Anna and Vronsky appear small and selfish. When I read Anna Karenina the first time, I thought this was Tolstoy siding with Karenin. 

However, it’s more nuanced and complex. As written above, on the way home, Karenin wishes Anna to die. 

Now look at this little moment of Karenin, when Oblonsky persuades him to agree to a divorce:

“And turning away so that his brother-in-law could not see him, he sat down on a chair by the window. He felt bitter, he felt ashamed; but alongside this bitterness and shame he felt joy and awe at his supreme humility.” (P.4, ch.22) 

He feels good about his own goodness—that doesn’t sound truly good, does it? 

At the same time, Tolstoy includes two significant things for the reader to see: firstly, Anna is hopelessly stuck and even if she can obtain the divorce, the ecclesiastical law wouldn’t allow her to marry again whilst the ex-husband is alive, and she would be ruined; secondly, Oblonsky points out that Karenin is 20 years older than Anna and they married without love, so their marriage is nothing like the marriage between Levin and Kitty. Regardless of his own views and opinions, Tolstoy presents the full picture, showing all the facts and nuances and complexities, and we can judge for ourselves. 

4/ The chapters leading up to the Levin-Kitty engagement and the scene of the engagement itself filled me with such joy and happiness, as though they’re real people. Tolstoy, I think, can write about all kinds of human experience and all kinds of emotions, and he does it better than any other novelist. 

5/ I’ve noted the subtle way Tolstoy draws the 2 main strands together. 

Levin and Karenin both react to an emotional blow (Kitty’s rejection and Anna’s affair respectively) by burying themselves in their work. 

Kitty goes to Europe (Germany) during her illness, Anna and Vronsky go to Europe (Italy) after their near-death experience. 

Anna gives birth, later Kitty also gives birth. 

In Part 4, the narrative moves between Karenin preparing for divorce and Levin getting engaged to Kitty.  

In Part 5, the story moves from the wedding of Levin and Kitty, to the “honeymoon” of Anna and Vronsky in Italy, then from the ennui and dissatisfaction of Vronsky and Anna, it moves to the disenchantment at the beginning of Levin and Kitty’s marriage. 

6/ Speaking of “honeymoon”, I can’t help noticing that Tolstoy doesn’t seem to allow Anna sexual pleasure. The first time she and Vronsky have sex, it doesn’t seem that enjoyable—she is filled with shame and guilt. If she enjoys it at other times, Tolstoy doesn’t mention it. 

Contrast that with the way Flaubert writes Emma Bovary or Zola writes Thérèse Raquin: we know Emma and Thérèse love sex (or maybe they’re just French).

This is a remark more than a complaint—not writing about women enjoying sex seems to be the norm in 19th century literature.  

(By the way, in Shakespeare there are a few women that like/want sex: Emilia from Othello, Helena from All’s Well That Ends Well, Lady Percy from Henry IV, Part 1, etc.) 

7/ See what Levin says to Oblonsky at the beginning of the novel:   

“‘…I have an aversion to fallen women. You are afraid of spiders but I’m afraid of these vile creatures. You probably haven’t studied spiders, after all, and don’t know their manners and customs: it’s the same for me.’” (P.1, ch.11) 

Now look at this passage about Levin, after he and Kitty agree to visit his dying brother Nikolay, who is taken care of by his prostitute girlfriend Marya Nikolayevna: 

“Deep down he even more seriously disagreed with the idea that she need not have anything to do with that woman who was with his brother, and he thought with horror of all the possible conflicts that might arise. The mere thought of his wife, his Kitty, being in the same room as a whore made him shudder with disgust and horror.” (P.5, ch.16)

In such moments, I find Levin unlikable, even obnoxious, especially considering what he has done sexually. I do remember from the last read, however, that later on Levin would meet Anna and rethink his view on “fallen women”. It’s similar to the way Tolstoy set out to write a novel to condemn adultery, but gradually came to love and have sympathy for his heroine.

If Tolstoy puts himself in Levin, it’s not very flattering. When they meet the dying Nikolay, Levin appears judgmental, ineffectual, and helpless, next to the kind, caring, and sufficient Kitty. Tolstoy doesn’t shy away from depicting the ugliness of illness and death, and the feeling of disgust and terror in Levin. 

8/ The Death chapter is magnificent. It affects me a lot more strongly now than last time. 

“The sight of his brother and the proximity of death revived in Levin’s heart that feeling of horror at the combined unfathomability, proximity, and inevitability of death which had overwhelmed him that autumn evening when his brother came to visit. This feeling was now even stronger than before, while he felt even less capable of understanding the meaning of death, and its inevitability seemed even more ghastly; but now, thanks to his wife being close by, that feeling did not reduce him to despair; he felt the need for life and love in spite of death. He felt that love had saved him from despair, and that this love had become even stronger and purer in the face of despair.” (P.5, ch.20) 

9/ After Nikolay’s death, Tolstoy returns to Karenin.

When I read Middlemarch a few years ago, I remember struggling with it for a while because of my clash with George Eliot, and it was chapter 42 that convinced me it was a masterpiece. Before this chapter, Casaubon is only seen from outside and from afar—he is seen by other characters as dry, difficult, demanding, emotionless, a man whose blood is “all semicolons and parentheses”. In chapter 42, George Eliot depicts Casaubon from the inside and makes the reader see him in a completely different light: he is also vulnerable and lonely and helpless, he is human.

Tolstoy doesn’t quite do the same thing because the stiff, duty-bound, passionless, self-righteous, and unlovable Karenin is already depicted with sympathy and compassion—we have seen him suffer. But Tolstoy goes further, and makes us realise the man’s utter loneliness and helplessness: 

“His despair was increased still further by the awareness that he was completely alone in his grief. It was not just that he did not have a single person in all of Petersburg to whom he could talk about everything he was going through, who might pity him, not as a senior official, or as a member of society, but simply as a suffering human being; he did not have such a person anywhere.” (P.5, ch.21) 

One common failure of many adaptations of Anna Karenina is that Karenin is depicted as a cold monster and we can’t really sympathise with him (though we probably have old Hollywood code to blame—for Anna to get sympathy, her husband has to be completely unsympathetic). The 2012 film tries to subvert that but ends up swinging too far the other way—not only does Karenin not seem cold and stiff but he’s also too good-looking (it’s Jude Law). One doesn’t think Anna would feel suffocated in the marriage, and can’t really sympathise with her (Keira Knightley) jumping into an affair that would cause her downfall.

To go back to the novel, in this passage I’ve spotted a continuity error: earlier in the book, Tolstoy writes that Karenin mentions sending Seryozha to his sister, and now says that he only has brothers. The sister isn’t mentioned anywhere else so that’s probably from an earlier draft of the book. 

10/ The scene of Anna secretly meeting her son Seryozha on his birthday is such a powerful scene. Tolstoy writes so well the point of view of a 9-year-old boy and the point of a view of a mother.

The scene at the opera is also magnificent. 

One of the things I forgot from the last reading is that in Anna Karenina, Tolstoy (almost) always narrates and describes from one character’s perspective for a stretch of time, usually a scene or a sequence, then switches to another character’s perspective. Think of the descriptions in Balzac’s Eugenie Grandet for example, especially the long description of the streets and buildings at the beginning of the book: it is objective (seen by the author), whereas the description in Anna Karenina is subjective (seen by a character). The same technique has been used by Flaubert in Madame Bovary.

Thus Tolstoy enters all of his characters’ minds, and he can inhabit them all: even a child’s or a dog’s. 

Wonderful novel.