Work record

Anna Karenina

Name: Anna Karenina
Author: Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy

1875–1877 (serial); 1878 (book) · 19th Century · Novel · Russian

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Abstract

Written: Written 1873–1877; serialized 1875–1877; book edition 1878
Setting: The early 1870s; Moscow, St. Petersburg and Levin's country estate, Russia; briefly Italy
Author: Leo Tolstoy; trans. Constance Garnett
Country: Russia
Language: Russian
Genre: Realist novel
Form: Novel in eight parts, third-person narration
Recommended: Grades 11–12 (Mature content: adultery, a suicide and a near-fatal childbirth; very long novel.)

Background. Tolstoy began the book in 1873, a few years after finishing War and Peace, and Katkov's Russian Messenger published it in installments until a quarrel over the Balkan war led the author to print the final part himself.

Plot. A brilliant Petersburg wife meets a young officer at a Moscow station and leaves her cold, correct husband and beloved son for him. Refused a divorce and shunned by the fashionable world, she grows lonely, jealous and desperate, and at last ends her life on the railway tracks. Meanwhile a shy, earnest landowner is rejected, then accepted, by the girl he loves, and their marriage, his farm work and the deaths and births around him lead him toward belief.

Ideas. Twin narratives contrast passion that defies marriage with a union that deepens over time, and set the judgments of society against the scriptural epigraph reserving vengeance to God. Questions of land reform, faith and the purpose of life run through the rural chapters.

Reception. Admired by Dostoevsky and later by Nabokov and countless readers, the book is often named the greatest novel ever written. Garnett's 1901 English version, the first widely read one, remains in print alongside newer translations. English versions began to appear in the 1880s, and Garnett's of 1901 long remained the standard one.

Main characters

Anna Karenina: Wife of a St. Petersburg official
Count Vronsky: Cavalry officer, Anna's lover
Alexei Karenin: Anna's husband, a senior official
Konstantin Levin: Landowner and seeker
Kitty Shcherbatskaya: Young woman who marries Levin

Portrait of Leo Tolstoy (23 May 1908). Source · Public domain

Summary

Anna Karenina is Leo Tolstoy's second great novel, serialized in The Russian Messenger from 1875 to 1877 and published as a book in 1878. It sets two stories side by side. In one, Anna Arkadyevna Karenina, the wife of a senior government official in St. Petersburg, falls in love with Count Alexei Vronsky, a wealthy cavalry officer. In the other, Konstantin Levin, a landowner who lives on his estate, courts Kitty Shcherbatskaya, marries her and searches for the meaning of his life. The novel opens in Moscow, where Anna has come to reconcile her brother Stepan Oblonsky with his wife Dolly after his affair with a governess. At the railway station she meets Vronsky, whom Kitty, Dolly's younger sister, hopes to marry. Kitty refuses Levin's proposal for Vronsky's sake, but Vronsky follows Anna back to St. Petersburg. Their affair becomes known to society and to Anna's husband, Alexei Karenin, a correct and self-controlled man who first insists on appearances. Anna nearly dies giving birth to Vronsky's daughter; Karenin, moved, forgives her, and Vronsky attempts suicide. Anna then leaves her husband and her son Seryozha to travel abroad with Vronsky, but Karenin refuses a divorce, and on her return to Russia she finds herself shut out of the society that once admired her. Isolated on Vronsky's estate and in Moscow, jealous and dependent on morphine to sleep, she becomes convinced that his love is fading. In the seventh part she throws herself under a train. Levin's story runs alongside. After Kitty recovers from her disappointment, the two marry, and Levin struggles with farm management, the peasants, his brother Nikolai's death and the birth of his son. Troubled by the thought of death and unable to believe, he finds in the last part a kind of faith through a peasant's remark that one should live for God and the soul. The book's epigraph, 'Vengeance is mine; I will repay', has been read in many ways. Tolstoy wrote the novel in the years before the spiritual crisis he described in A Confession, and its contrast between the Anna and Levin plots reflects his concern with marriage, family and the search for meaning. Dostoevsky and Nabokov were among its admirers, and it is widely regarded as one of the greatest novels ever written. Constance Garnett's translation of 1901 introduced it to many English readers.

Plot or Argument

Parts One and Two
Anna travels to Moscow to mend her brother's marriage and meets Vronsky; Kitty refuses Levin; Vronsky pursues Anna in St. Petersburg, and their affair begins. At the officers' steeplechase Vronsky's fall reveals Anna's feelings to her husband.
Parts Three and Four
Levin works on his estate; Karenin refuses a scandal and demands appearances; Anna nearly dies in childbirth and Karenin forgives her; Vronsky attempts suicide; Levin and Kitty are reconciled and engaged.
Parts Five and Six
Levin and Kitty marry and Levin's brother Nikolai dies; Anna leaves with Vronsky for Italy, returns, visits her son secretly on his birthday and is humiliated at the opera; at Vronsky's estate she grows isolated and dependent.
Parts Seven and Eight
Kitty gives birth in Moscow; Anna's jealousy deepens and she throws herself under a train; Vronsky leaves to fight in the Serbian war; Levin, through a peasant's words, finds a faith that gives his life meaning.

Characters

Anna Arkadyevna Karenina, protagonist
Wife of a high official, intelligent and warm, whose love for Vronsky leads her outside society.
Count Alexei Kirillovich Vronsky, major
Wealthy cavalry officer who becomes Anna's lover.
Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin, major
Anna's husband, a senior official devoted to propriety and duty.
Konstantin Dmitrievich Levin, protagonist
Landowner and seeker who marries Kitty and searches for meaning; often seen as a self-portrait of Tolstoy.
Ekaterina (Kitty) Shcherbatskaya, major
Dolly's young sister, who first hopes to marry Vronsky and later marries Levin.
Stepan Arkadyevich (Stiva) Oblonsky, major
Anna's charming, careless brother, whose affair opens the novel.
Darya Alexandrovna (Dolly) Oblonskaya, major
Stiva's long-suffering wife and Kitty's sister.
Seryozha, minor
Anna's son, separated from her when she leaves Karenin.

Lessons

Two stories in counterpoint
Tolstoy alternates Anna's story with Levin's. Readers can compare how each character seeks happiness and what each finds.
- How does the novel connect the Anna and Levin plots?
- Why might Tolstoy have chosen to end the book with Levin rather than Anna?
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Society and judgment
Anna is excluded from society while men who behave similarly are not. The novel shows the double standard without simply excusing or condemning its characters.
- How do different characters respond to Anna after she leaves Karenin?
- Does Tolstoy invite the reader to judge Anna?
Related across the library
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The search for meaning
Levin's doubts about death and faith end in a simple insight rather than an argument. Students can consider how meaning is found in ordinary work and family life.
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- Is Levin's conclusion convincing?
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Context

The novel is set in the Russia of the early 1870s, after the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, when landowners like Levin were adapting to hired labor, railways were transforming travel, and educated society debated reform, the zemstvo councils and the Slavic cause in the Balkans. Divorce in Russia required church proceedings and the admission of adultery by one party.

Composition

Tolstoy began the novel in 1873 and published it in installments in Mikhail Katkov's journal The Russian Messenger from 1875 to 1877. Katkov refused to print the eighth part because of its criticism of Russian volunteers in the Serbian war, and Tolstoy issued it separately before the full book appeared in 1878. Constance Garnett's English translation was published by Heinemann in 1901.

Reception

Readers followed the serial closely, and Dostoevsky praised the novel as a work without equal in European literature of its time. It has been translated many times, adapted for stage, film and ballet, and is regularly named among the greatest novels ever written.

Love Desire Marriage Family Class / Society Faith / Religion Doubt Meaning Death / Mortality Guilt Sin

Comparisons

War and Peace
Tolstoy's earlier epic also combines family histories with a search for meaning, but on the scale of the Napoleonic wars.
The Death of Ivan Ilyich
Tolstoy's later novella returns to the fear of death that troubles Levin, in the life of a conventional official.
Middlemarch
George Eliot's novel likewise sets several marriages side by side to study society, vocation and moral choice.
The Scarlet Letter
Hawthorne treats adultery and public judgment in a Puritan community rather than aristocratic Russia.
Ethan Frome
Wharton's short novel of a loveless marriage and a forbidden attachment ends, like Anna's story, in a desperate act.
Crime and Punishment
Dostoevsky's novel, published a decade earlier, also traces a crisis of conscience to a final turn toward faith.
Doctor Zhivago
Pasternak's novel continues the Russian tradition of love outside marriage set against a changing society, in the revolutionary era.

Quotes

“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

— Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, Part One, Chapter 1, trans. Constance Garnett (1901).Quote card

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“but my life now, my whole life apart from anything that can happen to me, every minute of it is no more meaningless, as it was before, but it has the positive meaning of goodness, which I have the power to put into it.”

— Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, Part Eight, Chapter 19, trans. Constance Garnett (1901).Quote card

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For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

The parallels and contrasts between Anna's and Levin's stories.
Railways and trains as images.
How society's treatment of Anna differs from its treatment of Vronsky and Stiva.
Levin's thoughts about death and faith.

Key terms and names

Zemstvo: Elected local council in Russian provinces after 1864.
Emancipation of the serfs: The 1861 reform that freed Russian peasants from bondage to landowners.
Epigraph: A quotation at the head of a book; here 'Vengeance is mine; I will repay'.
Parallel plot: A second storyline that mirrors or contrasts with the main one.
Society (le monde): The aristocratic circle of St. Petersburg whose opinion governs Anna's fate.

Seminar Questions

Comprehension Why does Anna come to Moscow at the start of the novel?
Comprehension What prevents Anna from obtaining a divorce?
Interpretation What does the epigraph 'Vengeance is mine; I will repay' suggest about how the novel views judgment?
Interpretation How do Levin's experiences of birth and death change him?
Big Question Can personal happiness justify breaking a commitment to others?
Big Question Where does Levin find meaning, and is it available to everyone?

Faith Connections

Romans 12:19 (Scripture)
'Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord': the source of the novel's epigraph, which reserves final judgment to God.
John 8:3-11 (Scripture)
Christ's response to the woman taken in adultery invites comparison with the way society judges Anna.
Leo Tolstoy, A Confession (Great Conversation)
Tolstoy's account of his own crisis of meaning closely parallels Levin's search.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: By pairing a love that defies marriage with a marriage that grows into love and faith, the novel suggests that meaning is found less in passion than in family, work and a life lived for something beyond oneself.

Rhetorical device: counterpoint. Chapters alternate between Anna's and Levin's stories so that each comments on the other.

Debate: Resolved: Anna is more a victim of her society than of her own choices.

Memory Work

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Part One, Chapter 1, trans. Constance Garnett (1901). The opening sentence is one of the most quoted first lines in fiction.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Analyze how Tolstoy uses the Levin plot to frame Anna's story.

Comparison with The Scarlet Letter: Compare how Hester Prynne and Anna Karenina are treated by their communities, and what each novel suggests about judgment.

Medical Lens

The novel depicts Anna's puerperal fever after childbirth, her growing dependence on morphine to sleep, and her suicide; Levin's brother Nikolai dies of consumption, a deathbed scene that contrasts the doctors' helplessness with Kitty's nursing.

Childbirth Maternal Addiction Suicide Tuberculosis Consumption Death Dying

Part Four
Anna's dangerous illness after the birth of her daughter, during which she asks Karenin's forgiveness.
Childbirth Maternal
Part Five
Nikolai Levin's death from consumption in a provincial hotel, nursed by Kitty.
Tuberculosis Consumption Death Dying
Part Seven
Anna's morphine use and the despairing state of mind that precedes her death at the railway station.
Addiction Suicide

Creative Prompts

Essay
Compare a scene from Anna's story with a scene from Levin's. What does placing them side by side reveal?
Dialogue
Write a conversation between Dolly and Kitty after Anna has left Karenin, in which they disagree about her.
Classroom
Trace the image of the railway through the novel, from the station in Part One to the last parts, and discuss what it represents.