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Anna Karenina has two parallel plots rather than one story
line. Tolstoy builds his book on the personal quests of Anna
and Levin, his two principal characters. For much of the book,
their paths are separate; in fact, they don\'t meet until the end
of the book, when the differences between them are especially
glaring.
The book begins with a domestic crisis. Stiva, Anna\'s
brother, has been caught again cheating on his wife. Anna is
able to convince Dolly, her sister-in-law, to forgive Stiva.
At this point, the beautiful and charming Anna appears as a
kind and generous woman. She is married to Karenin, a
high-ranking government official. Relations between them seem
stable, polite if not passionate.
But then Anna meets, and falls in love with, the young Count
Vronsky. She tries to avoid him, but he will not give up. They
have a torrid affair, and she becomes pregnant. Unable to live
a life of duplicity, she confesses to her husband. Karenin
insists that Anna and he go on living as though nothing were
wrong. In that way, he says, they will not be criticized and
gossiped about by society, whose censure--or, worse,
ridicule--he fears. But Anna continues to see Vronsky on the
sly. When Karenin finds out, he investigates the ways in which
he might obtain a divorce.
Anna falls gravely ill after giving birth to Vronsky\'s
daughter. Karenin, however, at what he thinks is her deathbed,
forgives her everything. Anna, delirious with fever, swears
that all she wants is to be at peace with Karenin, that he is
the one she loves.
Vronsky, who is also at Anna\'s bedside, is humiliated in
Karenin\'s presence. Desperately afraid that Anna will soon die,
he shoots himself. But he doesn\'t die, and neither, at this
time, does Anna. Karenin realizes that he had, in fact, hoped
for her death. Confronted with her living reality, he is unable
to summon the forgiving feelings he felt so strongly at her
bedside. When Anna goes back to Vronsky, he refuses a divorce
and custody of their son, Seriozha. Anna then goes to Italy
with Vronsky.
Anna, who is now abandoned by her former friends and
acquaintances, finds herself condemned to a life of loneliness
and idleness. Vronsky, however, as an unmarried man, escapes
society\'s censure; he\'s free to come and go as he pleases, and
does so. Anna becomes increasingly neurotic and fearful. She
convinces herself that Vronsky loves someone else, when, in
fact, he is as much in love with her as ever. There is a lot of
tension beneath the surface and they quarrel frequently.
Anna, neither Vronsky\'s wife nor merely his mistress, depends
entirely on his love for her peace of mind. But this love isn\'t
enough for her; no one, at this point, could satisfy Anna\'s
emotional needs. After a particularly bitter argument with
Vronsky, she takes her life.
Parallel with, and in sharp contrast to, Anna\'s story is the
story of Levin and his pure love (in Tolstoy\'s view). Levin, a
wealthy landowner, comes to town to propose to Kitty, a
vivacious and attractive young woman, who is--or thinks she
is--in love with Vronsky. She refuses Levin. Vronsky, however,
once having met Anna, has no interest in any other woman.
Levin is heartbroken by Kitty\'s refusal. He returns to his
country estate and buries himself in work. He is writing a book
meant to revolutionize farming practices in Russia. He proposes
that landowners strike a 50-50 partnership with laborers. That
way, he reasons, the laborers will work harder because they will
have a real stake in the harvest, and everyone\'s profits will
rise.
Kitty, meanwhile, traumatized by Vronsky\'s rejection, falls
ill. Her family takes her to a German spa. There, she
gradually recovers and admits that it was Levin she loved all
along.
Kitty and Levin meet sometime later. Levin proposes again,
and Kitty accepts. They marry and later have a son.
Through his happiness with Kitty, Levin is able gradually to
come to terms with his lifelong struggle to believe in God.
Kitty helps Levin to deal with the death of his brother Nicholas
and his horror of death in general.
Anna\'s and Levin\'s stories veer close to each other at times
through such major characters as Stiva, Anna\'s brother, and
Vronsky, who was once Levin\'s rival for Kitty.
Thematically, the quests of Anna and Levin are contrasted.
Anna\'s is a search for personal fulfillment through romantic
love; Levin\'s is one of spiritual fulfillment through marriage,
family, and hard work. Through their stories, Tolstoy attempts
to evaluate Russia\'s past and present and to express his vision
for its future.
Many Russian novels have large numbers of characters, and
Anna Karenina is no exception. It can be difficult to keep them
all straight, especially since each Russian uses three names. A
Russian has a given name (such as Anna or Stepan); a middle name
that refers to the father (patronymic), the suffix of which
means either \"son of\" or \"daughter of\" (for example, Anna
Arkadyevna and Stepan Arkadyevich, children of Arkady); and a
family name, which also has masculine and feminine forms (Anna
Arkadyevna Oblonskaya and Stepan Arkadyevich Oblonsky). When a
woman marries, she takes the feminine form of her husband\'s
family name (Anna Arkadyevna Karenina, wife of Karenin). Common
masculine suffixes are -ovich, -ievich,--ich, and -ych. Common
feminine suffixes are -a,--ovna, -ievna, and--ishna. (Not all
English translations include such suffixes. For instance, a
popular translation by Rosemary Edmonds has the title Anna
Karenin [New York: Penguin, 1954]). Russians also have
nicknames (such as Stiva.)
The seven principal characters in Anna Karenina are Anna
herself, Levin, Vronsky, Stiva (Stepan), Kitty, Dolly, and
Karenin. Each of them is considered below in an individual
profile. To help you keep track of the others, here is a list
of the major and more important minor characters in Anna
Karenina:
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