Anna Karenina Study Guide PDF

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Intro:  Odd title bc book is 40% on Anna, 40% on Levin, 20% on Stiva (people make movies without Levin)  Important that this is a realist novel bc it allows us to get inside the heads of characters in a way that allows the author to show us the characters’ thinking and feeling while also commenting on it Characters Stiva (Stepan Arkadyevich Oblonsky)  Wakes up after good dream → someone who enjoys life o Doesn’t remember problems until he reaches out for gown and it’s not there  Has an affair-his fault but not to blame o His fault: he had affair o Not to blame: attractive, young man married to dried out woman→ only nature o Narrator slightly disagrees and uses irony o He doesn’t love his wife-thinks of her as mother of 5 living children and 2 dead ones → wife is no longer young and sexy o All the servants are on his side bc Dolly is the one breaking their routine bc she’s not on board, Dolly won’t see Stiva o Solution: needs someone like himself, someone who is good at persuading, manipulating ppl, to come in: ANNA KARENINA  People feel delighted when they meet him o He smiles at Dolly and she hates him for it→ hurts her pride  Thinks that he is a truthful man (affair?)  He doesn’t understand that being a good parent is the most important thing you can be → just wants to enjoy himself o Doesn’t think about his children at all-it’s a neglect-spends money instead of planning for children’s welfare o Lives in the moment completely to enjoy life - a good forgettery and no worry for consequences help this o “In spite of Stepan Arkadyevich’s efforts to be an attentive father and husband, he never could keep in his mind that he had a wife and children.” p.297  Always absorbed in the moment o When he’s in front of Levin he encourages Levin sincerely o When he’s in front of Vronsky he encourages Vronsky sincerely o When he’s in front of his wife he feels sincerely sorry, but the moment he is out of her presence he forgets about her  Amazing forgettery  Decides to go to the restaurant where he owes the most money o Money is not something you take respect to  “Ah, oysters” he is thoughtful about oysters, this is funny  Gives names of foods in russian when waiter wants to show off in french, reverse snobbery-by not showing off you show that you don’t need to prove yourself Dolly Oblonskaya (Shcherbatskaya)  Married to Stiva, Kitty’s sister, kind of a frumpy housewife  Represents the good in the world  Knows she can’t leave bc of the children-it’d be too complex and dangerous and she can’t stop loving Stiva but her dignity and pride has been so hurt

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At first is on Anna’s side but then is on Aleksey’s side Loses a child → little pink coffin Have i lived my life correctly, or would i have lived like Anna? Should I have been loved the grand, passionate way? Would that’ve been a good way to live? -Dolly on her way to Anna o tinsel (wealth, fashion, up to date ideas, concealing a hallowness behind it all → her life however difficult it is, she would nvr trade her life for Anna’s, it’s meaningful bc the work she does everyday is meaningful even if no one else recognizes it)

Kitty Shcherbatskaya  Dolly’s youngest sister  Views Anna as a role model at first-as a woman who is similar to herself but further along in development  Has to choose between Levin and Vronsky → Vronsky (unknowing that it’s just a game for him) bc she doesn’t recognize that deep friendship doesn’t make intimacy impossible → realizes that she made a terrible mistake but his feelings are deeply hurt o Kitty is a fundamentally good person  Capable of seeing complexity - great powers of observation o Realizes Anna’s lack of authenticity  Looks at herself from other ppl’s perspectives  Understands that it’s the small things that matter  Copies the women she meets at the spa bc she wants to live a meaningful life like them and she ends up hurting not helping - really looks up to Varenka o Good motives don’t guarantee good results Anna Karenina  Stiva’s sister  Charming, elegant aristocrat that everyone loves (similarly to Stiva) but wait theres more...  Has an 8 year old son and a husband  Comes into town bc Stiva has begged her to patch things up his marriage; Stiva’s agent o When she leaves her home, where all her regular habits are, she is vulnerable to do things that she would not normally do o Pretends to see it from Dolly’s point of view in order to reconcile the two → whole situation has a falsity to it; Dolly wonders if Anna even knows about it but that’s the sole reason she is there to help Stiva o Acts like the perfect listener - insincere af  Remembers the children’s names, illnesses, etc bc she knows that Dolly loves them most and attention to the children are a form of manipulation but not completely insincere - neglect for the children after could be because she’s distracted by Vronsky  Understanding but insincere - the way any good conman does - you have to say what will work without bothering to see if it’s true or not  “I saw nothing but him, and that the family was broken up. I felt sorry for him, but after talking to you, I see it as a woman, quite differently.” p.82  Distraction in solidarity

Only conceivable solution: Dolly will stay with Stiva but her pride will be soothed by Anna saying that it was “not an infidelity of the heart” and says that it won’t happen again  A romantic, believes in mystery, fatalism, romanticism → narcissism “It’s an evil omen.” p. 77 → why is it an omen for her? You’d have to be quite a narcissist  Full narcissist Looking in the mirror constantly Amount of time spent with her dress-maker  Spends 2 hrs on her last day here There are portraits of her up everywhere Her servant’s name is a nickname of Anna and her daughter’s name is Annie, becomes interested in a little English girl whose name is Hanna Wants to be doing everything in the English novel that she’s reading Turns down the divorce and her son bc she loves him like a narcissist does  Her feeling > her welfare  “Willful tendrils” of Anna’s hair Makes it seem like there’s this overwhelming life force and passion that is overcoming her efforts, looks so effortless→ makes the guys go crazy Anna’s not unaware of them Something “terrible and cruel about her charm”  She’s enchanting, demanding attention, it’s like people can’t help but to look at her → enchanting gets a negative connotation → misleading charm  She understands what’s happening with Vronsky-evil in inaction  Red bag p. 115, p. 867 (puts down bag before suicide)  Convinces herself that Alexei’s hard time with the language of feeling means that he can’t feel and he only cares about social status As long as it’s kept private it’s fine  Likes the social circle with high political officials but after she gets back switches to hang out with the fashionable ppl who like to go to ballets and operas and dress up and have affairs and cocktail parties and gossip Betsy-cousin of Vronsky-so she can also count on meeting Vronsky Goes to a place to meet Vronsky to tell him that she doesn’t want to meet him -what you would do if you did want to meet him but you didn’t want to say it to yourself  She controls everything socially Shuts down her husband when he wants to talk about her and Vronsky Shuts down Vronsky when he wants to talk  Aleksey Offers the divorce and the son and she refuses it: why? So she is not indebted to his generosity → she’s thinking about herself not the welfare of the son (doesn’t mean she doesn’t love her son, just means she’s hella narcissistic)  Can’t love her daugther bc Annie has all the unpleasant messes of a real child not the romanticized distant child the way a narcissist love, sees him for what the role he plays in her life 

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So different from Dolly where you love the child for the child’s sake  Child’s wellfare > child hating you  Anna could never think like that  Being up to style, is to imitate, to be fake  New habit: lowering her eyelids → not to see what’s around her  Has to take opium to make her sleep → there’s something really wrong with her life and she’s trying not to see it  Starts doing things to Vronksy like she would to Karenin-not communicating, blaming things for not being sensitive, heading into a real tailspin building momentum, gets more and more desperate → wish for suicide

Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin  Anna’s husband  Important diplomat  Thinks that he needs to read all the literature he can get his hands on even if he has no appreciation for it  He has trouble with the language of feeling bc he is used to government writing, natural bureaucrat and an idealist, he’s genuine and noble-thinks if only we could write the right regulations, ppl could be happy o He really does love and miss Anna but can’t really say it, she understands this about him→ she turns this into that he can’t feel bc it’s convenient to hurt someone when they can’t feel→ she dehumanizes him  Suffering terrible pangs of jealousy  Social blind- He is aware that he can’t read social cues - so he has to base his opinions on others o Sees that everyone thinks they’re flirting and he’s like oh, maybe they are flirting p. 161 disturbed and doesn’t know what to think  He feels immasculated by the whole situation  The person who ends up loving his enemy is Alexei  Was an orphan, was never able to talk to anyone bc his brother died, when he started govt work he met Anna and marries her in a trapped sort of way ( kind of like Vronsky and Kitty if Vronsky went ahead with the marriage)  When he wants to reach out he can’t say it  Is willing to give Anna literally everything she wants → so that Anna can marry Vronsky, is willing to plead guilty himself to a fictious charge of adultery bc the adulterers in Russian law is not allowed to remarry o He can’t remarry o He believes he will go to hell if he admits to adultery o Offers the divorce and the son and she refuses it: why?  So she is not indebted to his generosity → she’s thinking about herself not the welfare of the son (doesn’t mean she doesn’t love her son, just means she’s hella narcissistic)  One person that adores him: Countess Lydia Ivanova  Turns into the monster that Anna made him out to be Alexei Kirillovich Vronsky  Made it seem like he’d propose to Kitty, but ends up falling in love with Anna  His mother has had affairs, neglecting him, doesn’t even know his father, went to the military academy → in flirting with Kitty he doesn’t understand that it will hurt her when

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he drops her, he doesn’t understand about family at all, he means no harm, didn’t grow up with the good habits that you get from a good family but he can’t make up for his lack of childhood Gotta pay your gambling debts, but don’t have to pay your tailor Vronsky riding the mare and breaking its back - not him and Anna bc Anna controls him not him her Tries to kill himself after Aleksey has to uncover his face when Anna is dying p. 471 Starts being all fashionable in Italy and him and Anna start living a romantic kind of life → gets boring real quick → painting (inauthentic tho) and we see his inauthenticism contrasted with a real artist p. 529

Countess Vronsky  Alexei’s mother  Endless society affairs and now wants her son to lead the same life o Get’s Anna interested into her son-not bothered that Anna is a married woman, bc there’s an attractiveness in having an affair and Vronsky will get to move into good social circles from her and it will luster his reputation that he could have an affair with a person of such status Levin  Comes to the capital to propose to Kitty→ gets rejected  Stiva’s friend - but very different from Stiva  Grew up like an orphan-similar to Tolstoy-w close friend w Kitty’s dead brother and saw their family→ valued the whole Shcherbatskaya family → loved all the girls (Dolly, Natalie, Kitty) o In Kitty he sees the Shcherbatskaya culture in her the most  No social connections, doesn’t care what kind of wine he drinks, doesn’t know how to act at a dinner party  Always concerned about finding out the truth of things and helping people o Asks about the soul-what happens to us as meaningful creatures when we die? Asks this to academics and they’re just like we can’t answer this yet there’s no proper data etc. and Levin gets annoyed and stops listening p.31  Cares for children, family, and land - not things to exploit, these are obligations o Doesn’t like Stiva’s life and sometimes gets carried away when he shits on it o Represents intimate family love  Is shameful for almost neglecting his brother Nicolai-reminds himself to remember  A reformer who thinks he knows how to make Russian agriculture more productive→ better for him and the peasants and all of Russia o Imports english seed oats and expensive threshing machines → tries to organize peasants the way english agricultural peasants do→ doesn’t work bc the oats are a bit ruined and the threshing machine wouldn’t work, everywhere Levin looks it seems like theres something impeding him o If you do not ask then reforms fail and you don’t actually care about your reforms working - Levin wants to know why every time he makes things better, it doesn’t work o If you want to really make things better than you ask for criticism and how to improve  Stays with a prosperous peasant with a few successful reforms and a much more successful farm than Levin and it works bc they are conscious of a particular problem

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and an array of possible solutions that they know about (modern, old, etc) and they know the particular worker and the particular problem that will be used and tried to fix o Bottom-up works Talks to a peasant → Levin asks how do i know that one should live for God, for the meaningful, for the soul? How is it that we all know that tho we express it differently? → catalyst

Nicolai Levin  Levin’s brother  Got into a shit ton of trouble growing up  Communist Sergey Ivanovich  Levin’s half brother Varenka  Girl at the spa that Kitty starts modeling after Madame Stahl  Raised Varenka Countess Lydia Ivanova  Hypocritical, spiteful, petty Christian woman  Her idea of Christianity is a strange mystical experience  Has Aleksey into her clutches bc of his Christian forgiveness experiences  Nothing more evil than trying to get rid of all evil Pages  “Vengence is mine, I will repay.” o If you do wrong you will pay o Do not punish each other, leave punishment to God o Anna’s perspective: shes going to punish Vronsky for  Pg. 3 - “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”  Pg. 6 - Dolly is “merely a good mother”  Pg . 9-10 - Stiva’s views of the majority “changed them only when the majority changed them-or, more strictly speaking, they seemed to change of themselves within him.” o Marriage “forced him into lying and hypocrisy, which were so repulsive to his nature.”  Ironic but he’s thinking well Dolly knew about the affair so it’s not dishonest  Pg. 30 - “Is there a line to be drawn between psychological and physiological phenomena in man, and if so, where?” o Are humans just neurons firing? o If i am nothing but brain activity, then when i die there can be no soul, nothing would matter? -Levin o The professor says “That question we have no right to answer as yet.”  Pg. 41 - waiter flings tablecloth over a table that already has a tablecloth-it’s an art form, it’s part of the ceremony of eating o “Ah, oysters” - oysters are what Stiva becomes thoughtful about

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Pg. 44 - Stiva: “But that’s just the aim of civilization-to make everything a source of enjoyment.” Pg. 48 - Stiva: “But women, my boy, they’re the pivot everything turns upon. Things are in a bad way with me, very bad. And it’s all through women.” o Stiva loves talking about love and women Pg. 51 - Stiva explains Levin’s nature-”you want a man’s work, too, always to have a defined aim, and love and family life always to be undivided-and that’s not how it is. All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.” o Description-the world is complicated, love is not simple, Levin shouldn’t expect everything to be as it should be, that’s naive -Stiva is a realist pg . 56 - Kitty wonders about the nature of love o One she feels close, familiar, intimate - Levin (friendship love) o One she feels hazy, brilliant, glorious - Vronsky (superficial love) o Culture tells her that romance and drama is love → Vronsky P. 57 - Kitty starts seeing the world from Levin’s perspective→ where morality begins when you see how you look in others eyes P. 71 ordinary description that you look over “peasant with a sack over his shoulder” → all the elements that she dimly remembers which she fuses together with her guilt and this becomes charged → things that look supernatural have real prior causes because the way our memory works o Tolstoy makes the reader make the same mistakes that the characters make (noticing many things you do not know you are noticing) P. 76 - Vronksy gives 200 roubles to the widow of the guard that gets crushed by the train in order to appear gallant in front of Anna and she understands that P. 77 “It’s an evil omen.” -Anna o Part of her romantic views, fatalism P. 81 - “Is he capable of remorse?” -Dolly about Stiva to Anna o Anna says yes because she says what she needs to say without examining it close enough P. 83 - “But if it is repeated?” -Dolly “It cannot be, as I understand it…” -Anna o Ofc Stiva’s gonna cheat on her again o Lying is about deceiving, Dolly means will Stiva will cheat on her and Anna replies by saying that Stiva won’t cheat on her with that same mistress P. 92- Anna shows up to the ball n a hella sexy, expensive lacey black dress, there’s nothing simple or uncalculated about it but it is described as “simple, natural” - she shows up as a woman, not in Lilac like Kitty wanted him to o Artificial simplicity and naturalness, she wants to seem effortless P. 95 - Kitty watches Anna and Vronsky dancing, thinking they would be talking about life and meaningful things, and they are really talking about nothing which is so much more important o When Kitty asks Anna what she is doing, Anna pretends like nothing is happening and then Kitty persists, and Anna cuts her brutally by just turning away P. 96 - “there was something terrible and cruel about her charm.” o Anna’s charm is no longer natural P. 116 “it was distasteful to her to read, that is, to follow the reflection of other people’s lives. She had too great a desire to live herself.” o “Anna was feeling a desire to go with him to the estate, when she suddenly felt that he ought to feel ashamed and that she was ashamed of the same thing.”  Talking about Vronsky but thru the hero of the novel she’s reading

Keeps denying that she has anything to be ashamed of → feeling of shame was intensified and errotic excitement is intensified  Moral relativity P. 120 - Anna first sees her husband after getting off the train and thinks “Oh my God why do his ears look like that?” after being married to him for so long o After falling in love with Vronsky, she sees her husband differently o After feeling differently, they look physically different o Sign of new way of seeing her husband, it’s a cause  She wants to see her husband in a negative light so she can hurt him without her feeling guilty - adjusting perception P. 128 - “Anna smiled as people smile at the weakness of those they love.” when her husband reads the literature he does without actually appreciating or enjoying it P.163 - illogical and irrational life was staring Aleksey in the face while he needed to consider that maybe his wife didn’t love him - he was horrified bc he usually thinks of things bureaucratically P.165 - lists off the points he wants to say in a bureaucratic way - doesn’t actually say them tho - whatever you prepare for a difficult conversation usually doesn’t come out the way he wants it to bc the other person says things/does things that take you away from the plan -it’s the real world- you can’...