Anna Karenina
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Did anyone else absolutely loathe Anna?
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Espen
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rated it 2 stars
Jan 04, 2013 04:27PM
One of the very few books I've put down. Suffocating. I am more of a Dostojevskij-person.
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Espen, I don't blame you one bit. If I hadn't felt a professional obligation (it's bad if your students out-read you!) I would have done exactly the same thing!
Remember (with apologies to the good fathers out there) that "Anna" did not choose to leave her child; TOLSTOY decided to have her do it. Do MEN think it is just one more bad thing in the world to walk out on their kid? Read the research. All of Anna's thinking was done for her by Tolstoy. And I do think it is intended (by him) to show how utterly depraved she had become, and I agree with you that leaving a kid is the ultimate sleaze.
I was disappointed by the end of the book...(view spoiler) She was selfish and all-together unlikeable.
I cannot have sympathy for a mother who would choose her lover over her child. Yes, this was Tolstoy's decision, but I cannot let it go that she left her child to be with her lover. I'm a mother, and nothing on earth (or beyond) could get me to give up my children.
I absolutely sympathize with Anna. As D. has mentioned above, she was a character created by Tolstoy to preach his moral code. He wanted to show people that 'immoral' women are unlovable, treacherous. On the contrary, upon finishing this book, after Tolstoy threw Anna under the bus, I had nothing but sympathy for her and all women who were/are subjected to a life betrothed. How simple it is for people to judge her, although I'd venture to guess that those judging her have had the freedom to procreate with whomever they choose.
I started off wanting to like Anna. After all, the book is named after her. But as soon as she started cheating on her husband and then whining and complaining about her messed up life, I lost all sympathy for her and started really dis-liking her. I also didn't care much for Vronsky.
Can I comment on this post even though it's old? I'm not so sure that Tolstoy liked Anna either. It's clear that Anna is loved by others, but it's usually because she is beautiful and charismatic.I think that to Tolstoy, Anna is a woman who has strayed from her traditional female role. She reads books on "masculine" topics like architecture, and someone (his brother?) has to keep Levin from scoffing at the book she's writing by assuring him that it's "only" a children's book. She shows little interest in her own baby, and Dolly notices that Vronsky is the one who handles the domestic details in their household. Where in the marriage of Kitty and Levin, Kitty gives Levin emotional support (with his irrational fits of jealousy etc.) in Anna and Vronsky's relationship she looks for emotional reassurance from him.
It seemed to me that Tolstoy thought that Anna wasn't behaving in a feminine way, and that this might be the cause of her anxiety. Dolly also is troubled by her personal life, but because she throws herself into domestic duties (the raising of her many children) she doesn't reach the level of despair that Anna reaches.
For a contemporary reader it seems normal that Anna acts for her own happiness and improves herself intellectually, but I think to Tolstoy she was not fulfilling the "proper" life of a woman and this led to her downfall. So I'm not sure how much he likes her either!
I might be wrong here, but because I know that Tolstoy held traditional views about women that's how I interpreted it.
I just realized that my long post didn't answer the question of whether I liked Anna. I didn't really. I sympathized with her but I never liked her the way I liked Levin.
Al wrote: "Oh, I felt sorry for her. In fact the last few chapters took me FOREVER to read, because I knew what was going to happen. I hated what happened to Anna (both emotionally and her ending), but the ..."oh how could anyone dislike vronsky! he is so hot! definitely the best part of anna karenina. if he wasn't in it i'd bin it.
I actually liked Anna very much. I did not agree with her choices of course, but I could totally see how she could get into the situation she got herself into. Stuck in a loveless marriage and then finding passion, making a horrible decision to leave her son, but yet hoping there would be some way to still see him and on and on. I loved her character. She was so intensely interesting and likable at the beginning, then you saw her downward spiral as she found herself in the impossible situation of having a lover and being married, being cast out of society and not being able to see her son. Then she turned to morphine. Don't forget the Morphine! Taking it everyday regularly helped very much in assisting her to get to the bottom as quickly as possible. She was depressed, knew she made a bad choice, medicated herself endlessly and then.....well, we see what happened in the end. To me, her character showed how someone can make decisions that can ruin them. I cried when it ended for her. I felt sorry for her. And really, Vronsky was not to blame either. I feel he really loved her. It was not his fault that society made it ok for him and not ok for her in their situation. As things got worse for her, she envisioned him doing all manner of running around on her, which I don't think he did. She was only paranoid due to the downward spiral she was in. I loved this book and it is my all time favorite in the world. So full of meaning, even if I did have to put up with all that farming and political ranting, lol!
I found her to be very childish. I hate to admit it but I could not wait for her to go ahead and die already.
Camille wrote: "I hated her in the very end. I couldn`t stand her whiny complainy attitude. In the end I still hated the fact that she [spoilers removed] . It made me so mad....."I didn't see her as whiny per say. I found her to be tortured between what she was supposed to do and what she wanted to do. She made her own bed, so to speak, and was torn between the two "beds" there for her. I think the whininess you mention is more of her mentally torturing herself between her two choices and regretting the choice she made to some extent. Her obsession with being madly in love and blissfully happy as she was at the start of her affair with Vronsky is what let her her downfall.
Wendy wrote: "Did no one notice that Anna was not loved by her husband? I cannot condone what she did, but it didn't surprise me that she became dissatisfied with her husband when compared with Vronsky's passion..."Hmmm... I didn't see that Karenin didn't love Anna. I think where the book begins, we are thrown into see marriages that have been damaged prior to the "start of the book." If he didn't love her, he wouldn't have been by her side when she fell ill - he would have said, "To hell with her! She's sleeping with another man!" But he didn't. Yes, it was his view to loyalty to God through marriage, but I felt he still loved her. I felt, all the way through the book, that if Anna had gone back to him, he would have taken her back and forgiven her. Just my thought. Karenin was a very complex character. He denied divorce to her, I think, because he still loved her and believe in a chance for her to redeem herself. What say you? :)
This discussion seems to have been over but I am just wondering how the society still tends to blame the victim?
Not sure Tolstoy wants us to like her. I certainly didn't. But hating her was part of my love for the book.
Ruby wrote: "This discussion seems to have been over but I am just wondering how the society still tends to blame the victim?"What do you mean?
Dagny wrote: "I actually liked Anna very much. I did not agree with her choices of course, but I could totally see how she could get into the situation she got herself into. Stuck in a loveless marriage and th..."I agree. It wasn't Vronsky's fault at all! I think her mind created so much drama because she was so torn with the decision she made and wanted just to be happy. I liked her very much and understood her.
I really admired the way in which Tolstoy potrayed her. But yes, at the end, she is a character to be pitied!!
Russia was changing from a feudalist system to a capitalist one. A new system that not only destroyed the economical infrastructure of the old one, but it also destroyed the values the old society was built on. Tolstoy writes about that era, and he portrayes them so well. Resurrection, which is his autobiography, shows this transition very vividly.Anna Karenina was a book that one of the greatest thoreticians of the Russian Revolution read it 100 times... Any time he needed more material to study the old system, he went back to this book.
Looking at the society back then, we can see how corrupt it is, all they need is a scapegoat on whom they can blame everything. Today, those values are not valid under the new system. Family values are gradually changing and so are other social values such as doctors becoming merchants (just an example). We in the 21st Century must have gotten used to this kind of social relations and the leat we can do, especially as writers, would be seeing the problems, analyzing them and finding solutions for them. Anna, in my opionion, was a victim of the era, her family, her husband, her society and anything that was considered as value.
Oh my stars. It was exhausting! Once she has sinned, Tolstoy just keeps dragging her through the mire, page after inexorable page, chapter after never-ending chapter. Ultimately, I'm pretty sure Anna was nearly dead before that train ever came around the bend; Tolstoy beat her to death!
Katie wrote: "I feel like there were a lot of ways to read Anna's story and character. On the one hand, there was criticism of how marriage was handled by the older generation (particularly mothers), putting the..."By far, this is the best comment on Anna covering everything surrounding the events and understanding the role of social relations in individual lives and decisions. There is one point though, that I need to address. Taking the child away from the mother was part of the law back then. It all comes from what is known as "Code Napoleonian" wherein :"l'enfant concu pendant le marriage a, pour pere, le mari" which can be translated as: "The hunsband will be the father of any child conceived during the marriage."
This Code however was due to a great deal of infidelity happening in the high society and it had become a big issue when the future of land ownership and inheritance was involved.
OH YES, totally loathed Anna. I read the (unabridged audio) book in complete ignorance of anything about Tolstoy or the book, except that both he and it were famous. Well in listening to the book as I mentioned I grew more and more annoyed at Anna and I liked the character Konstantin Dmitrich Levin more and more and then finally when near the very end when Levin goes into his speech I really liked that character, i.e. Levin. In hindsight the book seemed to be more and more about him or at least he was the character I was most drawn to and less and less to Anna. I still wonder why the book was named after her and not another name or title instead. If you read the book read it for Levin/(Tolstoy) and pay little attention to Anna.
That book was depressing for me. Could not imagine myself living the way Anna did or how women lived in that time period. Anna Karenina is a classic though and so happy to see it being discussed here. I agree with Marjorie who said that Anna was genuinely desperate.
Donna wrote: "I didn't loathe Anna, I loathed Tolstoy.Tolstoy's pedantic over-moralizing and torturing both Anna and us"I had just the same impression!
I especially didn't like the way he presented Lewin's life in contrast to Anna's as if that was the proper way to live.
I have to agree with Anna. This is coming from a man's perspective where Anna left her child for her lover. We should loathe Tolstoy actually. Was it his intention to portray women as he did Anna? What about his upbringing? How were the women in his life? Sometimes authors bring their experience into the story. A note of reality here, women do leave and mistreat their children for lovers/men in their lives even in the 21st century.
Zofia wrote: "Donna wrote: "I didn't loathe Anna, I loathed Tolstoy.Tolstoy's pedantic over-moralizing and torturing both Anna and us"I had just the same impression!
WOW... Loathed Tolstoy?
Ian wrote: "As one of the reviewers mentioned, Tolstoy has a way of presenting a character in a disagreeable light and then later showing us their point of view. With Anna, however, I just could not follow her..."She epitomized feminine selfishness to me.
Jacqueline wrote: "I'm sorry, but I can not abide women who let themselves be pushed around so much by society and the moralists of the day. Tess of the D'Ubervilles, is another, and The French Lieutenant's Woman......"You are forgetting it was in Russia 100years ago! That was prabably the only way she could express her disagreement with that society:(
There were better ways, even then, to express your disagreements with society--rather than abandoning your child, cheating on your spouse, and then taking revenge on your lover by committing suicide. As a FICTIONAL character Anna chose herself before anything else the entire book, which led her to great misery and affected everyone around her negatively.What's great about this book is the comparison between Anna and Levin--who is also prone to think of himself throughout the book but who learns through experience and CHOICE that selfishness has not and will not make him happy. And then we see in the end how he achieves great happiness as a result of learning that lesson; whereas Anna keeps trying to force wrong in to becoming right despite how miserable she makes herself (and again, everyone around her).
While it is true that today women have the freedom for the most part to choose the person they want to marry, leaving your child is behind is something else. It is instinctive for women to want to protect and nurture their children. Many women today are trapped in marriages that are unfulfilling but still stay and raise their children. Women are naturally self-sacrificing. I like the different points of view about Anna though and the person who posed the initial question has really opened a dialog. Thank you.
As far as I am concerned Anna is a drama queen.
Jacqueline wrote: "I'm sorry, but I can not abide women who let themselves be pushed around so much by society and the moralists of the day. Tess of the D'Ubervilles, is another, and The French Lieutenant's Woman......"I haven't read Tess of the D'Ubervilles but watched the movie one snowy afternoon and thought the same thing. Anna also elicited no sympathy from me. She knew she was choosing her lover over her child when she left Karenin then blamed Vronsky for her guilt.
Yes, there were several times when watching the movie and reading the book, I just wanted to smack Anna. Very self-absorbed ninny.
I believe Anna was a much more sympathetic character than, say, Emma Bovary -- we must remember that in those times, women had far fewer choices than we do today. Anna was caught between a cold, loveless marriage that was sanctioned by society and a warm, loving relationship that was not. Her child, probably the only person she truly loved, was in the balance. She knew her place, but chose to try to flee, with horrible consequences. She knew that she had an empty existence so chose to end it. The men in her life survived. Karenin as a self-righteous martyr, Vronsky as a socialite and soldier. She had neither option, really. I think that Tolstoy was trying to say that her passions were her undoing, but as a woman, I can see her much more sympathetically.
I don't think that Anna is a flat character by any means, but I do think she is intended to be unlikeable and a "bad" person, as demonstrated by what ultimately happens to her. However, reading the novel today, I can certainly sympathize with her character, as someone who is so trapped and confined in her place in the world and unable to explore her own desires. She is by no means a perfect "person" and I don't think should be seen as such, or is even an admirable one. Which makes it a bit easier to watch her fall.
I don't know if she is meant to be "bad," but I have a feeling that Tolstoy meant for her tragedy to be some sort of lesson. She is, after all, the protagonist -- at least, her name is the book's title. I think that this is one of the ultimate questions of the book. How did Tolstoy mean for her to be viewed? I think this is a great novel, that covers a lot of ground, both plot-wise and philosophically. She is a great character because she is not all good or all bad. Her conflicts are real, gritty, tragic. And those of us who are out there who are perfect may be able to point fingers at her, but those of us who are human simply cannot.
I agree, Anna didn't choose to be away from her child, her husband kept her from the child. He was being a SELFISH tyrant. If this scenario was reversed in modern society (meaning the father was being kept from his children because he committed adultery and the mother was pissed off) - everyone would be like, "poor poor sap, look at that bitch keeping him from his children." The double standards are sickening and the numbers of puppets jumping in to ride that train over Anna's dead body are proof that very little has changed.
Christie wrote: "Jacqueline wrote: "I'm sorry, but I can not abide women who let themselves be pushed around so much by society and the moralists of the day. Tess of the D'Ubervilles, is another, and The French Li..."No, Karenin was making that choice. he could have allowed her to keep seeing her children.
I think that we, as modern women, cannot even begin to understand what women then had to go through. If your husband died, or if, heaven forbid, you never got married, you had to find someone to live with, because you had no means of supporting yourself. The men were in complete control. When your choices are taken away, you are indeed subject to the whims of those who control you.
Kate wrote: "Oh thank goodness for this thread - I'm only about half finished and I keep wondering why I'm even bothering...I'm so frustrated to follow the tale of a woman who has neither the gumption (nor the ..."Life is too short to read books you loathe. I gave up on Anna Karenina about a quarter of the way through.
What there is to like about Anna is that she is a tragic figure. She makes the wrong choice, out of her human failings, and by the time she realizes that her husband does have love for her, and that her lover is a cad, it's too late, and she has lost everything. The book is deeply moral, exemplified by the honesty, earnest striving and more innocent love of Kitty and Levin.
I don't think Karenin comes across as a selfish tyrant AT ALL. Religion had a huge role in his motives (whether he ultimately chose wisely or not), and his reason for choosing not to divorce Anna was his feeling that it would ruin her salvation. And while their marriage may have been "loveless" she was relatively happy in her life with him even if it was largely due to her relationship with her son. Not to mention she had peace of conscience, which is priceless. Sometimes relationships are cold/diplomatic, and less passionate, but through time and experience they become passionate and very fruitful. This book proves that passionate relationships are not always wise--Anna didn't even love her second child, which is probably a metaphor.
Anna never gave her first marriage a chance to become something better, which is why she was afraid of her husband=her own guilty conscience acknowledging she's headed down a bad way when Karenin threatens to cut her off. But does he? No, in fact, she still lives off of him to some extent even though she's openly CHEATING on him. Does that sound like tyranny??? Not to mention the fact that at any point she could probably have resumed her habitation with him since they were still legally married, he even loved her illegitimate child, so it's not like she was without choices/begging for her subsistence. And why should he have let her continue to see his son? So that his son would know his mother was unfaithful and chose a lover over both of them, or so he could act what she did hadn't hurt either of them? Any responsible parent protects their children from unsavory influences, and sometimes that does include their own parents--raising children is a privilege not a right. But yes, Anna should have had the cake and eaten it too, because she could've fictionally proven that love affairs always end in happiness and anyone suggesting otherwise is a bigot.
Again, she had choices throughout the entire book, and consistently made selfish ones. If there's anything some modern women can't relate to in this book it's the concept of moral obligation (especially to men, since they are apparently less than dust today).
I have read this book maybe three or four times in my 56 years. The first time I was probably 17-18 and I was talking to my dad about it and he said that Karenin "put up with all that nonsense" and I was so taken aback!!! Didn't my dad see the romance there? But each time I have read it since, I have liked Karenin more and Anna less, especially since I have since become a mother. Karenin gave her a second chance and she chose her lover over her son, then had to pay the price! Need I say more? But I loved this book at each stage in my life, the characters struck me in a different way, they were so multi-deminsional. The sign of a truly masterful writer. Well is its Tolstoy after all
Pat wrote: "I have read this book maybe three or four times in my 56 years. The first time I was probably 17-18 and I was talking to my dad about it and he said that Karenin "put up with all that nonsense" an..."The fact that in developed countries, in case of divorce the mother gets the child, is so well established and accepted that many people cannot even imagine how it is in places such as the Third World countries where, even though Feudalist System has disintegrated, the children and the estate are considered the ownership of the father. This is very tragic and women fall victims to it, even though none even commit adultry.
Tolstoy is speaking of an era in the developed countries where the rules of the dark ages were still in force and he is an excellent critique of those rules.
"I won't abandon Anna to your mercies. She's such a dear, so charming. How can she help it if they're all in love with her, and follow her about like shadows?"
I found the book facinating because of its social commentary. I feel it was an excellent glimpse into Russia in the 19th century. I didn't hate Anna. It was just so sad that she made bad choice after bad choice. If the book had only her story in it, I wouldn't have finished it. It was Kitty and Levin's story that kept me going.
I haven't read the whole book yet, but Anna's character is irritating me. Vronsky also annoys me. My favourites are Levin and Kitty :)
I saw Karenin as a person who used his religion to make him look good, not sincere at all. He had no warmth or depth of feeling, except where his social status or appearances were concerned.
Straight to the point, I didn't like Anna and I didn't like the story. This was a book that I picked up several times over the years and one day, with determination, I read it. The back stories were much stronger than Anna. Was it the times? Perhaps, but she was so self-centered and absorbed that she outplayed herself. That he loved her and gave up his "all" (or so he thought) for this, I think distressed him at the end. Personally, it seemed to me like watching a soap opera - over the top and overdramatic.Surprising that the alleged "great writer" Tolstoy wrote some dribble.
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