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The product of its age
• Novel written and published from 1873 to 1877 in “thick journal” Russky vestnik (The Russian Messenger). • Journal refused the last part, so that the instalment version ended with Anna’s suicide. Refused mainly because of Tolstoy’s sarcastic depiction of the Russian volunteers going to fight in Serbia. • Definitive book version appeared in 1879.
Background: Alexander II’s reforms
• Period of rapid change in Russian society • Complication of the situation of the Russian nobility (дворянство) • The liberation of the serfs: the emergence of the future “kulaks” • The rise of a new business class – partly Jewish • The creation of zemstvos: local democracy • Railway as symbol of the new industrialized Russia in the making
Anna Karenina
By Lev Tolstoy
A Classic
• Considered one of the world’s greatest novels • At least nine film and TV film versions, plus theatrical dramatizations • Opening sentence famous, frequently quoted: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” • Commonly seen simply as a novel about an extramarital affair that ends in suicide (cf Flaubert, Madame Bovary) • In fact a complex interweaving of themes and characters
Social changes reflected in plot
• Opening sentence states the theme: happy and unhappy families • Polemic with the radical/nihilistic thinking about free love • The changing nature of marriage: Princess Shcherbatskaia does not know how to arrange her daughter’s marriage • Shifting social attitudes towards divorce and the family
பைடு நூலகம்
More social changes reflected in plot
• • • • The clash of values: imported, Western values French, English influence marked as negative Hostility towards foreign languages The question of faith: how can an educated nobleman believe the way the simple peasant believes? • The polemic with rationalism, Western social theories
Levin as Tolstoy
• Position of Tolstoy the conservative thinker expressed by Levin • Clearly autobiographical figure: shares details of Tolstoy’s own life • The invisible narrator-author shines through in Levin – cf Nikolenka in Childhood • Direction of sarcasm (e.g. description of Obolensky at the restaurant) is clearly felt by the reader to be that of Tolstoy.
Marriage among the upper class in the 1870s
• In transition from the arranged marriage, towards one based on love • Anna is in an arranged marriage (considered an abomination by the radicals) • The older couple Shcherbatskys almost certainly in wellarranged marriage • • Why did Stiva Oblonsky marry Dolly? – For her money. • Officially the woman’s wealth remains her property in marriage
