Concepts of Realism in Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina

Written by the Russian author, Leo Tolstoy, the novel Anna Karenina was, in 2007, voted the greatest novel of all time in a Time Magazine poll.  Leo Tolstoy who was born in 1828 in the Russian Province of Tula, wrote Anna Karenina, his second novel, over a period of four years - 1873 to 1877.  His first works was the critically acclaimed War and Peace published in 1869. Tolstoy regarded War and Peace as more of an epic than a novel. The reason why he may have considered War and Peace an epic rests on the fact that it was set against the background of authentic history; that of Napoleon Bonaparte’s expansionist  drive in Europe, his invasion of Russia and his subsequent defeat and retreat.  On the other hand, Tolstoy considered Anna Karenina “his first true novel”.  In distinguishing between the themes in War and Peace and Anna Karenina, Tolstoy is quoted as saying that while War and Peace revolved around the “nation”, Anna Karenina focused on the “family”. The first lines in both these pieces of work indeed attest to this.  The first line in War and Peace begins thus “Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Bonaparte’s” (Napoleon’s family name); while Anna Karenina starts with the famous sentence “All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”.  Leo Tolstoy died in 1910 having penned ninety volumes of both fiction and non-fiction in the form of books, essays, articles and pamphlets, among them, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Resurrection and a short fiction story entitled Family Happiness.

In literary terms, Anna Karenina is an eponymous novel. In other words, the title of the book is also the name of the lead protagonist: Anna Karenina. The book set in Russia in the late 1870’s, when Russia was ruled by Tsars, tells the story of the bewitchinglinly attractive and enigmatic Anna, the wife of a senior civil servant in the Russian government, Alexandrovich Karenin (Alexi) and mother to their son, Sergei Alexeich Karenin. Together, the Karenins live in St. Petersburg. As mentioned above, the novel begins with the celebrated sentence “All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”” and undeniably the reader is immediately propelled into an unhappy family circumstance. Anna’s brother, Prince Stepan Oblonsky (nicknamed Stiva) awakens in Moscow one morning in a state of angst. His wife Dolly had made the discovery that he was engaged in a liaison with their children’s governess as a result of which Dolly is threatening to leave him.  Stiva sends for his sister Anna in the hope that she will be able to calm Dolly down and save the marriage. On the train to Moscow, Anna shares a carriage with Countess Vronsky, the mother of Count Alexi Vronsky. Anna meets Count Vronsky on arrival at the train station where he has come to receive his mother. The Count is immediately taken by the beautiful Anna. Be that as it may however, at this point in the story, Vronsky and a wealthy rural landowner, Constantine Levin Dmitrich are both suitors for Stiva’s sister in law called Kitty Shcherbatskaya. Levin proposes marriage of Kitty, but she turns him down, as she is expecting a proposal from Vronsky.  However, whereas Vronsky finds Kitty’s interest in him exciting, the idea of marriage does not cross his mind. At a ball, Vronksky openly flirts and dances with Anna, leaving Kitty distraught.

On her way back to her family in St. Petersburg, Anna increasingly realizes that she is attracted to Vronsky, who par chance, also happens to be on the same train that Anna is travelling back on.  Upon arriving home, she finds that, in comparison with Vronsky, her husband is oddly repulsive. It dawns on her that he has extremely ugly ears and that his mien is cold and imposing. Even her son whom she adores seems to fall short of her ideal perception of him.

Vronsky visits St. Petersburg more frequently with the aim of entering into a relationship with Anna and although at first she rejects him, she eventually succumbs to his advances. When it comes to Karenin’s attention that Anna has an unconventional relationship with Vronsky he warns her that her behavior is giving rise to gossip in public which is injurious to their marriage, his person and his standing in society. He asks her to desist from the relationship.  She pays no heed to his request.

With time Anna becomes pregnant with Vronsky’s child. Karenin contemplates a divorce and threatens to take legal custody of their son if Anna’s illicit relationship continues. During the delivery of Anna’s daughter, Anna almost dies.  Caught up in the emotion of the moment, Karenin forgives Vronksy, following which the latter, overcome with remorse, attempts suicide. The attempt does not succeed. Although Vronsky does seriously injure himself;he lives. 

When Anna recovers from her near death experience, she leaves Karenin and her son to live with Vronsky in Europe.  They soon become dissatisfied with life abroad and decide to return to Russia where, due to the irregular status of their relationship, many of their old friends give them the cold shoulder.  They leave urban high society and opt to settle down together on Vronsky’s country estate.  By this time, Anna is approaching a mental breakdown; she grows more and more jealous of Vronsky and the apparent freedom he continues to enjoy vis-à-vis her virtual exclusion from society.  She writes to Karenin pleading for a divorce in order to regularize her status; Karenin refuses largely on the advice of his friend Countess Lidia and on the word of a French “psychic” called Landau.  The increasing strain and distress on Anna compel her to constantly argue with Vronsky.  She is tormented over the state of her status and the separation from her son. When things become unbearable for her, Anna commits suicide by throwing herself under a train.

Running parallel to Anna’s life is the narrative of her co-protagonist Levin, who having been initially rejected by Kitty, retreats to the country where he concentrates his energies on farming. On a second attempt he wins over Kitty. They have a wedding. In due course they become parents to a baby boy.  As he goes through various stages in his life, Levin endeavours to comprehend the significance of the forces of nature and the true purpose of man’s life.  By the end of the novel we encounter a man who has come to terms with the imperfections and contradictions he contends with in his life.

Tolstoy has been called a master of realism. The novel Anna Karenina is not just a masterpiece but a study of realism at its finest.  What, then, is realism? Realism was an artistic movement that began in France in the late 19^th century.  Artists and writers sought to demonstrate and present detailed realistic and factual description in their works.   This was contrary to movements such as, for example, idealism whose approach to the writing of literature depicted everything in an ideal form.  Idealism presented, for example, perfect societies where conflict would always be resolved amicably.  Realism, on the other hand, emphasised fidelity to common, average everyday life. It focused on the reality of the immediate - the here and now. It concentrated on specific actions whose consequences had to, of necessity, be able to demonstrate a correspondence to real life. Most intriguing about works of realism and particularly with reference to Anna Karenina, is the ability of the astute reader to discern a co-relation with real life experiences, be they in 19^th century Russia or in today’s “global village”.

As mentioned above, insistence on the experience of the common place, that is, day to day humdrum experiences and interactions in society, is a characteristic of realism. “All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” this first sentence of Anna Karenina is a statement on the universal commonality of families, be they in a royal palace in Belgium, Eskimos in Greenland or the San of Southern Africa.  No matter the nature of the society, families are its pillar; its foundation – an everyday reality.  In Anna Karenina, the narrative on practically all the families therein, focuses on upper middle class families who, ideally, should be living a life sans hardship or unhappiness (Russian society in the late 19^th century was inflexibly hierarchical with an established class system that guided social and economic order). Idyllic though the assumption of a trouble-free life may have been, however, the reality of life was that every single one of those families had challenges they confronted that occasioned unhappiness. There is the obvious conflict between Stiva and Dolly that is encountered at the start of the novel. This conflict results from an extra marital liaison Stiva engaged in. As the story progresses, however, we learn that they also have financial difficulties which, naturally, cause distress.  Stiva’s apparent refusal to assume responsibility as the head of the home compounds their general state of unhappiness. Anna Karenina on her part, is the envy of society due to, not only her beauty, but also her privileged social position as a result of her husband’s position in government, yet she is not content and seeks fulfillment in Vronsky, which fulfillment brings untold sorrow to so many. In the character of the co-protagonist Levin, we see between him and his brothers a somewhat fragile relationship that creates unhappiness between them. The fact that they have inherited vast wealth has not brought them guaranteed contentment. Levin’s brother, Nikolai, eventually dies in pitiful circumstances.

On another level, realism fervently upholds morality. Morality is, more often than not, intrinsic. It is woven into the fabric of society and is, therefore, taken as a matter of course. Sociologists refer to morality as a norm; an informal understanding that governs one’s behavior in society thereby dictating how we should live.  Morality is held up to scrutiny most clearly in the Karenin’s marriage. Anna, who has long been regarded as virtuous and possessing high social standing, loses this status when she not only falls in love with Vronsky, but forsakes her marriage and child to be with him. This, society dictates, is simply not done.  It (society) hits back viciously and closes ranks in shutting its doors to her presence. Curiously, however, Anna’s brother Stiva who has a reputation for sampling pleasures outside his marriage (though admittedly not on such a drastic scale; assuming morality can be measured) is tolerated as are, indeed, other women in the novel who have adulterous liaisons but do not desert their matrimonial homes. It is left to characters like Stiva’s wife, Dolly, to suffer the humiliation of his immorality.  Similarly, Vronsky is free to continue enjoying society. Vronsky insightfully recognizes this irony of society. He muses that, although society would open its ranks to him personally, they would remain closed to Anna (page 483). Anna is therefore largely left cooped up in his house. Her interactions in society are severely limited.   Additionally, Vronsky’s elder brother, Alexander Kirillovich, who we learn has always respected  his younger brother’s opinion, generally had no judgment on his brothers arrangement with Anna and agreed to visit her for so long as society, in his opinion, had not settled whether it was right or wrong.  Society’s response to morality or otherwise is hypocritical; on the one hand, it condemns what it labels immorality, while on the other, it seems to suggest that if an act of immorality is kept under wraps then it is permissible. This held true then just as it does today. The question of morality could very well be the reason that the novel starts with the epigraph “Vengeance is mine, and I will repay”. Tolstoy was possibly questioning what right man has to judge others when ultimately judgment rests with a higher deity.

Realism is concerned with the effect a specific work has on its reader and the reader’s life. Does the reader derive any pragmatic lessons from reading Anna Karenina?  Pragmatism requires the reading of a work to have some demonstrable outcome for the reader that will lead to a better life for them.  In the character of Levin, we encounter a man who is in constant battle with himself and his convictions.  His life is symptomatic of the internal struggles men and women confront as they go through life.  By walking with Levin through his ups and downs; one learns to be gentler on themselves in the sense that self-doubt, lack of conviction or indecision are not indicators of dysfunction or failure but rather an acknowledgement of the frailty of man.

When Vronsky succeeds in “winning” Anna, he soon realizes that although he felt a certain fulfillment, that same fulfillment served to show him “the constant mistake people make when they imagine that happiness lies in the fulfillment of desires”. This moment of truth for Vronsky rings true for Levin during the early period of his marriage to Kitty. Having desired her hand in marriage so desperately, upon its passing, Levin soon observes that all his thoughts about marriage and his dreams about how he would arrange his life had been childish. Although he was happy, it was not at all in the way he had expected. Levin gives an interesting analogy of marriage being like a man who had long admired the smooth sailing of a boat on a lake only to later find himself sitting in the same boat. As the occupant of the boat, it becomes apparent that he cannot just sit in it without rocking it – he needs to be constantly on the look-out for the course he is steering the boat otherwise the boat will sink.  In other words, it requires work to keep the boat on course.  Likewise while it was easy for Levin in the past, to watch other people’s marriages and be contemptuous of their failings; one’s own marriage required work which, although pleasant, was also fraught with difficulty.

Another source of disappointment for Levin was the quarrels that occurred in his marriage. In his idyllic mind he never imagined the relationship between his wife and he could be anything but, as he puts it, “tenderness, respect and love”. However, one day early in the marriage, he got held up on the farm attending to a matter that required his attention.   On its successful completion, he rode home thinking very fondly of only Kitty and looking forward to being with her.  On arrival back at the house, he quickly sought her out.  As soon as he found her he rushed up to embrace her.  Lo and behold, when he tried to kiss her she pushed him aside. When he attempted to explain the reason for his lateness all manner of words of reproach tumbled out of Kitty’s mouth; words of “senseless” jealousy that her mind had fed her as she waited for him. It was only then that he clearly realized for the first time something which he had not appreciated when he led her out of the church after their wedding.  He realized that not only was she close to him, but paradoxically at the same time, he now no longer knew where she ended and he began and therefore seeing that they were one, he could not conceivably hurt her as he would be hurting himself.  Notwithstanding that realization however, subsequent clashes occurred with regularity due to the fact that each, had not, as yet understood what was important to them.

When their son was born, Levin’s feelings for the “little creature”, as he put it, were not at all what he had expected.  His feelings were neither happy nor bright; on the contrary, what he experienced was a new, agonizing fear; a fear of vulnerability.  Levin worried at the enormous responsibility he had towards this little baby and worried that he may not be able to ensure the baby would not suffer. So strong was the fear that it obscured whatever feeling of joy and even pride he experienced when the baby had sneezed at birth. He explains to Kitty later that, although he had been disappointed when his son was born; it was not a disappointment with the child itself, but, more a disappointment in himself (Levin) as he had expected a more invigorating emotion to ignite within but instead he just felt disgust and pity. 

Levin muses on the futility of arguing.  It occurs to him that whenever he is engaged in an argument or discussion, in the middle of it, he realises that the position his opponent has taken is actually the position he should have taken himself, thus making the whole purpose of the argument meaningless. How often does this happen in social interactions? Often, but rather than acknowledge the realization, pride gets in the way and one ploughs on with the argument; often times becoming increasingly agitated. 

Religion preoccupies Levin considerably. As he prepares for marriage,  Stiva informs him he has to undergo communion before the Church can agree to solemnize his marriage.  This sets Levin back because his attitude and position in relation to religion was rather vague. He did not exactly believe in it and yet at the same time he was not firmly convinced that it was all meaningless. He felt that religion could be hypocritical. He wondered how, if the main proof of God’s existence was the revelation that the good exists, then why should such revelation be limited to Christians alone. Did this revelation not affect Buddhists and Muslims who also preached and did good? By the end of the novel, however, he appears to have reconciled his thinking on religion.  He acknowledges the importance of Christianity and opines that the problem of other faiths and their relationship to the Deity are not within his ambit to decide.

Following intense soul searching, Levin concludes he must acknowledge his frailties and determines to live his life on the understanding that he would continue to lose his temper with his coachman, continue to argue, continue to express his ideas out of turn; the wall between the holy of hollies of his soul and others will continue to stand, he will even continue to blame his wife for his own fear and will repent afterwards, he will continue to fail to understand why he should pray but shall nonetheless continue to pray. He will continue to do all this, because, as meaningless as they may all appear to him, he knows there is an unquestionable meaning of goodness in life which is in his power to invest in. And therein, in Levin’s last observation, lies the key to all men and women’s strivings.

It seems apt to conclude that, Anna Karenina is not simply romantic novel, it realistically interprets the practicalities of life, free from subjective prejudice, idealism or romantic colour. It treats the commonplace truthfully and uses characters from everyday life with whom a reader can identify with and learn from.