Anna Karenina: Plot
Leo Tolstoy on Love, Happiness, and the Meaning of Life
The adulterous and tragic affair of Anna and Count Vronsky is intertwined with the story of Levin and Kitty's love in one of the world's greatest novels.
Anna Karenina ranks among the world’s most influential pieces of literature. It vies with the 1,215 page War and Peace (Pevear and Volokhonsky translation, Knopf) as Leo Tolstoy’s greatest work and, at 740 pages, it is much more approachable. Countless authors such as George Bernard Shaw, Vladimir Nabokov, Orhan Pamuk, and Virginia Woolf, amongst many others, have cited Anna Karenina’s importance and effect on their own work.
Plot
From the famous opening sentence, “All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”, Anna Karenina is concerned with differentiating “good” and “bad” (to put it roughly) family relationships. To this end, Anna Karenina weaves the stories of two opposite romances - the courtship and marriage of Levin and Kitty, and the adulterous affair of Anna and Count Vronsky.
At the novel’s opening, Stiva Oblonsky is quarreling with his wife, Dolly, over his infidelities. Anna, Stiva’s sister, arbitrates a reconciliation. Anna ardently believes in true love, something she has never shared with her husband, Karenin.
Dolly’s younger sister, the pretty and unworldly Kitty, is pursued by two suitors. Kitty rejects Levin (the awkward intellectual, similar to Tolstoy himself) in favor of the more glamorous Count Vronsky. However, Kitty was just a plaything to Vronsky. He soon falls in love with Anna and abandons Kitty.
Kitty gets sick and eventually recuperates at a German spa, where she meets Levin’s ill brother, Nikolai, and two religious Russian women. Her misstep in society and encounters with these people help her to mature.
Rejected by Kitty, heartsick Levin quits his bureaucratic job and returns to his country estate. He throws himself into developing new agricultural tools and working side-by-side with the peasants. His efforts with the peasants are not successful.
Meanwhile, Vronsky and Anna meet at a party in St. Petersburg. Anna speaks in Kitty’s defense, but Vronsky makes it clear that he only loves Anna. Despite Karenin’s mounting suspicions, Anna and Vronsky begin an affair. Anna believes she has found true love. Always one to tell the truth, she admits the affair to her husband.
Karenin initially refuses divorce and demands that they keep up appearances. Anna becomes pregnant. Karenin eventually offers Anna a divorce with great generosity. Anna is so enraged by his generosity that she refuses the divorce and moves to Italy with Vronsky.
Anna is unhappy. She and Vronsky return from their unfulfilling life in Italy to Russia, where Anna is an outcast of society. She becomes jealous of Vronsky and paranoid that he might leave her. She passionately misses her son, who is living with Karenin.
Meanwhile, Kitty and Levin meet again at a dinner party. They have each changed, and they are immediately in love. Levin confesses his past sins and Kitty, now more mature and realistic, accepts them. They are married and move to Levin’s estate, where married life is more restrictive than Levin imagined. Kitty insists on coming with Levin to visit his brother, and she comforts Nikolai in his dying moments. Kitty becomes pregnant, but Levin is still not happy.
Jealousy and Desparation
Levin and Anna are introduced by Stiva. Levin is overwhelmed by admiration for Anna, but she is distracted by her jealously over Vronsky. Anna now demands a divorce from Karenin, but he has changed his mind. She meets with Dolly, who is concerned for Anna’s morals and mental state but also admires Anna’s beauty and decision to follow her heart.
In the climax of Anna’s love story, she arrives at a train station to meet Vronsky under the influence of drugs and in a near-halucinatory state. When Vronsky doesn’t arrive, Anna plunges her body in front of a moving train.
The Meaning of Life
Meanwhile, a depressed Levin has been questioning the meaning of life. He has a new son, but doesn’t love him. Everything is changed when a peasant tells Levin that the point of life is service to God, not self-fulfillment. This message becomes clear when Levin fears that his wife and son may have been killed in a lighting storm. He rushes out and, finding them safe, realizes that he does love his son and that his life has meaning.
Click here to read about Tolstoy's biography and works.
To learn more, read the companion article, Anna Karenina: Themes.
Tolstoy, Leo. Anna Karenina. New York: Norton Critical Editions, 1970. ISBN# 0-393-96642-9.
