Why do you not like Anna?

[vinsydney]

Just had another point, further to my post above. Rationally, Anna could have said to herself that in the circumstances in which she found herself (i.e. in love with Vronsky, but in a loveless marriage and living in a society that would not tolerate divorce) the best course of action would be to forget Vronsky and stay with her husband. But in a different time and place (i.e. today's society) the greater cost/ lesser good might have been to stay with Alexei rather than cause some short term turmoil to Alexei and Seryoza for ultimately a better life for all of them if she followed her heart. I think this ties in with Levin's thoughts at the end of the novel, where he sets aside his rationalising of the meaning of life and finds the truth in his heart. Anna follows her heart, but she is crushed by the society of the day, causing irreparable harm also to Vronsky, Alexei, her children and others close to her.

[kelby_lake]

I have almost finished the book and although Tolstoy strikes me as a mysogynist (there seems to be quite a consensus about that in the threads - i have read almost all the Anna Karenina threads in the site) that didin't diminish my pleasure of reading the novel

I disagree with Tolstoy portraying misogynistic feelings in this book. Both Karenin and Vronsky are shown as flawed and ultimately both fail Anna.

[Mr Endon]

(I've started a thread as a reply to the misogyny question)

I dislike Anna not so much because of the adultery and abandonment of her child but rather because of the way she handled the whole situation. She fell for Vromsky. Alright, I suppose she couldn't help it, and apparently she was indeed unhappy, so pursuit of happiness and whatnot. But there were a hundred ways she could have broken the news to her husband - none of them easy, I know - but she may have picked the worst possible one. In case you don't have that scene present in your mind, I'll sum it up for you: she is cold and snappy when dealing with her husband, as though blaming him for her lust, and then suddenly she says she hates him and that she has a lover.

But wait, it gets better. She goes on to say, 'do what you like'. Alright, putting herself at his mercy, that gets her some martyr points. And indeed Karenin does what he likes: he keeps her and asks her to stop seeing Vromsky. You can question the wisdom of that decision (and it is very questionable), but because she wavered her will on the matter, so she's sure to accept it. Wrong. She grows restless and wants a divorce. And he's willing to divorce her, but she falls ill and then, understandably, seeing the end drawing near, wants him to forgive her. And he does! Is she happy? No! As soon as she's well again she wants to elope.

And that she does, which leads me to my final and most crucial point: she abandons the child she claims to love above everything. No matter how you look at it and in which century you live, she willingly deserted the one person she truly cares about for a lover, and that's all there is to it. Forget about the train, in the end what she really dies of is remorse.

After all this, how am I supposed to sympathise with her? Maybe some people do, and that's all very well, but me, I just can't.

[kelby_lake]

Her disobeying Karenin is because she has realised what she had missed out on by marrying an older man. She resents Karenin for this and rejects his frigidity. There is evidence at the beginning that the couple are very close and both know exactly what the other character will hate, so it is a shame in that sense that she leaves Karenin as her relationship with Vronsky may be more passionate but he doesn't realy know her.

[BC22]

I just finished the book, and bottom line, she is self-involved to the core. For all her supposed charm and beauty, she lacked substance, which made her a weak willed character.

[Gladys]

For all her supposed charm and beauty, she lacked substance...

Did the Anna of the early chapters really lack substance?

[BC22]

At the start of the novel she is seen as a societal "darling".
She is also shown as a devoted friend, like when she helped Dotty to reconcile with Stiva (irony a its finest).

In the beginning, she seems to have it all, but as the novel progresses we see her core character disintegrate.


The fact that she married Karenin because it was "expected", and not because she loved him, set her up to be unsatisfied in marriage. This makes her a sympathetic figure.


However, she becomes a vain, neurotic, insecure mess toward the end of the novel, which makes her decidedly unlikeable.

[Number7]

Anna's behaviour becomes erratic towards the end of the novel but I don't think she should be accused of selfishness. She is forced to make a choice between Vronsky and her son and that choice drives her mad, especially when her husband tries to take her son away from her, and tells him that his mother is dead, so it could be said that Karenin is depicted unfavourably himself. Anna flouts convention and does not respect the institution of marriage in Tsarist Russia and for that she is punished, as a woman who see's no reason why she should not live passionately and openly, she is contrasted with the men in the novel who do the same thing but discreetly, it is they whom are the hypocrites. Nevertheless Anna's devil may care attitude leaves her wide open to criticism and her act of suicide at the end seems to confirm her ultimate vanity. The sub plot involving Levin whom is compared to Tolstoy himself involves Levin's understanding at the end of the novel that the way to give his life meaning is to fill it with acts of kindness towards others and that his agrarianism unites him with the natural order whereas Anna ends up a victim of mechanical 'progress' under the wheels of a train, she is separated from nature, another example of Tolstoy's distrust of modern liberalism and industrialism, and his dislike of 'frivolous' characters like Anna. Despite this though Tolstoy portrays Anna as a beautiful, sometimes sincere, kind and passionate woman who dearly loves her son and who was the object of much jealousy and envy by people who are hypocrites themselves, but who are better paced to 'fit in' to their social identities.

[kelby_lake]

I think that Anna is not deliberately selfish but she is simply self-absorbed, willing to build her own happiness on the base of other people's unhappiness.