Anna Karenina as Mouthpiece for Tolstoy’s Moral Vision

"The more perfect a thing is, the more susceptible to good and bad treatment it is."

— Dante, Inferno

According to Leo Tolstoy, high society in the 19th-century Russia perpetuated a trivial and artificial social order. Throughout his life, he remained steadfast in the belief that modern society corrupts the innate goodness of mankind, and that familial unity is a mandatory component of ethical living. The corrosive effect of the Russian aristocratic etiquette and the restorative power of familial servitude are demonstrated by the character of Daria Alexandrovna Oblonskaya (Dolly) and Alexis Alexandrovich Karenin in Tolstoy’s 1878 novel Anna Karenina. In this paper, I discuss how the eulogization of Dolly, a loyal proponent of the traditional family, and the vilification of Karenin, a simultaneously corrupt and exemplary member of high society, illuminate Tolstoy’s theory of human nature and the cause of its continuous degradation.

In Anna Karenina, Tolstoy rejects Anna Karenina’s carnal relations with Count Vronsky in favour of Dolly’s lowly and loyal, albeit loveless, relations with her husband, Stiva. A general concern for the good life—a life that Tolstoy believes to be conditional on the existence of a complete family, more so than a happy one—fuels her altruistic forgiveness and quiet endurance. She sacrifices beauty, time, and joy for the sake of familial unity; she exists to serve her husband, her children, and society. Unlike Anna, who narcissistically prioritizes a destructive romance with Vronsky, Dolly endures her husband’s affair with the French governess in the opening of Anna Karenina. Despite sacrificing everything, Dolly remains unhappy. On her way to visit Anna at Vronsky’s country estate, Dolly laments her complete renunciation of personal ambitions for the sake of familial obligations. She daydreams of a carnal romance with an imaginary, collective man and momentarily desires to embody Anna, who had parted with Karenin for the sake of her presumed true love, Vronsky. At first, Dolly does not judge but validates Anna’s relinquishment of the troubles that so devastated her life: “God has implanted that need [for love] in our souls” (605). However, she is quickly disillusioned by Anna’s fallen state—she is an unhappy, childlessness mother addicted to morphia and ostracized from society. Dolly left for home the following morning, her life seeming precious and dear again, radiating a new-found love for her family. The pains of childbirth—the sore nipples, sleepless nights—and the loveless wedlock with Stiva, now seemed trivial and were forgotten. If Anna’s tragedy is that of a woman who leaves her family, then Dolly’s redemption is that of a woman who does not.

Prior to Anna’s eloping with Vronsky, Dolly visits the Karenin household and comments on the artificiality of their family politic. The marriage, maintained only for reputation, and the home, decorated in accordance with the new style of high society, are products of social conformity—both are inauthentic representations of human nature. In Part VI, Anna reveals to Dolly that she has denied Vronsky a biological child. As a precaution, Anna wishes to keep her marriage to Karenin intact and her reputation in high society salvageable. Modern readers would argue that Tolstoy contextualizes Anna’s use of contraceptives as solution for Dolly’s earlier aversions: “[a] woman’s curse is the bringing forth of children” (603). However, in his later work The Kreutzer Sonata (1889) Tolstoy argues that sex without the objective of procreation is a sin. Although Dolly is momentarily taken aback by Anna’s secret, she is immediately horrified by the capacity and Anna’s desire to regulate conception: she whispers, “n’est-ce pas immoral?” (“isn’t it immoral?”). Dolly, like Tolstoy, struggles to reconcile with Anna’s decision to disobey a woman’s natural obligation. Instead of finding fulfilment in a quiet life of resigned contentment, which culminates in the raising of proper daughters and sons, Anna transgresses to serve her volition. She simultaneously defies her motherly inclinations and fears the social repercussions of a public divorce. After her stay at the estate, Dolly no longer perceives herself as a subordinate to her husband or a mother serving the burden of childbirth— a hen with her chickens, as Levin put it—but as a guardian and cultivator of human nature.

By living in the façade of comme il faut, Russian aristocrats corrupt their innate humanity. If Levin is the moral example of simple living in Anna Karenina, then Karenin is the reflection of aristocracy and thus the chief subject of critique within the narrative. For instance, consider how Karenin discovers the affair between Anna and Vronsky. The infidelity is brought to his attention not by Anna’s absence or her odd behaviour, but due to his noticing of the habits and opinions of others. Tolstoy explicitly identifies the discovery as mimetic: “if others noticed, that showed that there must have been something for them to notice” (142). In contrast to Dolly, who is devastated by the spiritual implications of Stiva’s infidelity, the discovery is an annoyance for Karenin. It is described as a burden that falls when he desperately demands peace and the powers of his mind. He is not troubled by the direct impact of the affair—the marriage is not the culmination of a happy union—but because of the indirect repercussions of losing an asset as valuable as the image of a proper marriage. Thinking Anna unaware of the corruptive influence of infidelity, Karenin believes a warning will be reason enough to terminate her relationship with Vronsky. Here Tolstoy analogizes Karenin as living on a manmade bridge above an abyss—a metaphor for real, simple country life—unable to confront the depths below. Since Karenin observes life through the eyes of the illuminated, highly positioned society, he remains a stranger to the grounded ways of Tolstoyan philosophy.

In Anna Karenina, each character experiences at least one of Tolstoy’s principles of human nature. In Part IV, Karenin briefly embodies the natural principle of forgiveness. Despite his unyielding devotion to the Russian aristocracy, Karenin forgives Anna and Vronsky following the life-threatening birth of Vronsky’s bastard daughter, Anya. His façade, catered to Russian aristocracy, cracks; his sordid character comes alive and tears flow down his cheeks. Faced with Anna’s cries for mercy, Karenin describes the habits and rules of the upper-class fading into futility. He no longer wishes for her death but for her life. Even Vronsky proceeds to regret his transgressions with Anna—Karenin, once a ridiculous obstacle to his happiness, appeared dignified and righteous. This uncharacteristic exercise of Christian forgiveness relieves Karenin’s pent-up emotions and rekindles his desire to live a life with Anna. However, Tolstoy does not erase the underlying condition that made Karenin’s forgiveness plausible; Karenin forgave because his image was not immediately at risk. Tolstoy limits the expression of Karenin’s humanity to situations devoid of established, high society norms. In other words, forgiving Anna will not challenge his reputation because poignant lapses into one’s humanity are typically unavailable to the corrupt aristocracy. Although his extreme fidelity to comme il faut should prevent him from exercising humanity, Karenin forgives Anna. This forgiveness drives the belief that humanity is naturally inclined toward love. Regardless of the brevity of Karenin’s forgiveness and Vronsky’s guilt, Tolstoy equipes even his most wrenched characters with the universal capacity for kindness. “I only pray God that the joy of forgiving may not be taken from me,” Karenin tells Vronsky as he reconsiders his dehumanizing role in society (413).

Anna Karenina is the story of people in search of Tolstoyan happiness and purpose. In Part 5, Tolstoy reinforces the perverse influence of high society on the human soul. Karenin, now cursed by solitude and disoriented by grief, is paid a call by Countess Lydia Ivanovna. She rushes into his study and exclaims upon entering, “j’ai forcé la consigne!” (“I forced my way past your servants”). Along with preparing the home, fulfilling tedious errands, and satiating the belly of the property-owner, servants also filter information coming in and out of the property. Moreover, they are unique to upper society—the peasants, those pure and good according to Tolstoy, are devoid of servants. The countess implies that she was initially refused entrance but succeeded in her wish to enter the home, and simultaneously the soul of Karenin, to recover his goodness from the snares of society. The servants, a class unique to aristocratic life, denied her entrance, but she prevailed. Just like the Russian aristocracy organizes itself into cliques, Tolstoy has Karenin find a formal category to which Anna’s transgressions belong. He then delegates the affair to Anna’s conscience and to God, which do not concern him. By removing himself from direct responsibility for his family, Karenin sealed his own fate. Only with the support of the Countess Ivanova does he successfully regain control of his spirit and work through the de facto loss of his wife to Vronsky.  

Anna Karenina teaches a lesson about family. For Tolstoy, the family is the cornerstone for moral education, where individuals learn the virtues necessary to lead a good life of sacrifice, humility, and forgiveness that ends without regret. He contrasts Dolly’s steadfast familial devotion with Karenin’s comme il faut to argue that true human nature thrives in sacrificial unity and perishes under the hollow pressures of aristocratic society. For those without a cohesive family unit, social and spiritual harmony remains inaccessible; but for those with family, well “all happy families resemble one another” (1).

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Louise, Leo Tolstoy Translated by, et al. Anna Karenina.Oxford University Press, 2008. Oxford World’s Classics.