Ambika Chopra

Supurna Dasgupta
M. A. (F) English
Roll no 412, semester 3
November 1st 2015
The constantly shifting landscapes within the novel Anna Karenina represent moral as well as
temperamental vacillations which are built into the soul of 19 th century Russia. Contemplate the
value of such vacillations in framing the dialectic between goodness and happiness in the novel.
The atmosphere of 19th century Russia was in flux. The socio moral rootlessness raised questions
about identity and attained supremacy as the most important philosophical questions of the age.
The writers, especially Tolstoy stressed on the concept of universality, emphasizing the collective
nature of human beings. Ethics and aesthetics formed the cultural context and the society became
conscious of the social determinism of a human being, while utilitarianism also pre-dominated
the space at the same time. There happened a juxtapositioning of history and change with the
common mans intuition. It is in these times Tolstoys canonical text, Anna Karenina was written
and consequently the shifting landscapes in the novel depict the instability of the life and times
of Russia in the 19th century so much so that it becomes the greatest novel ever written on the
society. Its entire plethora of characters is seen as caught between assurance with stability and an
innate desire for change. The three main areas of action namely, Moscow, Petersburg and the
countryside then become the background for the various counter ideas to interact with each other
and gives the characters space to unfold and mould themselves.

Tolstoy, whose characters spend so much time in Moscow and St Petersburg, barely describes
these cities; urban buildings and landscapes are practically invisible, whereas the countryside is
described in exquisite detail. To Tolstoy the city is a static, artificial place. It is as if he does not
believe that the cities are permanent, as though he feels that if hell ignore them, theyll go away.
It turns out that everything Tolstoy cares about, everything he describes taking place outside the
characters heads, is alive and moving, in the non human world of dogs and leaves as in the
human world. No human action is too small to be recorded: Karenins knuckle cracking, Anna
rolling up her eyes, Vronsky touching the ends of his moustache. The characters are always
smiling, frowning, blushing, twitching, fidgeting, touching, kissing, bowing, sobbing and
deconstructing these signs in each other. They come to us alive with intentionality, describing
themselves in constant movement across landscapes, waltzing through the ball room, trudging
through the marsh after wildfowl, racing horses, cutting hay and much more.
The passage of time is significantly compressed and chaotic. Time almost acts like a chimera so
much so that the most odious characters are always within the momentary reach of redemption
and the most loved characters are frowned upon for long passages in the novel and in time. All
Tolstoys mastery of time and space and language comes together in a single moment in the text
when Annas estranged and passive-aggressive husband Karenin and her beaumond Vronsky,
meet beside the bed where Anna is lying ill, waiting for death. That point reverses the roles
assigned to the characters and a dialectic shift between happiness and goodness happens. But like
everything else in the novel, its not static. The moment passes and the characters, because of
their particular axiomatic positioning in time and space retain their predestined course of
movement. This ultimately signifies that in Tolstoys work, there are no turning points, only
points and characters travelling through them.

It is surprisingly the Oblonksys, not the Karenins that are referred to the opening lines of the
novel: All happy families are alike. Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Their
unhappy marriage is the image of society in momentum, that momentum which only requires the
right face to be put upon it to be tolerable, which is true neither for the illicit affair of Anna and
Vronsky, nor for the profoundly lawful affair of Levin and Kitty. The novel, true to its peculiar
realist tradition opens at the scathing critique of the aristocrat societal life of Russia and the ideas
of people losing all rational sense and doing as they are told. Where Dolly, justifiably the real
hero of the novel acc to Tolstoy is presented as the rendition of the old worldly charm, Stiva is
the caricature of the modern man. The clashes between the moralistic Levin and his friend
Oblonsky, sometimes affectionate, sometimes angry, Levins linkage of modernity to Oblonskys
attitude, the not to be forgotten fact that Levin is the mouthpiece of Tolstoy signify that the social
mores are to be worked around and subordinated to happiness. It also then suggests one possible
reading of Anna Karenina, Anna as a martyr in the struggle for modern female sexual freedom,
taken down by the hypocritical, conservative elite to which she herself, Vronsky, Karenin and
presumably her whole world belongs. The moralistic sham of the aristocracy prevents the mercy
to be shown to Anna. The unhappy family of the opening lines is the Russian aristocracy in the
1870s, trying to hold the line against excessive change after the abolishment of serfhood in
1861.
It is primarily through Levin, the hero of the novel, his observations and reactions, through the
singular force and insistence of his critical conscience and obstinacy that converts the great novel
into the scathing critique of all that it represents. He is a foil, a contrast, a light to Anna, Stiva,
Karenin, Kitty, and Vronsky; and he is a successful foil by the accident of the condition of his
temperament, by what he misses or ignores of what they all see. There is thus in the novel, a kind

of dialectic of incarnation: the bodying forth in aesthetic form by contrasted human spirits of
goodness, through their reactions and responses to it. It is this dialectic which gives buoyancy
and sanity to the text. Anna and Levin are very different. Each, in a separate and opposed way,
can be satisfied with nothing less than a full incarnation, a rebirth into the force which at crisis
they feel moves them. Anna craves to transmute what moves her from underneath - all that can
be meant by libido, not sex alone - into personal, individual, independent love; she will be
stronger than society because she is the strength of society, but only so in her death at the hands
of society. Levin craves to transmute himself upwards, through society, into an individual
example of the love of God; he, too, will be stronger than society because he finds the will of
God enacted in the natural order of things of which society is a part, but he will only do so as
long as God is with him in his life. What separates both Anna and Levin from the conventional
category of rebels is that they make their rebellions, and construct their idylls, through a direct
confrontation and apprehension of immediate experience. There is nothing arbitrary about their
intentions, only their decisions; there is nothing exclusive or obsessed about their perceptions,
only their actions.

Works Cited:
Tolstoy, Leo. Anna Karenina. Trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. England; London.
2003.
Jones, Malcolm V. The Cambridge Companion to the Classic Russian Novel. Cambridge
University Press.
Mann, Thomas. Introductory essay on Anna Karenina. Random House : New York. 1939