Critique of Society in Anna Karenina - Literature review Example

To what extent is the novel of adultery a critique of society?” Discuss, with reference to Anna Karenina. If asked to a ic novel whose central theme is adultery, most people would undoubtedly opt for one of two outstanding examples: Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina. But whereas reactions to Emma Bovary’s self-destructive ennui range from empathy to extreme irritation, few readers can resist shedding a tear or two over Anna’s torment and eventual suicide. Perhaps this is because Emma exists above all in a fantasy world of her own devising, while Anna wants very much to live in the real world – but on her own terms. And as a woman in Muscovite high society in the 1870s, the terms are not hers to dictate. In order for there to be a ‘novel of adultery’, adultery itself must exist. In other words, the society in which the narrative is played out must regard sexual infidelity to a life-partner as a crime or sin. The very word ‘adultery’ is pejorative, deeply condemnatory, and would have been even more so to Russian readers in the late nineteenth century. Unlike French society, which compensated those in arranged marriages by tolerating the keeping of mistresses, the Russian aristocracy demanded that any sexual activity outside marriage must be strictly discreet – and if the offender was a woman, the stakes were very high indeed. An errant husband might conceivably enhance his reputation through dalliances with the right ladies, but if a woman’s indiscretions were made public, she was liable to lose everything. Adultery therefore cannot exist outside its social setting. It owes its very existence to society. Consequently, any novel with adultery as its main theme must inevitably examine the social framework in which this adultery takes place. To this extent then, the ‘novel of adultery’ is certainly a novel about society’s values, rules, taboos and punishments. Those values, however, are not always set in stone, and are certainly not always fair. As Christo N Koutroulis1 points out in an essay examining the meaning of the novel’s epigraph, ‘while Oblonsky and Princess Tverskaya were having extramarital affairs, Princess Tverskaya had no problems with judging and shunning Anna.’ Adultery, the author seems to suggest, is a dangerous game with complex rules and endless possibilities for personal ruin, but it is possible for certain individuals to play it to their own advantage. As we see, Anna is not one of those fortunate few. Although society’s values are extremely important in Anna Karenina, the novel is far more intricate than the simple record of a woman who broke the rules and was destroyed as a punishment. We know that Tolstoy had problems with the novel, because morally he was against Anna and her behaviour, but as his writing progressed, he found it increasingly hard not to understand and feel sympathy for her. The novel is designed around two parallel lives - Levin’s and Anna’s – and their corresponding relationships, with Kitty and Vronsky. We are intended to see Levin’s as the ‘good’ life and Anna’s as the ‘bad’, for Levin ultimately finds meaning in his life through selflessness and his dedication to family life and God, whereas Anna’s independent and egotistical pursuit of romantic love and happiness leads her to darkness and death. All the same, however much we may warm to Levin, and despite the fact that he begins and ends the novel, there is no question that Anna is the character who appeals to the reader. In this respect then, Tolstoy has failed in his aims. As Nora Kleinman comments: ‘Tolstoy details Anna’s frightening journey from a poised and enthralling socialite to a desperate and broken woman. Anna Karenina follows Anna as her life falls apart and she descends from a position of privilege and beauty to one of despair and isolation, yet Anna remains a sympathetic character to the reader until the end.’2 What’s more, it is not only the reader who is seduced by Anna. At his first meeting with her, Vronsky finds himself ‘delighted [by Anna], as though at something special’.3 Women too find her an attractive character. Kitty finds herself ‘in love with [Anna], as young girls do fall in love with older and married women’.4 And when Levin meets with her, when her star has very much fallen from the ascendant and she has been ostracised by her former friends and acquaintances, Anna cannot help exerting her charms and he too is utterly won over. His wife Kitty even accuses him of having fallen in love with Anna; and there is a hint by Tolstoy that if Anna and Levin had met in different circumstances, they might have fallen in love and achieved happiness and fulfilment together. On many occasions, Anna is described as having a near-magical power to charm people of both sexes. At the ball, Kitty describes her as ‘enchanting’, and many fall under her spell. But this literally charming ability grows dark and twisted as the novel progresses and she hurtles towards her downfall. As the inevitability of death approaches, she is no longer charming but witch-like, jealous, needy and on occasions almost repellent. This, we are told, has happened to Anna because of the path she chose to follow; for Anna Karenina is not just a story of forbidden love and repressive social constraints. It is a kind of tender condemnation of the eponymous heroine, balanced with approval of Levin – a hero widely believed to have been based upon Tolstoy himself. Yet this is a tragedy, not a polemic. For all her faults, we know that Anna has – or had – many virtues too. When she counsels Dolly and brokers a reconciliation with her adulterous husband, we are told that ‘sympathy and sincere love were visible on Anna’s face’5. She is not, at least in the beginning, a mere creature of selfish desire who cares nothing for anyone else. She is a passionate woman who has been more or less forced into a loveless marriage with a passionless civil servant, and who craves affection and sexual satisfaction. So what is so wrong in taking those things when they are offered to her by Vronsky? What is wrong in refusing to be stifled by society’s rules and remaining true to herself? In the first place, Tolstoy tells us, her behaviour is foolish. By violating those rules, she sets in motion a chain of repercussions that will eventually kill her. Ostracism, disdain, isolation and unrelenting condemnation take their toll; and because of the very sensitivity that makes us feel sympathy for her, she falls prey to despair and ultimately takes her own life. In the second place, Tolstoy wants us to see that Anna’s mistake was in following the desires of her heart, rather than in seeking woman’s ‘natural’ fulfilment: in other words, reconciling herself to creating a stable family life, bringing up her children, and being the mistress of her house. This of course is what Dolly – the ‘hen among her chicks’ – does, and despite the fact that she has to put up with a husband who is a serial womaniser, she seems eventually to feel that she has taken the wrong path. Certainly, after she has seen Anna for the last time she cannot get back to her children quickly enough. Perhaps that is because the role of ‘mère de famille’ truly is her destiny; or perhaps she simply does not possess the courage to be a rebel and to risk losing everything: ‘”Everything is at an end, and that’s all,” said Dolly. “And the worst of it is, you understand, that I can’t leave him: there are the children, and I am bound. Yet I can’t live with him; it is torture for me to see him.”’6 To the modern eye, there is much that is right in Anna’s choices and behaviour. A feminist interpretation would certainly consider her determination to be honest to herself in the face of society’s condemnation as laudable and courageous. What we have to remember is that this was not Tolstoy’s view, though he is at pains to contrast Anna’s often painful candour with the overwhelming falseness and excesses of Russian aristocratic society. All the same, when Anna throws herself under a train in Book Eight of the novel, it seems unlikely that Tolstoy intended his readers to sympathise with her. It is more likely that he wanted them to understand that Anna’s denial of the right, selfless, womanly path to fulfilment is what has brought about her ignominious end. As well as examining the falseness of a society that turns a blind eye to adultery until it becomes public, Tolstoy also points to the hypocrisy and insincerity of certain ‘town’ characters, such as Lydia Ivanovna, and Anna’s husband Karenin in the early stages of the book. He is particularly at pains to draw a stark contrast between the peace, wholesomeness and ‘goodness’ of life in the country (and especially the life of the peasants) and the decadence and excess of urban society, where aristocrats speak French instead of Russian and young men are encouraged to gain experience through liaisons with ‘une femme comme il faut’7. In his Confession, Tolstoy recalled that one of his own aunts, ‘the purest of creatures’, had encouraged him to have an affair with the right sort of discreet married woman. This would of course not have been an affair with any kind of future in it. Society dictated that such liaisons must be ended long before they became serious. Anna’s greatest ‘sin’ is perhaps that of falling in love. True love comes from hard work, honesty, and a commitment to others. Levin, for example, does not and cannot find any meaning in his life while he is in Petersburg or Moscow. It is only when he quits society and goes back to his estates, where he joins in with the peasants, working the land, that he is able to attain earthly love with Kitty, religious faith, and a quiet contentment with his lot. His moment of greatest happiness is perhaps when he joins the mowers in the field, and abandons intellectual effort in favour of the physical and repetitive motion of the scythe: ‘… it seemed that the scythe was mowing by itself, a body full of life and consciousness of its own, and as though by magic without thinking of it, the work turned out regular and precise by itself. These were the most blissful moments.’8 Yet – although Levin and Kitty’s relationship is held up as a model of perfection - even he suffers from the loss of liberty he feels at the start of his married life. And Kitty of course accuses him of having been ‘bewitched’ by Anna, so perhaps her love and trust of her husband are not quite as rock-solid as Tolstoy might have us believe: ‘”You’re in love with that hateful woman; she has bewitched you! I saw it in your eyes. Yes, yes! What can it all lead to? You were drinking at the club, drinking and gambling, and then you went … to her of all people! No, we must go away … I shall go away tomorrow.” It was a long while before Levin could soothe his wife.’9 Perhaps the character who most epitomises society’s constraints is that of Karenin, Anna’s husband. The consummate bureaucrat, he exists for rules and cannot live without them. When Anna confesses to him that she is Vronsky’s mistress, his first concern is not that his wife is in love with another man, but how society will react if the news gets out. With perfect coldness and composure, he informs Anna that the affair is to be kept secret, and sets out the rules under which their marriage will now be conducted: ‘”I want you not to meet that man here, and to conduct yourself so that neither the world nor the servants can reproach you … not to see him. That’s not much, I think. And in return you will enjoy all the privileges of a faithful wife without fulfilling her duties. That’s all I have to say to you. Now it’s time for me to go. I’m not dining at home.” He got up and moved toward the door.’10 For Karenin then, reality is very clearly subservient to appearances. Honesty is unimportant. The only thing that matters is what other people think. Vronsky too is troubled by the impact of his affair with Anna on his military career; but he is well aware that if managed properly, a frivolous affair might even enhance his reputation. For Anna though, with her searing demand for honesty and openness, the affair is quite simply a matter of life and death. As we have seen, Anna Karenina is not merely an examination of Russian high society in the late nineteenth century. Nor is it concerned solely with adultery. It is also an opportunity for Tolstoy to put forward his beliefs: a simple way of life in the countryside, belief in God, fulfilment through family life and commitment to others – especially for women. It is true to say that a ‘novel of adultery’ must deal with social rules and conventions, since the very concept of adultery depends upon those rules. However, that does not mean that such a novel needs to dwell on a single issue, and that is certainly not the case with Anna Karenina – which, when all is said and done, is simply a marvellous classic novel, not some pot-boiler that can be classified within a genre of ‘adultery novels’. Bibliography ‘Anna Karenina’, Leo Tolstoy, ed George Gibian, trans Alymer Maude, New York: Norton & Company, 1995. ‘Anna Karenina’, Lisa Appignanesi, www.penguin.co.nz ‘The True Shock of “Anna Karenina”’, Judith Armstrong, www.oprah.com/obc_classic/featbook/anna/genre/anna_genre_c.jhtml ‘Anna Karenina’, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Karenina ‘Anna Karenina’s Transformation’, Nora Kleinman, http://www.literatureclassics.com/essays/1140/ Bibliographic Overview, Christo N Koutroulis, www.einaudi.cornell.edu/europe/courses/hist485/projects/ Fennel, John ed, ‘Nineteenth Century Russian Literature’, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973 Hayman, Ronald, ‘Profiles in Literature – Tolstoy’, New York: Humanities Press, 1970. Read More