So yes, we appreciate that the novel is bigger than one woman's downfall, but, if we accept Tolstoy's didacticism, what is he saying when many characters are unfaithful, but only Anna is punished? Why does no one, not even her adulterous brother Oblonsky (who appears smilingly talking to Vronksy after his sister's death) have a line of defence for her?Īnd even if we embrace Levin's religious conversion, don't his conclusions feel painfully workmanlike? To commit to something higher than oneself to live for God and goodness to avoid selfishness (and therefore punishment like Anna, but not her brother). Sure, this scene proves that faith is compromised by quotidian concerns, but still. 'You ought to be ashamed of yourself', he scolds her for having a picnic in the woods with their child. Even after his final religious breakthrough – instigated, of course, by the simple words of a male peasant – Levin still finds a reason to shout at his wife.

Superiority of male vision and male mastery of narrative is evident. On the basis of this novel, it could be argued that Tolstoy rejects female experience as domestic, limited, even lacking in spiritual insight, because the one woman who attempts to transgress these boundaries ends up committing suicide. Yes, it's good to keep the reader on his toes, and pull the narrative in unexpected directions, but can Tolstoy really justify such fleeting reference to Anna's death? I accept the book's quest for higher meaning, but how can its author dismiss this complex story, which we have been following for 800 pages, and which he has hitherto treated with respect and care? How can he allow the last word on Anna to tumble from the pinched mouth of Vronsky's mother, who says witheringly: 'Her death was the death of a bad woman, a woman without religion'? A handful of pages inform us of Vronsky's decision to die for the Slavic cause, because his life 'is of no value' to him, although most of the remaining information relating to Anna's suicide (Karenin and the issue of Anna's child the chronology of the tragic day itself) is glossed over in a gossipy monologue from Countess Vronksy. Tolstoy elects instead to follow minor character Koznyshev's support of the Serbs and, most languorously, Levin's final religious rebirth.

Leo tolstoy anna