Anna Karenina

Though the two characters only briefly meet, Levin and Anna’s respective journeys are each about the interplay between faith, uncertainty, and the meaning of existence—especially the looming specter of death. Karenin, who Levin momentarily meets, undergoes a similar character arc. When the work opens, Levin is plagued by doubt on every level. He is certain of his love for Kitty, but doubts his worthiness or that she will accept his proposal. And he does not let his romantic preoccupations prevent him from equal uncertainty about the existence of God or the purpose of the universe.

After Kitty’s refusal, Levin turns to the philosophy of agriculture. Anna’s doubts are existential in a separate way: She cannot, on her own, resolve the impasse of her marriage and her love for Vronsky, and even in her dreams she recognizes the impossibility. Anna seems to recognize that she has, in some way, sinned against God—especially when she is dying in childbirth and pushes her husband and Vronsky to forgive one another.

Karenin’s formal view of religion and God, which he first uses to castigate Anna when he learns of her affair, becomes something different when he learns Anna is dying. He experiences a kind of rapturous contrition, forgiveness, and of love for everyone around him. But this love does not align well with the secular world, as Anna finds him unbearable, and society seems to think him pathetic. Tolstoy’s narrator admits that this ecstasy of generosity was more plausible when Karenin thought Anna would die. Karenin again turns to faith, but it is strongly implied his new devotion is hypocritical: It is a way for him to preserve his own ego after Anna has left him and he has only Lydia for comfort.

Where Karenin turns to ego, Anna turns to passion as the solution to her doubts, even abandoning practical details. She leaves for Italy “resolutely abandoning the idea” (435) of divorce, intent only on escape and leaving her son behind. Her refuge is only temporary, as the return to Russia reminds her of her son. Her doubts turn to Vronsky’s fidelity.

Levin, too, flees for Europe when he realizes Nikolai is dying and all his philosophical projects will end with his own death. Levin, however, has a new certainty: his love for Kitty, who now loves him in return, with no doubts of her own. This gives him strength on his brother’s deathbed. Kitty’s labor renews his childlike faith. Though his agnosticism leads him to contemplate death by suicide as Anna does, Levin takes refuge in domestic labor and family life. Anna has only her jealousy and despair. Karenin is left only with Lydia and a mysterious medium, who may be manipulating him. Tolstoy indicates that a socially sanctioned purpose in life leads to a more authentic faith and less existential torment.

The historical backdrop of the text is Russia in the 1870s—a decade marked by new forms of rural and representative politics, changing peasant labor patterns, and an aristocracy preoccupied by social problems and increasingly distant from rural life. Modernization in Russia did not extend to divorce law, however, which shapes much of Anna’s fate in the text. As a farmer who vastly prefers rural life to the city, Levin is portrayed as a social outlier compared to most of his friends and family. Speaking with his unnamed farmer neighbor, he laments that most men of their class do not understand their world. Levin’s brother Sergei treats his estate as a respite from labor, while Levin is preoccupied with work and productivity.

Dolly, too, seems more out of her depth in the country, turning to Levin for support and advice. Karenin is a representative of this order in his own way, as he is devoted to modern state bureaucracy and committees. Karenin is closely bound to the Russian state, which is most obvious when he receives a high civilian honor, the order of Alexander Nevsky. The type of work Levin disdains epitomizes his behavior at the local elections for the provincial assembly, the zemstvo. Vronsky’s enjoyment of these institutions is perhaps Tolstoy’s way of implying that he remains a shallow dilettante at heart.

Levin’s relationships with Oblonsky and his brothers further epitomize tensions within nobility. At the novel’s opening, Levin’s brother Sergei is fascinated with the zemstvo as the new source of social reform; he idealizes the peasants as the source of a more authentic Russia. Oblonsky is devoted to European culture with no ambivalence, delighting in luxurious dinners in hotels. Sergei’s position is more reminiscent of nobles who felt that their position obligated them to assume causes and pursue a more enlightened future for Russia, while Oblonsky is more self-interested. Sergei’s tendency to assume one cause only to abandon it seems to be Tolstoy’s way of critiquing aristocratic shallowness: As the text ends, he is a passionate devote of Pan-Slavism and obsessed with the Balkan wars with his earlier interest in peasants forgotten. Levin’s brother Nikolai has more extremist politics, discussing radicalism and socialism, much to Levin’s chagrin.

Levin is, in his own way, preoccupied with Russia’s place in the world as he ultimately decides that Europe’s modernization path will not work for Russia’s peasants. His conviction is born from his lived experience of farming alongside his workers, and he seems most content when he abandons philosophy for practical work. Levin is also disdainful of what he sees as aristocratic social pretense; he is unhappy seeing Dolly speak French more than Russian with her children and despairs when he realizes Moscow is making him unwisely spend and pursue gambling. For Levin, Anna becomes a source of modern temptation, briefly drawing him in despite his disapproval of her life. The novel’s conclusion is a kind of retrenchment of the traditional order, as Levin turns from rationality to faith and Anna abandons her dreams of freedom for death by suicide.