Excerpts from Anna Karenina

 

“All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” (1).

The first sentence of the novel reveals the trajectory of the book: the book is to follow the lives of three couples and their happiness or lack thereof.

 

“It cannot be. Forgive me” (48).

Kitty’s answer to Levin’s marriage proposal.  Scholars have noted that much of Kitty and Levin’s courtship in fact mirrors Tolstoi and his wife’s.  Just as Levin gave Kitty his journal to read after proposing, Tolstoi presented his fiance with his.

 

 

“‘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'” (67).

Dolly is speaking to Anna about her marriage to Oblonsky where she is very unhappy due to his affair with the governess. This sets up the commonality of affairs of married men while illustrating how women are trapped into martial roles due to social construct.

 

‘Do this for me: never say such words to me, and let us be good friends.’ These were her words, but her eyes said something different” (139).

Anna says this to Vronsky after one of his many declarations of love. It is here that Vronksy sees the proof he craves; Anna wants him.

 

“‘I must think it over, come to a decision, and throw it off,’ he said aloud.  ‘The question of her feelings, of what has taken place or may take place in her soul, is not my business; it is the business of her conscience and belongs to religion” (143).

Karenin thinks this to himself when deciding whether or not to confront his wife on her inappropriate behavior with Vronsky. This allows us insight into his character that reveals his preoccupation with the views of society and eagerness to avoid conflict or scandal even at the suffering of his own feelings and consciousness.

 

“‘No, you were not mistaken,’ she said slowly, looking despairingly into his cold face.  ‘You were not mistaken.  I was, and cannot help being, in despair.  I listen to you but I am thinking of him.  I love him, I am his mistress, I cannot endure you.  I am afraid of you, and I hate you. Do what you like to me'” (212).

Anna admits her affair to her husband. This pivotal confession of Anna’s should be a changing point in the novel, however Karenin instead decides to attempt to stop the affair himself and save face with society.

 

“She felt that, insignificant as it had appeared that morning, the position she held in Society was dear to her, and that she would not have the strength to change it for the degraded position of a woman who had forsaken husband and child and formed a union with her lover; that, however much she tried, she could not become stronger than herself” (293).

Anna laments her loss of status within society. She doesn’t value it until she loses it. This contributes to her desperation at the end of the novel and part of her resentment of Vronksy.

 

“And death, as the sole means of reviving love for herself in his heart, of punishing him, and of gaining the victory in that contest which an evil spirit in her heart was waging against him, presented itself clearly and vividly to her” (744).

Here we see the presentation of death for Anna. She sees it as a way out for herself

 

“You…you will repent of this!” (746).

Anna says this to Vronsky after one of their fights. He leaves to go to his mother’s and upon being unable to reach him, Anna throws herself under a train. This phrase later haunts Vronsky

 

“I looked for an answer to my question.  But reason could not give me an answer-reason is incommensurable with the question.  Life itself has given me the answer, in my knowledge of what is good and bad.  And that knowledge I did not acquire in any way; it was given to me as to everybody, given because I could not take it from anywhere” (791).

Levin ends his existential search for life’s big meaning as he accepts the existence of God.

 

“Alexey Alexandorivich had seen nothing striking or improper in the fact that his wife was sitting with Vronsky at a separate table, in eager conversation with him about something. But he noticed that to the rest of the party this appeared to be something striking and improper. He made up his mind that he must speak of it to his wife” (151).

This quote illustrates Karenin’s obsession with public opinion, outward appearances, and propriety.  These notions and constructs are some of the specific motifs Tolstoi juxtaposes with the idea of a passionate love.

 

“She flew over the ditch as though not noticing it. She flew over it like a bird; but at the same instant Vronsky, to his horror, felt that he had failed to keep up with the mare’s pace, that he had, he did not know how, made a fearful, unpardonable mistake, in recovering his seat in the saddle. All at once his position had shifted and he knew something awful had happened” (195).

It is important to note that although this is an excerpt of Vronksy’s consciousness during his horse race and the pronoun “she” appears to refer specifically to the horse he is riding, the pronoun could also refer to Anna.  This could also represent a revelation of his as to what this affair would truly mean for him responsibility wise and within the eyes of society.