Anna Karenina: A Novel of Love, Sex and Marriage

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"All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way" (1).
This aphoristic sentence is the beginning of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina which gives the reader an introduction to the entire novel: the novel is about the happiness or unhappiness in family life. There are stories of three married couples illustrating their attitude and Tolstoy’s views on love, sex and marriage. Therefore, it is often said that Anna Karenina is a novel of love sex and marriage.

          The character vigorously driven by love is Anna married to Karenin, 20 years older than her, a bureaucrat, always cold and formal, whom she can not love. She is only in chain with the fetters of a social system. Therefore whenever she finds her demands of her soul, and probably of body also, in Vronosky, Anna, an unfulfilled lady decides to possess him at any cost. She transgresses all familial, social and religious bounds. The result of this unlawful love is devastating:
“Yes, to die! Alexis Alexandrovich’s shame and disgrace, and Serezha’s, and my own terrible shame-all will be saved by my death.”

Sex especially adultery has got a critical treatment in the novel. Tolostoy has never approved of adultery but the sanctity of marriage. The accusation of adultery is directed against two persons Obnosky and Anna. But the treatment has been different on the standards of male and female. Anna suffers, and ultimately throws herself before the running wheels of a train, thinking
“I shall … escape from everybody and from myself.”
But Oblonsky doesn’t suffer, rather he asks Levin to “consider” his extra marital relationship with a woman “sacrificing everything” for him. Moreover, he thinks that his duty is to look after her, even though he has his own family:
“oughtn’t one to pity her and provide for her and make things easier?”
Again, Vronosky’s mother is “pleased” at her son’s adulterous relationship with Anna, because,
“in her opinion nothing gave such finishing touches to a brilliant young man as an intrigue in the best Society” (part2, chapter 18)
         
          Anna Karenina is important for its detailed analysis of marriage and family life: love and sex are its ingredients. There are mainly three couples, either married or living together, that illustrate the contemporary social picture and Tolostoy’s views on marriage.
         
          Tolstoy depicts the divided, hopeless and incomplete marriage patterns in urban society. Such relationships are exemplified by Stiva-Dolly and Karenin-Anna couples. Tolstoy shows us that Stiva, Vronsky, and Karenin, unlike Levin, divide their lives sharply between their homes and amusements keeping themselves outside the home, whereas women, like Dolly, center their existence on the family, since family unity depends on the woman.

However, the divided pattern of these marriages and the double standard of the family allow the dissatisfied partner to seek outside fulfillment of social, emotional, or sexual needs. Anna is the strikest example of the divided nature of an unfulfilled spouse: Anna does not hesitate to declare her pregnancy contributed by Vronosky:
“I am pregnant”
Again, she declares her determination to Vronosky:
“[I] Become your mistress and ruin my…everything.”

Without solving these marital problems, Tolstoy develops his characters in such a surrounding that they adjust to their incomplete relationships.

On the contrary, Tolstoy shows that Levin and Kitty have the only mutually complete union of the novel. Their marriage is a fulfillment, not a compromise, because his outside interests and his love are vehicles which aid him to discover the truth of inner goodness. Levin is disgusted at the outward show of love of Dolly-Oblonosky relationship:
“Of course she does not believe in his love. Then why is she so pleased? Disgusting! thought  he.

Tolstoy portrays Anna’s husband, Karenin, as a symbol of maintaining strictly social decorum even compromising with adultery. To him, marriage is not only a personal union rather strictly a social institution. His objections against Anna are that she has shocked public opinion and social code of morality; has grossly transgressed the religious sanctity of marriage with her adulterous relationship. Yet he can not divorce his wife for some social reasons: the separation would prove to be shocking to his son; she herself would be in public scandal, because in that society divorce happens either for any of the spouses’ impotency or adultery:
“I warned you of the consequences from the religious, civil and family points of view. You have not listened to me. Now I can not allow my name to be dishonoured…”(p.189)



Kitty’s parents’s attitude to choosing her husband shows two types of tendencies. The mother selects Vronsky attracted by his outward grandeur. She does not like Levin’s “strange and hard criticisms”, “awkward manner” and “strange way of life in the country”, while,
“Vronsky satisfied all the mother’s desires; he was very rich, cleaver, distinguished…an enchanting man…attentive to Kitty”
On the contrary Kitty’s father seeks inner goodness in Levin:
”Levin is a thousand times better man. This one [Vronsky] is a little Peters burg fop. They are machine-made by the dozen, all to one pattern, and all mere rubbish.”


It must be safely concluded that Anna Karenina is not only the love story of Anna, rather it actually a story of happiness and unhappiness of family life which includes love, sex and marriage. IN this case, critics have persisted in Tolstoy’s contrasts between Anna’s story and Levin’s. W. Gareth Jones comments,
Anna is supposed to illustrate the physical, Levin is spiritual; Anna is affirming personal fulfillment, Levin of the contrary, sees the meaning of life outside himself and a higher plane.
Actually Tolstoy advocates for the sanctity of marriage and the individuals quest for “immanent goodness” which may be weakened by the mere sex-based relationship. And the result in the novel is, as Anthony Thorlby states,
          “hers [Anna’s] ends in disaster whereas his[Levin’s] ends in happiness.”

Works Cited:

Jones, W. Gareth. “Introduction”.  Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. Oxford University Press, 1995
 
Thorlby, Anthony. Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina. Cambridge University Press, 1987

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