Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina shows the fall of a high societal woman as she gives up everything for love. She resists society’s expectation of women to submissively dismiss their passions and live for raising a family. Anna and her lover Vronsky attempt to create their own life, separate and independent from society, believing that their love alone will sustain each other. However, they tragically discover that isolation is not a life that they can endure. Vronsky’s love does not mature; he does not know how to develop it beyond passion. He needs ambitions, accomplishments, and admiration, and Anna longs either for Vronsky entirely, or for approbation: at least enough courtesy or civility to not be openly scorned and humiliated in public. Unable to empathize and appreciate what each other need and what each other have given up for one another, hostility and resentment stockpile. Anna’s suicide is as much a punishment intended for Vronsky as it is as an escape from here own despair as it is way of securing his love for her eternally. The ultimate irony then is that Levin and Kitty achieve what Anna and Vronsky so desperately sought, a fulfilling and happy life, free from society.
Both Anna and Vronsky come from aristocracy, and both enjoy the decorum and pleasure that comes with high society. Anna effortlessly glides from social circle to social circle just as Vronsky ceaselessly and confidently advances through the ranks in the military. Both are sophisticated and worldly, and both are vain. When Vronsky followed Anna to Petersburg, “she was overcome by a feeling of joyful pride… to know that he was there in order to be where she was.” Vronsky “felt himself a king...” and was proud of attracting such a prestigious women. To Vron...
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...ty. They took a miscalculated risk in believing they could separate from an elite group that they depended on and were the product of. They acted on their passion for each other. However, passion dies. Vronsky was unable to reassure Anna that his love for her was steadfast, “Assurances of love seemed so banal to him…” , and Anna was not secure enough to trust in his love. Tolstoy’s happy family is the conventional mold. The woman is wife, mother and domesticity; the husband is worker, provider and authority. “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” If we take this statement to be true what then is Tolstoy saying about society, feminism and relationships? What then is a life worth living?
Works Cited
Tolstoy, Lev Nikolaevitch, Richard Pevear, Larissa Volokhonsky, and John Bayley. Anna Karenina. London: Penguin, 2003. Print.
In the novel, My Antonia, by Willa Cather, society seems to govern the lives of many people. But for the others, who see past society's stereotypical values, had enough strength to overcome this and allowed them to achieve their dreams. Throughout the book, everyone seems to be trying to pursue the American Dream. While they all have different ideas of just exactly what the American Dream is, they all know precisely what they want. For some, the American Dream sounds so enticing that they have traveled across the world to achieve their goal.
Throughout the story, Tolstoy gives us a clear reasoning as to why he writes so deeply and meaningfully, but also leaves plenty of room for our own interpretation. Combining the two structural elements of pathos and metaphors in his writing helped give a well-defined reason to his intended audience of what he was trying to say. Over all, Tolstoy’s illustrative language was beautifully written and got the message across about making sense of death and accepting
Memories are a stockpile of good and bad experiences that are retained of a people, places. How do you remember your childhood memories? Do certain people, places or things trigger these memories to the past? Does the knowledge of these experience still affect your life today? Throughout the novel My Antonia, Jim's nostalgia for the past is represented by nature, symbolic elements, and above all Antonia.
On September 9, 1828, their fourth son, Count Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy, was born on the family’s estate of Yasnaya Polyana. The estate (also spelled as Iasnaia Poliana) was located in the province Tula, approximately one hundred miles south of the Russian capital, Moscow. At the age of two, the Tolstoy home had transformed after the death of his mother, and his father asked his distant cousin Tatyana Ergolsky to take charge of the children and act as a governess. When his father’s death eventually came at the age of nine, the legal guardianship of the five children were given to their aunt, Alexandra Osten-Saken. She was described to be a woman of great religious fervor from which the radical beliefs of Tolstoy’s wer...
The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy shows reader how not to live their everyday life. Of course we have to work day in and day out to provide for our families, but there comes a time when your work life should be put on hold. No life is ever perfect, we must make the best out of what we can accomplish. The Death of Ivan Ilyich teaches us about three themes: the right life, your mental “phony” life versus reality, and the unavoidable death to come.
Tolstoy uses The Death of Ivan Ilyich to show his readers the negative consequences of living as Ilyich did. One of the worst decisions that Ivan Ilyich made during his lifetime was based on what would monetary benefit him. In others words, he his family and his colleges relate happiness to material possessions only. They could afford to buy big house, expensive cars and fancy clothes which leaded to happiness. But it was just an illusion.
identical. Both characters were in isolation prior to the initial plot of the books, but for
“Days of a Russian Noblewoman” is a translated memoir originally written by a Russian noblewoman named Anna Labzina. Anna’s memoir gives a unique perspective of the private life and gender roles of noble families in Russia. Anna sees the male and female gender as similar in nature, but not in morality and religiosity. She sees men as fundamentally different in morality and religiosity because of their capability to be freely dogmatic, outspoken, and libertine. Anna implies throughout her memoir that woman in this society have the capacity to shape and control their lives through exuding a modest, submissive, and virtuous behavior in times of torment. Through her marriage, Labzina discovers that her society is highly male centered.
In every rags to riches story, the protagonist eventually must decide whether it is better to continue to associate with impoverished loved ones from the past, or whether he or she should instead abandon former relationships and enjoy all that the life of fame and fortune has to offer. Anton Chekhov gives his readers a snapshot of a young woman in such a scenario in his short story Anna Round the Neck. While this story certainly gives a glimpse of the social climate in Russia during the nineteenth century, its primary focus is the transformation of Anyuta (Anna) Leontyich from a meek, formerly impoverished newlywed into a free-spirited, self-confident noblewoman. Throughout the story, the reader is drawn to pity Anna’s situation, but at the
Chekhov reminds the readers that Anna is young compared to Gurov. Chekhov’s novel states, “As he went to bed he reminded himself that only a short time ago she had been a schoolgirl, like his own daughter” (3). The images of Anna being a schoolgirl not too long ago, when Gurov has a daughter of similar age, brings the sense of abnormality between the relationship of Gurov and Anna. It’s hard to imagine such a huge difference in lovers especially in the strict culture of Russia in the late 19th century where these occasions were unthought-of. The uncomforting thought of the difference in age goes back to differ the meanings of love and romance in the novel because against all odds and differences, Anna and Gurov hide away from these obvious facts. The thought of love in this culture is between a man and woman of similar age. According to Chekhov’s novel, “He was sick of his children, sick of the bank, felt not the slightest desire to go anywhere or talk about anything” (9). Chekhov’s description of sickness reveals that Gurov has a huge moment of denial, denial of family and denial of age. This denial of age, helps Gurov cope with the oddities of their relationship, the oddities of the love they had with the characteristics of a romance. Gurov was trying to change the definition of their relationship on his own mental terms. While Gurov was trying to bring out a spontaneous, younger
Tolstoy establishes his satire instantly after the death of Ivan through the cruel and selfish reactions of his friends. The death of a friend would normally conjure feelings of grief and compassion, yet for Ivan’s close associates, thoughts of their futures drowned out any thoughts of death. “So on receiving the news of Ivan Ilych's death the first thought of each of the gentlemen in ...
In order to understand the nature of Gurov and Anna’s “love”, the question of “Who seduced who?” needs to be answered. When looked at the story step by step, the answer would be Gurov, since he w...
A. The Epic of Russian Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 1950. 309-346. Tolstoy, Leo. "
These aristocrats, despite their high education and power, will do nothing to help win the war. They live like parasites on the body of Russia’s society. This is how Tolstoy describes this class in general, but he also depicts two representatives of this upper class, Andrew Bolkonsky and Pierre Bisuhov, who were the more intellectual ones, and whose lives and views of war and life changed as the result of the war. Andrew was interested in a military career, and wasn’t completely satisfied with the czar, while Pierre wasted his life on alcohol – his everyday activity.
Tolstoy, Leo. Anna Karenina. Trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. New York, NY: Penguin, 2000. Print.