What happens when you cut yourself off from society, or are cut off by it? This
is the main question that Leo Tolstoy explores in Anna Karenina. Isolated from
society, Anna is destroyed by a conflict of wills. The desire of the individual is forced
to give way to society’s restrictions and requirements, represented in the image of the
railroad. Those who do not conform to society will ultimately face death, a fate, that
both Anna and Vronsky will not be able to outrun as a consequence of their illegitimate
relationship. Besides personifying the necessity of living within society’s realm of
expectations, the railroad serves a central role in the organizational plan of the novel. The
major railway scenes can be interpreted as pillars supporting the structure of the novel by
connecting the Anna/Vronsky storyline. It is at a railway station where Anna is
introduced to Vronsky, where he admits his love to her and where Anna makes her first
and last appearance. The recurrence of motifs and the final return to initial associations
within Anna Karenina serve to create the symmetrical architecture of the work.
The first mention of the railroad is in context of children and their games, which
serves as a premonition of the events to come. The children who are aware of the current
distraught household are playing with a box, representing a train. Stiva’s eldest girl is
heard telling off her younger sibling, telling him that “[she] told [him] not to put the
passengers on the roof”, instructing him to “[pick them up !” (Anna Karenina p.7).
The children’s games foreshadow not only the accident at the station but Anna’s suicide
at the conclusion of the novel. ...
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result of Anna’s willingness to abandon her home and husband to build her
happiness on other human being’s suffering. Anna’s action causes Kitty to suffer
heartbreak as she loses Vronsky, the man she loved, to Anna. In addition, Anna and
Vronsky’s relationship breaks up Anna and Karenin’s marriage and causes Serezha to
grow up without his mother’s presence. The wrath of society punishes Anna for her sin
by crushing her, metaphorically as well as literally.
Bibliography
Tolstoy, Leo. Anna Karenina. Translated by Yuri Corrigan. London: Genius Translators Press, 1999.
Bayley, John. Tolstoy and the Novel. London, 1966.
Gustafson, Richard. Leo Tolstoy: Resident and Stranger. Princeton, 1986.
Jahn, Gary. The Image of the Railroad in Anna Karenina. The Slavic and East European Journal Vol. 25, No. 2 (Summer, 1981), pp. 1-10
Anna’s older sister Margaret had a baby girl. Anna’s father owned a vineyard and was a wine merchant, while Anna mother was a stay at home mother.
She sees her father old and suffering, his wife sent him out to get money through begging; and he rants on about how his daughters left him to basically rot and how they have not honored him nor do they show gratitude towards him for all that he has done for them (Chapter 21). She gives into her feelings of shame at leaving him to become the withered old man that he is and she takes him in believing that she must take care of him because no one else would; because it is his spirit and willpower burning inside of her. But soon she understands her mistake in letting her father back into he life. "[She] suddenly realized that [she] had come back to where [she] had started twenty years ago when [she] began [her] fight for freedom. But in [her] rebellious youth, [she] thought [she] could escape by running away. And now [she] realized that the shadow of the burden was always following [her], and [there she] stood face to face with it again (Chapter 21)." Though the many years apart had changed her, made her better, her father was still the same man. He still had the same thoughts and ways and that was not going to change even on his death bed; she had let herself back into contact with the tyrant that had ruled over her as a child, her life had made a complete
Moss, W., 2014. A History of Russia Volume 2: Since 1855. 1st ed. London, England: Anthem Press London, pp.112-113.
Alexandra Bergman’s lack of self awareness allows others to forget that she is a woman and, at times, even human, which continuously builds the wall of isolation that surrounds her. As a result, when she reacts to situations as a woman would, rather than as “she” should, those around her don’t know what to make of it. Because she has been such a steady influence for so many years, those around her do not understand that perhaps she did have another dream besides working the land that she seems to care so deeply about. Her brothers in particular are unable to comprehend that Alexandra is a woman and was forced into the life she has lead by their father’s fantasy rather than by her own free will. Perhaps the only people who truly understand her dilemma are Ivar and Carl. Ivar is a “natural man” and a religious mystic and Carl a man who was unable to make a living from the land– neither is respected by their peers, and yet they have some sort of insight to Alexandra’s heart that even she has failed to acknowledge. Alexandra’s walls are brought down only by love: love of her youngest brother, love of the land, and the return of the childhood love she thought was lost to her– as these loves begin to change her, her outlook on her entire life begins to change and meld into something that only those who actually know who and what she is recognize: a woman.
Moreover, the trip in the train gives an example of the loss of the humanity. In the train, a
“I envied the people in the train because they seemed to be going somewhere” (Lesley,7).
Reinhardt, Richard. Workin' on the Railroad; Reminiscences from the Age of Steam. Palo Alto, CA: American West Pub., 1970. Print.
woman she once knew. Both women only see the figure they imagine to be as the setting shows us this, in the end making them believe there is freedom through perseverance but ends in only despair.
Anna transcribes her memories in a way that transitions from being able to love freely to being forced to love Alexander Karmyshev out of obligation; this was an arranged marriage by her mother. Anna sees the role of a noblewomen as being completely submissive towards their husbands even under unbearable conditions. The lessons learned from her mother helped shape and control her life. Labzina’s mother instilled the lessons of submission and survival in her mind before departing. Her mother’s motivation for teaching her these things was so that elite people would intercede on her behalf through respect for her. Her mother’s teachings were to:
...n she acrs as their mother. When the Darling children’s return to the nursery they accept the rules imposed on them, in effect trading freedom for security. They will have to accept the dominance of Mr. and Mrs. Darling and leave behind their pirates, redskins, and mermaids and in turn grow up. “Soon they settled down to being as ordinary as you or me” (218). They give up their world of wonderment for an average life where they must enter into a society with certain expectations for them.
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Wood, A. (1986). The Russian Revolution. Seminar Studies in History. (2) Longman, p 1-98. ISBSN 0582355591, 9780582355590
For one, brief hour she was an individual. Now she finds herself bound by masculine oppression with no end in sight, and the result is death.
Fitzpatrick, Sheila, and Yuri Slezkine. "N.I. Slavnikova Et Al. "Speeches by Stakhanovites"" In the Shadow of Revolution: Life Stories of Russian Women from 1917 to the Second World War. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2000. 331-41. Print.
Riasanovsky, Nicholas V., and Mark D. Steinberg. A History of Russia. 7th ed. Oxford: Oxford, 2005. Print.