Instead of a cookie-cutter wrap-up, or a point-for-point address of the points in my last post, I'm just going to cover a few of the aspects that were most essential to my reading of Anna Karenina.
First off, I like quotes. Here's a few noteworthy ones:
Favorite Anna Karenina Quote:
“All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is
made up of light and shadow” (40).
Before
Stepan Arkadyevitch slips this gem into the tail end of his soliloquy, a naïve, pre-rejection
Levin talks of love, and explains that in romantic love, there can be no real
tragedy. I feel that, having gone through the gauntlet of emotions that Russian
aristocracy (apparently) demands, Levin, once a cynic, would now agree to this insightful quote
that he had previously dismissed as the musings of a romatic. If Anna Karenina
has a protagonist, Levin is the closest we get: his journey from rejected
bachelor to rural patriot/conscientious brother to family man and
beacon-of-honesty is a semi-autobiographical bildungsroman, from what I can
gather. The quote itself sums up
the most positive outlook one can imagine for the rest of the novel: for every
shadow—every midlife crisis, every hint of infidelity, every ominous reminder
of one’s mortality—there somewhere corresponds beauty and light in the world. The shadows cast by Anna's handiwork are foiled by the light in the Levin's lives.
Honorable Mention for Favorite Quote:
“She felt herself clad in an impenetrable armor of
falsehood” (132).
Anna
Karenina, what a mess you made of your life. This early quote comes from Anna’s
consciousness, wherein she marvels at how naturally, how effortlessly she can
deceive her husband to whom she had so long been faithful. “Clad in armor”
writes Tolstoy, a phrase that suggests how safe she feels, as though she were
vulnerable before, and now she, Anna, is battle-ready, eager for the coming war.
Later, encountering her husband for the last time, Anna acknowledges his
tenderness (seemingly for the first time), but “some strange force of evil
would not let her give herself up to her feelings, as though the rules of
warfare would not permit her to surrender” (637). This substantiates the
anecdote/cliché that “the woman’s war is in the home,” although not in a sense
that is supportive of the female perspective. That Anna feels empowered by an
armor of “falsehood” was originally disconcerting; in retrospect, it is an
indictment of her flawed character, and ironic in the sense that someone so
armored could be so prone to insecurity.
Least Favorite Quote:
“Yes, you have conquered me, and I am yours” (394).
I
have yet to see any film of AK, but I am willing to bet that of all the quotes
in the novel, this one makes it into the film, and is overdramatized for its
romanticism the reckless abandon so glorified in the film medium.
Set apart from the novel, this
quote might inspire love, passion, and all that one aspires to have in a
relationship. Perhaps if Kitty had spoken this, then that sentiment might
resound. But it is Anna that speaks this quote, and Anna’s romantic life can
hardly be idealized.
Conquered? Can the conquering of a married woman be
something transcendent? I say no. If anything, Anna conquered Vronsky, with
the supernatural allure she emanates over the opposite sex. Vronsky merely
followed the scent, and gave her the opportunity to betray her loyalty to her
husband.
Is Anna really Vronsky’s? Again, her devotion wavers. She risks her
affair to return her attention to Seryohza. She goes out into a ball comprised
only of her husband’s friends only to return in tears: a desperate plea for
attention, and for her past life. She shows no maternal love for Annushka, and
is satisfied in being unable to birth any more children to Vronsky; an attitude
that shocks and appalls those in the know.
Anna’s sentiment in being conquered
is more an omen than a new dawn, and this quote inspires resentment in myself
toward her.
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