ANNA KARENINA

ANNA KARENINA

I/ DESCRIPTION OF THE BOOK
The title of the book is “ Anna Karenina”
The novel was published by Penguin Readers Publishing
The translation of the book was first published in Penguin Classics 1954
( The Whole Edition ) by Rosemary Edmonds
The first simplified edition was published in 1992
This edition was published in 2001
The type of the book is novel.
The author of the book is Count Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy.

Count Leo Nikolayevich TOLSTOY: Count Leo Tolstoy( born sept.9,1828 and died nov.22,1910) was Russia’s greatest novelist and one of its most influential moral philosophers.He was born near Moscow at Yasnaya Polyanai, or “Clear Glade” the estate where he was to spend most of his life.At the age of nine he became an orphan and thereafter he was brought up by aunts.In 1847 he left the University of Kazan to reform his estate, but he was unprepared for the task and moved to Moscow.Five years later, Tolstoy volunteered for the army in the Caucasus,Crimea; he participated in the defense of Sevastopol and was hailed as a rising literary star for his fictionalized Childhood, Youth and the Sevastopol Sketches,which already contained some of the main features of his mature work–psychological analysis of unprecendented detail, and a unglamorous actions performed by ordinary men.
Tolstoy retired from the army in 1856, traveled in Europe, and returned to his estate, where he founded a school for peasant children that anticipated several modern educational practises.He was married in 1862 and a year later publihed a novel he had begun much earlier, The Cossacks.During this period he wrotethe novels upon which most of his fame rests: War and Peace and Anna Karenina.A deep-seated dissatisfaction with himself and a long-frustrated search for meaning in life, however, led to the crisis Tolstoy described in his Confession and Memoirs of a Madman.In these works he also formulated a doctorine to live by, based on a nonviolence, renunciation of wealth, self-improvement through pyscical work, and nonparticipation in such social institutions as war juries.
The doctorine had an enormous vogue, profoundly influencing Mahatma Gandhi, among others.Yasyana Polyanai became a place of pligrimage, and Tolstoy was revered and emulated throughoutthe world.Constant strife, however, existed between Tolstoy’s wife, Sofia, and his followers; finally, after many scenes, Tolstoy left the estate in October 1910, became ill, and died at nearby Astopovo a few weeks later.
Anna Karenina (1875-77) also weaves together several plots. Anna gives up family and social position to live with her lover, Vronsky, and her brother’s less consuming adulterous passions lead to marital strife.The courtship and rewarding marriage of Levin and Kitty, based on Tolstoy’s own experience, provide a contrast.Although the novel’s scope is smaller than that of War and Peace, and its techniques differ, it also presents an extensive picture of Russia.The novel’s end depicts the crisis the author was undergoing himself.
II/ Presentation of the Book
The story takes place in Russian High Society in St.Petersburg and Moscow. And also the country estates which belongs to Levin and Count Vronsky.
“In the 1870’s, the Russian aristocracy was plagued by financial woes.The liberation of the serfs some years earlier had created an agricultural crisis, as it became extremely diffucult for large landowners to make a profit through farming.The introductionof the railroads caused urban centers such as Moscow and Petersburg (Leningrad) to replace country estates as the centers of the social life, but the expense of the life in the cities, combained with the easy access to bank loans and to the nobility of Western Europe led to ritual imitation throughout Anna Karenina, well-bred Russian men and women speak to one another primarily in French, particularly if they seek privacy from eavesdropping servants.
The 1870s were a time of social change and political upheaval as well.The glimmerings of communism can be seen in characters like Nikola, who accuses his brother of revamping the ideas of the communists in defining his own ideas.The plight of the poverty-stricken peasants was problematic, as was the relationship of Russia to Slavic nations such as Serbia, which languishedunder Turkish rule.Gender and class roles were frequently debated, and greater education for the peasants and for women was often seen as a goal.But as Anna Karenina demonstrates, Society remained at least outwardly old-fashioned despite the liberalism of the time.This was true especially with regard to marital propriety.Divorces were extremely diffucult to obtain, and well-bred women who left their husbands to live with lovers, like Anna, were considered fallen, and lived as outcasts from society.Men enjoyed much greater freedom, both within marriage and outside it.
The story takes places in 19th centuriy nearly about 1870’s.
The main characters are Anna Karenina, Karenin (Anna’s husband), Count Vronsky (Anna’s lover), Oblonsky, Levin, Kitty, Dolly.

The Summary:
Stephan Oblonsky’s wife Dolly had discovered that her husband was having an affair.With her beauty fading and her household a wreck, she had had enough.Stephan fretfully wrote to his sister, Anna Karenina, asking her to come to Moscow and convince Dolly not to leave him.
Later,while working at his job in the entrenched Moscow bureaucracy,Stephan received an unexpected visitor; Levin, an old friend from the university, came to discuss Dolly’s sister Kitty, whom he wanted to marry.After being informed by Oblonsky that he had a rival for Kitty’s affections, a certain Count Vronsky of St. Petersburg, Levin resolved that he would propose to Kitty that very night.
At the same moment, Anna and Count Vronsky were riding together in a train bound for Moscow. Vronsky noticed the charming woman as he made his way to the first-class compartment that he shared with his mother.He had time to take note of “ the suppressed eagerness which played over her face” as their eyes met, and she remained in his mind. However, upon reaching their destination, the two went their seperate ways – Anna to her brother’s home, Vronsky and his mother to a hotel.
Approached by Anna, Dolly at first refused to discuss her husband’s infidelity. “ Everything is lost after what has happened, everything is over !”she raged. But finally she relented to Anna’s plea to keep the family together.
Meanwhile, Levin had arrived early at a dinner party hosted by the parents of Kitty and Dolly, determined to make his desires known to Kitty before the appearance of the rich and handsome Count. But “ That cannot be…….forgive me,” Kitty replied upon hearing his stammering proposal. Crushed by the rejection, Levin escaped from gathering at the first opportunity.
A few days later, at her coming-out ball, Kitty couldn’t help but notice how Anna and Vronsky kept gazing at each other. Vronsky’s face had a look that puzzled her. . . “like the expression of an intelligent dog when it had done wrong” It was clear to Kitty that the two were in love.
Neverthless, with her task her seeing to Stephan and Dolly completed, Anna boarded the next train for St.Petersburg. She thought of her son, Seriozha and her husband Alexei Karenin. “….My life will go on in the old way, all the nice and as usual,” she thought. But she found that she could not easily dismiss Count Vronsky from her mind. And stepping along the way, as Anna stepped out for a breath of air, there he was. “You know that I have come to be where you are; I cannot help it,” confessed the officer. Anna was boyh delighted and flattered by this, but it was simply unthinkable that anything could come of his attraction to her. After all, she was a married woman.
Back in Moscow, Kitty was devastated. Not only had Count Vronsky spurned her, but Levin had also left the city to supervise work on his country estate. Humiliated and distraught, Kitty became so ill with despair that she was soon unable to eat or sleep.Her frantic parents, after finding no restorative medical treatment in Moscow, sent her to Europe to consult various doctors.
Meanwhile, life for Anna in St.Petersburg remained strangely unsettled. The happiness that in Moscow “had fairly flashed from her eyes,( now seemed ) hidden somewhere far away.” To her further disquiet, the love-struck Vronsky took every opportunity to see her.One night she knelt and begged him to leave her in peace; but still he persisted: “I can’t think of you and myself apart. You and I are one to me.” And at that moment Anna “let her eyes rest on him, full of love.”
Soon afterward, Alexei Karenin walked into a party and found his wife with Vronsky; but Anna denied any impropriety. Still, she and Vronsky met night after night, with Karenin seemingly powerless or unwilling to stop them.Anna by now felt “so sinful, so guilty” ; but still she could not curb her passion for the Count.
The following summer, while staving at her husband’s villa outside the city, Anna confronted her lover with an announcement: she was pregnant.Thoughhe understood the gravity of Anna’s position, Vronsky smiled. This was the “turning point he had ben longing for.” “Leave your husband and make our life one,” he implored. But Anna shook her head.If she left, Alexei would take sole custody of Seriozha and she would not be allowed to see her son. But Anna did promise Vronsky that she would tell her husband the truth about the child she was carrying.