Part VII: Anna Karenina

If your name is Susan Baldwin, consider this a spoiler alert. While you may already know Anna's outcome, I don't want to spoil the rest of the novel for you. Keep reading Anna Karenina, and come back to this posting when you're done.

The rest of my avid readers will be glad to know that I've finished Part VII of Anna Karenina, and I've read about a dozen chapters of Part VIII (chapters are only a couple of pages long, so it's easy to get through a dozen). I have 30 pages to go in the book, and I'll be so glad when I've finished it.

As critical as I've been of the book lately, I found Part VII especially satisfying. That's because Anna dies.

I know that sounds horrible. I'm not glad Anna threw herself in front of a train. Instead, I found this portion of the book satisfying because Tolstoy told so well the story of a woman's downward spiral through depression and into the deepest despair. Reading Part VII gave me that "hindsight is twenty-twenty" feeling. As frustrated as I was with Anna all through the book, once she committed suicide, I reflected on her previous self-involvement, and it all made sense.

Anna never matures. When we first meet her in Part I, she advises Dolly to remain with her philandering husband, Anna's brother, and in 1000 pages that's the only thing she does that centers on someone else's needs or problems. From then on, Anna's behaviors are entirely self-focused, at the expense of those she claims to love the most. So at the end of the novel, when her selfishness turns into jealousy over an imaginary woman, she won't stop with her own misery, but must make Vronsky miserable with her, deciding to end her life to "punish him and escape from every one and from [her]self."

For several chapters leading up to Anna's end, Tolstoy focused on Anna's depression, revealing how Vronsky attempted to satisfy her to no avail. By creating problems to worry about, Anna dug herself into a hole from which she couldn't climb out, and Tolstoy's prose depicted that decline so perfectly, having her alternate between self-loathing and projecting anger onto others. One moment, Anna "blame[s] herself for the humiliation to which she ha[s] lowered herself," but then just a few minutes later, Anna feels "that sense of mortification and of being an outcast, which she ha[s] felt so distinctly on meeting Kitty," when in fact, Kitty finds her "charming" and "lovely," though "awfully piteous." When Anna decides to go to Vronsky (who is at his mother's), on the way to the station she views a couple on the street, and she projects her misery onto them: "They made inane and affected remarks to one another, entirely for her benefit. Anna saw clearly that they were sick of each other and hated each other. And no one could have helped hating such miserable monstrosities." All through these chapters leading up to Anna's death, Tolstoy builds up tension with Anna's roller-coaster of emotions.

And that tension continues even as Anna stands at the railroad tracks because she mucks up the deed on her first attempt: "She tried to fling herself below the wheels of the first carriage as it reached her; but the red bag which she tried to drop out of her hand delayed her, and she was too late; she missed the moment" (At that moment I recalled Vronksy's failed suicide attempt earlier in the book). Then when she does finally kneel in front of the train, Tolstoy depicts that confused moment so well: "And the light by which she had read the book filled with troubles, falsehoods, sorry, and evil, flared up more brightly than ever before, lighted up for her all that had been in darkness, flickered, began to grow dim, and was quenched forever."

And so ends Part VII.

Sadly, what Anna never realizes his how much her sister in-law Dolly admires her and how much she's influenced her. When Alexey Alexandrovitch Karenin contemplates divorcing Anna, it's Dolly who stands up for her, remembering how Anna convinced her to remain in her marriage. Much later, after Oblonsky has continued his money-spending, philandering ways, leaving Dolly and her children at the mercy of Kitty and Levin, Dolly visits Anna and Vronsky at their country estate and admires how Anna and Vronsky carry on like a devoted, married couple. After observing their lives, Dolly questions whether she should have stayed her husband. Later, we see her standing up for herself more. For instance, in Part VII, Oblonsky, short on cash, much shorter on sense, asks his wife to sign over some of her property to him. She refuses because of Anna's influence. It's a round-about way of being a role-model, but as Anna contradicts the advice she gave Dolly, she demonstrates the results of acting in one's self-interest. The only difference is that Anna's decisions were entirely motivated by love; Dolly's are motivated by survival.

So now I'm on Part VII, the final book of the novel. My mom warned me I'd find it anti-climactic, as it's all about Levin, whom I love, but there's only so much I can read about a character's indecision about his religious faith. Several chapters revolve around Levin's ambivalence, and they have him doing absolutely nothing. Just thinking.

So I will push through these last 30 pages. As quickly as possible. I'm ready to pick up my summer reading books.