Anna
Karenina
Anna adyArkevna Karenina
- A beautiful, aristocratic married woman from St. Petersburg whose
pursuit of love and emotional honesty makes her an outcast from society. Anna’s
adulterous affair catapults her into social exile, misery, and finally suicide.
Anna is a beautiful person in every sense: intelligent and literate, she reads
voraciously, writes children’s books, and shows an innate ability to appreciate
art. Physically ravishing yet tastefully reserved, she captures the attentions
of virtually everyone in high society. Anna believes in love—not only romantic
love but family love and friendship as well, as we see from her devotion to her
son, her fervent efforts to reconcile Stiva and Dolly Oblonsky in their marital
troubles, and her warm reception of Dolly at her country home. Anna abhors
nothing more than fakery, and she comes to regard her husband, Karenin, as the
very incarnation of the fake, emotionless conventionality she
despises.
Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin
- Anna’s husband, a high-ranking government minister and one of the most
important men in St. Petersburg. Karenin is formal and duty-bound. He is cowed
by social convention and constantly presents a flawless façade of a cultivated
and capable man. There is something empty about almost everything Karenin does
in the novel, however: he reads poetry but has no poetic sentiments, he reads
world history but seems remarkably narrow-minded. He cannot be accused of being
a poor husband or father, but he shows little tenderness toward his wife, Anna,
or his son, Seryozha. He fulfills these family roles as he does other duties on
his list of social obligations. Karenin’s primary motivation in both his career
and his personal life is self-preservation. When he unexpectedly forgives Anna
on what he believes may be her deathbed, we see a hint of a deeper Karenin ready
to emerge. Ultimately, however, the bland bureaucrat remains the only Karenin we
know.
Alexei Kirillovich Vronsky - A
wealthy and dashing military officer whose love for Anna prompts her to desert
her husband and son. Vronsky is passionate and caring toward Anna but clearly
disappointed when their affair forces him to give up his dreams of career
advancement. Vronsky, whom Tolstoy originally modeled on the Romantic heroes of
an earlier age of literature, has something of the idealistic loner in him. Yet
there is a dark spot at the core of his personality, as if Tolstoy refuses to
let us get too close to Vronsky’s true nature. Indeed, Tolstoy gives us far less
access to Vronsky’s thoughts than to other major characters in the novel. We can
never quite forget Vronsky’s early jilting of Kitty Shcherbatskaya, and we
wonder whether he feels guilt about nearly ruining her life. Even so, Vronsky is
more saintly than demonic at the end of the novel, and his treatment of Anna is
impeccable, even if his feelings toward her cool a
bit.
Konstantin Dmitrich Levin - A socially awkward but generous-hearted landowner who, along with Anna, is the
co-protagonist of the novel. Whereas Anna’s pursuit of love ends in tragedy,
Levin’s long courtship of Kitty Shcherbatskaya ultimately ends in a happy
marriage. Levin is intellectual and philosophical but applies his thinking to
practical matters such as agriculture. He aims to be sincere and productive in
whatever he does, and resigns from his post in local government because he sees
it as useless and bureaucratic. Levin is a figurehead in the novel for Tolstoy
himself, who modeled Levin and Kitty’s courtship on his own marriage. Levin’s
declaration of faith at the end of the novel sums up Tolstoy’s own convictions,
marking the start of the deeply religious phase of Tolstoy’s life that followed
his completion of Anna Karenina.
Ekaterina Alexandrovna
Shcherbatskaya (Kitty) - A beautiful young woman who is courted by both
Levin and Vronsky, and who ultimately marries Levin. Modeled on Tolstoy’s
real-life wife, Kitty is sensitive and perhaps a bit overprotected, shocked by
some of the crude realities of life, as we see in her horrified response to
Levin’s private diaries. But despite her indifference to intellectual matters,
Kitty displays great courage and compassion in the face of death when caring for
Levin’s dying brother Nikolai.
Stepan Arkadyich Oblonsky
(Stiva) - Anna’s brother, a pleasure-loving aristocrat and minor
government official whose affair with his children’s governess nearly destroys
his marriage. Stiva and Anna share a common tendency to place personal
fulfillment over social duties. Stiva is incorrigible, proceeding from his
affair with the governess—which his wife, Dolly, honorably forgives—to a liaison
with a ballerina. For Tolstoy, Stiva’s moral laxity symbolizes the corruptions
of big-city St. Petersburg life and contrasts with the powerful moral conscience
of Levin. However, despite his transgressions, the affable Stiva is a difficult
character to scorn.
Darya Alexandrovna
Oblonskaya (Dolly) - Stiva’s wife and Kitty’s older sister. Dolly is
one of the few people who behave kindly toward Anna after her affair becomes
public. Dolly’s sympathetic response to Anna’s situation and her guarded
admiration for Anna’s attempt to live her life fully hint at the positive
aspects of Anna’s experience. Well acquainted with the hardships of matrimony
and motherhood, Dolly is, more than anyone else in the novel, in a position to
appreciate what Anna has left behind by leaving with Vronsky. The novel opens
with the painful revelation that Dolly’s husband has betrayed her, and her even
more painful awareness that he is not very
repentant.
Sergei Alexeich Karenin
(Seryozha) - Karenin and Anna’s young son. Seryozha is a
good-natured boy, but his father treats him coldly after learning of Anna’s
affair. Anna shows her devotion to Seryozha when she risks everything to sneak
back into the Karenin household simply to bring birthday presents to her
son.
Nikolai Dmitrich Levin
- Levin’s sickly, thin brother. The freethinking Nikolai is largely
estranged from his brothers, but over the course of the novel he starts to spend
more time with Levin. Nikolai is representative of liberal social thought among
certain Russian intellectuals of the period; his reformed-prostitute girlfriend,
Marya Nikolaevna, is living proof of his unconventional, radically democratic
viewpoint.
Sergei Ivanovich Koznyshev
- Levin’s half-brother, a famed intellectual and writer whose thinking
Levin has difficulty following. Koznyshev embodies cold intellectualism and is
unable to embrace the fullness of life, as we see when he cannot bring himself
to propose to Varenka.
Agafya Mikhailovna - Levin’s former nurse, now his trusted housekeeper.
Countess Vronsky -
Vronsky’s judgmental mother.
Alexander Kirillovich Vronsky
- Vronsky’s brother.
Varvara Vronsky -
Alexander Vronsky’s wife.
Prince Alexander Dmitrievich
Shcherbatsky - The practical aristocrat father of Kitty, Dolly, and
Natalie. Prince Shcherbatsky favors Levin over Vronsky as a potential husband
for Kitty.
Princess Shcherbatskaya
- Kitty, Dolly, and Natalie’s mother. Princess Shcherbatskaya initially
urges Kitty to favor Vronsky over Levin as a
suitor.
Countess Lydia Ivanovna
- A morally upright woman who is initially Anna’s friend and later her
fiercest critic. Hypocritically, the religious Lydia Ivanovna cannot bring
herself to forgive or even to speak to the “fallen woman” Anna. Lydia Ivanovna
harbors a secret love for Karenin, and induces him to believe in and rely on
psychics.
Elizaveta Fyodorovna Tverskaya
(Betsy) - A wealthy friend of Anna’s and Vronsky’s cousin. Betsy has
a reputation for wild living and moral looseness.
Marya Nikolaevna - A
former prostitute saved by Nikolai Levin, whose companion she
becomes.
Madame Stahl - A
seemingly devout invalid woman whom the Shcherbatskys meet at a German spa.
Madame Stahl appears righteous and pious, but Prince Shcherbatsky and others
doubt her motivations.
Varvara Andreevna (Varenka)
- A pure and high-minded young woman who becomes Kitty’s friend at the
German spa. Varenka, who is a protégée of Madame Stahl, nearly receives a
marriage proposal from Koznyshev.
Yashvin - Vronsky’s wild
friend from the army. Yashvin has a propensity for losing large sums of money at
gambling.
Nikolai Ivanovich Sviyazhsky
- A friend of Levin who lives in a far-off
province.
Fyodor Vassilyevich Katavasov
- Levin’s intellectual friend from his university
days.
Vasenka Veslovsky - A
young, pleasant, somewhat dandyish man whom Stiva brings to visit Levin. The
attentions Veslovsky lavishes on Kitty make Levin
jealous.
Landau - A French psychic who instructs Karenin to reject Anna’s plea for a divorce.