Anna Karenina

Anna Karenina is a path breaking novel by Leo Tolstoy. Tolstoy approached issues like unhappiness in love and unhappiness in marriage in a fresh manner and Anna Karenina shows that without commitment love cannot succeed. The main protagonist of the novel Anna Karenina was the darling of the Moscow society until she decides to debase herself in love. Highly realistic in portraying the inner dilemma of a woman who was unsure about her love or what she wanted from a relationship, the character of Anna was to some extent motivated at least to some extent by Maria Hartung, the elder daughter of Russian poet Alexander Pushkin.



Though the main protagonist in Anna Karenina is Anna herself, the other characters are just as important. Stepan Oblonsky, Darya Oblonsky, Alexei Karenin, Konstantin Levin, Ekaterina Shcherbatsky and Count Alexei Vronsky play an important role in stepping up the pace of the novel.

Anna, the refined, elegant and mother of one son was married to Alexei Karenin who was an important government official. The Oblonskys were her brother and sister-in-law and it was with Vronsky that she became hopelessly infatuated.

Unable to keep the love for each other Anna and her amour Vronsky crossed the invisible line of friendship and love and Anna left her husband for her extra-marital dalliance. But somewhere along the line, the love could not give satisfaction to either Anna or Vronsky, in fact Vronsky's love for Anna definitely went on back gear after the initial bursts of passion. When Anna realized that her future was not with Vronsky or Karenin whom she hated, she resorted to escapism and killed herself. Vronsky, who was without any strength of character tried to commit suicide but survived.



Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, as mentioned before had shown that perhaps in the world love just for the sake of love does not survive, its in human psyche to want more, to crave for more. And without commitment no love can survive