Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

At first, Anna Karenina may seem to be a story about love, but the novel explores deeper issues, such as human relationships, religious beliefs, and moral responsibilities. Anna Karenina published in is one of the masterpiece from Tolstoy after War and Peace, this genre is romance with so much religius aspect. Tolstoy does not simply tell and preach readers what is right or wrong. Instead, he leaves us with questions that are not so easy to resolve.

Set in nineteenth-century Imperial Russia, Anna Karenina takes place mainly in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and the countryside. The novel opens with a marital crisis: Stiva Oblonsky’s affair has been discovered by his wife, Dolly. We then meet Anna Karenina, Stiva’s sister, who travels to Moscow to help reconcile the couple.

The story also introduces Konstantin Levin, who comes from the countryside and hopes to marry Kitty Shcherbatskaya, Dolly’s younger sister. However, he has a rival, Count Vronsky, a young officer who is also interested in Kitty, and she hopes to marry him. At a ball, Anna (still married with Karenin) meets Vronsky, and they begin to fall in love with each other. And the adultery is begin. 

‘Yes, there’s something alien, demonic and enchanting in her,’ Kitty said to herself.

Tolstoy presents us with three different examples of marriage in Anna Karenina:

Through Stiva and Dolly, we see a marriage that lacks responsibility on Stiva’s part. Stiva does not seem to feel much regret for his affair with his children’s governess. He carries on with his life as if nothing has happened, while Dolly is left to deal with the pain alone. He seems to give little thought to his wife’s feelings. I admire Dolly because, despite her disappointment and suffering, she still considers her family and children important and tries to keep her family together.

This raise the question:  Should a person stay in an unhappy marriage for the sake of their children and family, even when their partner has hurt them and failed to take responsibility?

Through Levin and Kitty, Tolstoy presents a different view of marriage. They hope to build a happy marriage based on sincere love, honesty, and Christian values. They want their relationship to be more than romantic love; they also want to fulfill their responsibilities as husband and wife.

This raise question : Is marriage has a higher purpose beyond personal happiness, to live according to God's will and prepare for the life to come?

Through Anna and Alexei Karenin, Tolstoy shows a marriage that lacks emotional closeness. Anna married Karenin without truly understanding what love was, while Karenin was twenty years older than her. This reminds me of Dorothea and Casaubon in Middlemarch, where marriage also appears respectable from the outside but lacks genuine emotional connection. Their relationship raises an important question: Can a marriage truly be happy when emotional needs are not fulfilled and love is missing? 

                                              

The novel consist in eight part, not just telling about Anna's romance, Tolstoy present deeply other character, mostly about Konstantin Levin rather than only focusing on Anna. I think Anna herself can be seen as a symbol of how relationships can change the lives of other people. Her presence first brings Stiva and Dolly together again after their marital conflict. Later, her relationship with Vronsky also affects Levin and Kitty, because if Anna had not become involved with Vronsky, Vronsky might not have rejected Kitty, and Levin might not have ended up with her. In this way, Anna is connected to the other marriages in the novel. Her choices do not affect only herself, but also change the direction of other people's lives. 

The marriage in context is in 1800s, it's quite complicated, when women who are always disadvantaged women only waiting to be purpose, can't she purpose men. just like Dolly said:

‘Yes, I understand everything now,’ Darya Alexandrovna went on. ‘You can’t understand it. For you men, who are free and can choose, it’s always clear whom you love. But a young girl in a state of expectation, with that feminine, maidenly modesty, a girl who sees you men from afar, who takes everything on trust – a girl may and does sometimes feel that she doesn’t know who she loves or what to say.’

‘Never mind, you propose when your love has ripened or when the scale tips towards one of your two choices. But a girl isn’t asked. She’s expected to choose for herself, but she can’t choose and only answers yes or no.’

But what about the illegitimate relationship between Anna and Vronsky, in which they live together like husband and wife? Their situation is not as simple as it might seem from a modern perspective. Vronsky still wants to maintain a connection with his former social circle. He wants to live a meaningful life beyond his relationship with Anna and their family life. From a man's perspective, having an affair seems more socially acceptable. If Vronsky could not be with Anna, he might simply marry another woman and continue his life as before. This reflects the double standard that existed in society at the time (same as Stiva Oblonsky's affair), which placed women at a much greater disadvantage. While men could continue their lives with relatively little judgment, women were condemned. People gossiped about Anna and called her a whore behind her back. It seems that Anna and Vronsky have love, but is love alone enough to sustain a lasting relationship?

So in the end, what about happines that Tolstoy seem to suggest? 

If we choose of the example or Tolstoy's candidate which one to be a perfect marriage? I would rather choose Levin and Kitty, not because they are have a perfect marriage which I don't think some kind of it exsist, bur because they are lucky. Personaly when Levin is married, he is  a thoughful men, thinks seriously about life and the future. I also admire Dolly's patience and perseverance. Her character makes me wonder whether a wife's sacrifice is always necessary to maintain a happy family.

But what if someone finds herself trapped in a marriage like Anna's? To what extent should a wife have the freedom to leave a marriage that no longer brings her happiness? And if she chooses to leave, what about her children? Should she sacrifice her own happiness to remain with them, or should she have the right to seek a different life?

For me, the most heartbreaking scene in the novel is when Anna meets her son, Seryozha. Their relationship makes the question of personal freedom much more difficult. Anna is not simply a woman who wants to follow her feelings; she is also a mother who loves her child. Her situation makes me wonder how society's judgment and the restrictions placed on women can turn a personal decision into a painful choice between romantic love and motherhood. 

Anna is not free from responsibility for her choices, but the way society treats her reveals its double standards, especially toward women. I wonder whether people who judge her are genuinely concerned about morality or whether they simply enjoy the comfort of believing themselves better than someone who has failed. Perhaps the real question is not whether Anna deserves criticism, but whether society has the right to strip someone of their dignity because of their mistakes. 

The last, reading Anna Karenina is quite chalenging, for what I thought it is romance novel, but it's wrong. This eight hundreed novel, has made me reflecting of life, Perhaps the most important lesson I have taken from Anna Karenina is that we can disagree with someone's choices without denying their humanity. After all, being morally right does not give us the right to be cruel.

Ruang Buku Megga Rated :  5/5

Title :  Anna Karenina

Author : Leo Tolstoy

Publisher : Penguin Classics
Year : 2006, (First Published in 1878)
Format / Pages : Softcover / 838 pages
ISBN : 9780140449174