Anna Karenina Readalong, 2023

Is a rake the same as a cad 🤔

I think a rake gets up to no good but stops short of doing really bad things like hurting people's feelings. More mischievous, perhaps?

I'm struck by how very un British AK is. I know that's ridiculous but it's so different. I can't think of too many 19th century British novels so fixated on the aristocracy as protagonists and so open about affairs . Victorians I guess did shame more. The Russians seemed saucier to me! I'm sure they both were in reality but Dostoevsky's lens is so different form Hardy or Dickens or Eliot. I don't even remember Thackeray being quite so gossipy, chatty and uncensorious. (I'm aware that bit will change but it's the open chatter about it that seems so striking)?

23/02/23

Part 2, Chapter 19

•	On the day of the races mentioned in the previous chapter, Vronsky comes a bit earlier than usual to eat lunch in the regimental mess. He's leaning over a French novel, but he's not really reading—he just doesn't want anyone coming up and talking to him.

•	He's preoccupied (as usual) with thoughts of Anna, who he hasn't seen in three days.

•	He thinks up an excuse to visit her by saying that Betsy sent him to see if she would be going to the races.
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•	Two officers go over and try to talk to Vronsky about his eating and drinking before the race. They irritate him.
•	Next, Yashvin, a captain, goes over to Vronsky and is well received, by contrast.

•	Yashvin is Vronsky's best friend in the regiment. He's also a man who doesn't seem to have any morals. He's described as a gambler and a rake. (A rake is an old-fashioned term for a "player." Yashvin is a player who enjoys breaking ladies' hearts without ever getting tied down.)

•	Vronsky likes Yashvin for a lot of reasons: he's strong, he's a great drinker, he's got a lot of character, and he can do any number of things with great skill in spite of all his drinking. Most of all, Vronsky believes that Yashvin likes Vronsky for who he really is.

•	Vronsky also feels that Yashvin would be the only friend he has who could possibly understand his desperate love for Anna.

•	The two men chat about Yashvin's gambling and Vronsky's chances for winning the steeplechase, and then the two head over to Vronsky's place for a bit of drinking.

22/02/23

Part 2, Chapter 18

•	Vronsky's outer life has not changed one bit since his affair with Anna.

•	He still hangs out with his military friends, (a.k.a. his regiment). They all love him, and he loves them back.

•	He doesn't mention his love to any of them, but the entire Petersburg society knows that an affair is taking place between Vronsky and Anna. Karenin's important standing puts a massive spotlight on their affair.
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•	Everyone gets ready for the relationship to go public—all the women who don't like Anna are preparing the nasty things they'll send through the gossip mill.

•	Vronsky's mother approved of the affair at first, when she thought that Vronsky was having an elegant affair with a prominent society woman.

•	Vronsky's mother is not so pleased, however, when she realizes that it's a passionate, desperate affair that results in Vronsky turning down promotions in order to remain near Anna.

•	Vronsky's second passion is for horses, which gives him some time away from his primary passion (i.e., Anna).

•	His regiment has planned a race for the officers. It's a steeplechase (an obstacle course for horses over three miles of open ground) for which Vronsky had registered and bought a special English thoroughbred mare. In spite of his distracting love for Anna, Vronsky is pretty excited about this event.

21/2/23

Part 2, Chapter 17

•	Oblonsky is now cheerful.

•	Levin is in a terrible mood, which is made worse by the idea that Kitty is ill because Vronsky failed to propose.

•	Levin and Oblonsky enter into an extended discussion.

•	Levin understands that he's being kind of reactionary, but he still feels that it's wrong that the peasant classes and the nobility are growing closer together. As a nobleman, he's okay with noblemen losing their property due to excessive luxury, because that's what noblemen do. And it's great for peasants to raise themselves up and buy land if that's what they deserve.
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•	What he dislikes, though, is when noblemen lose money due to innocence (i.e., ignorance), because it's just a waste. He thinks it's ridiculous to see noblemen like himself getting poor because they don't know what's what, while the peasants are educating themselves, buying land and making money. According to Levin, the next generation of noblemen is also getting a bad deal.

•	Oblonsky doesn't seem to care. He's more interested in Miss Agatha's herb brandy. For him, alcohol is more crucial than social commentary.

•	Levin asks about Vronsky, and Oblonsky points out that he recommended that Levin go head-to-head with Vronsky to fight for Kitty.

•	Oblonsky also mentions that Kitty's mother was the real Vronsky fan because Vronsky was an ideal aristocrat and had a future in society.

•	Levin gets worked up at the idea of Vronsky being an ideal aristocrat: he dismisses Vronsky's parents as wily and conniving. Levin also suggests that Vronsky's mother had loose morals.

•	It becomes clear that Levin's vision of the aristocracy doesn't encompass the hedonist socialites with whom Vronsky associates.

•	Levin likes the idea of an aristocracy in which members can point back to three or four honest generations, with high degrees of education, and low degrees of debt. In his opinion, that's better than someone who lives on handouts from connections and is willing to do anything for money.
•	

Oblonsky's good mood continues even though he knows that he's probably more in Levin's second group than in the first. Oblonsky nonetheless agrees with Levin and enjoys his spirit.
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• Levin is in a much better mood after his rant.

•	The two men agree to go shooting first thing in the morning.

20/2/23

Part 2, Chapter 16

•	On their way home, Levin asks Oblonsky for all the details of Kitty's situation, but once Oblonsky starts to speak of them, Levin suddenly cuts him off, saying that he has no right to know
•	Then they start discussing the forest that Oblonsky is about to sell. He's getting a bad deal. Levin knows that the forest is worth much more than Oblonsky's asking price, and he feels scornful of city people who come down to the country assuming they know everything.
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•	Oblonsky asks why no one else offered a higher price, and Levin explains that the dealer (Ryabinin) has fixed it up with the other dealers so that no one else will offer a better price.
•	By the time they reach the house, Levin is in a bad mood, although he won't admit it.

•	Ryabinin is waiting for Oblonsky.

•	Ryabinin is unattractive and doesn't have any class or manners. Levin clearly dislikes him.

•	Ryabinin wants to talk first, to bring down the price even further, but after Levin threatens to buy the forest himself, Ryabinin produces the money that had been agreed upon previously.

I'm a couple of chapters behind, but I agree with having some sympathy for Karenin. I found the bit where he was trying to give his little speech, but couldn't get his thoughts into words, rather touching.

I do feel for Anna too. Vronsky is clearly the bad guy here!

19/2/23

Part 2, Chapter 15

•	Levin and Oblonsky go shooting.
•	Feeling happy, Levin is finally bold enough to ask if Kitty is married.
•	Oblonsky's reply—that Kitty is not married, not thinking of getting married, and is very ill and has been sent abroad—disturbs Levin.
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•	Laska (Levin's dog) spies a snipe and assumes that the two men are going to miss it.
•	Both men hit the snipe, and Laska fetches it.

18/2/23

Part 2, Chapter 14

•	On his way home, Levin finds a surprise: Oblonsky has taken the train from Moscow to see Levin. Oblonsky says he has arrived to see Levin, do some shooting, and sell a forest.

•	The two men have a splendid dinner and great conversation, because they know each other so well.

•	Levin is afraid to ask if Kitty has been married.
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•	At the end of supper, it becomes clear that Oblonsky has been having sex with women other than his wife. He makes an uncomfortable analogy between eating sweet rolls while also having a daily ration of bread. He won't accept life without love, Oblonsky tells Levin.

•	Levin listens attentively, but he can't understand the appeal of sleeping with women with loose morals.

I thought of Madame Bovary when I read that chapter. Emma goes through the full range of emotions with each of her affairs from desire and pleasure to disillusionment and regret. Flaubert must not have had a disapproving wife looking over his shoulder :) There are some good moments in it. The scene where Emma orders the carriage to keep going around Rouen while she is enclosed with her lover (Leon?) comes to mind.

Thanks for your comments cassandre. Always so interesting!

I quite agree that women at that time were between a rock and a hard place when it came to sexuality and the double standards were horrendous - look at how Oblonsky carries on without the confusion or potential for disgrace Anna faces. It's just that some of the early comments were looking at the men from a very 21st century point of view but not Anna and I found that interesting. Maybe that says a lot about us having a more "he's a bore, you go girl" attitude.

I'm guessing that in the context of the era the immediate remorse is meant to keep the reader's sympathies with Anna?

I'm sure that's right, Sadik.

Countrygirl, I don't think Anna's decision to commit adultery is ethically admirable, but I have a lot of sympathy for her, because I don't think her society has equipped her to acknowledge and deal with her own sexual desire. Traditional morality says that women should be faithful to their husbands, but it doesn't encourage women to seek sexual fulfilment, so what are women supposed to do when they're married and they find themselves having strong feelings for someone they're not married to? I think this is one of the questions the novel is making us ask.

Anna's shame and self-hatred mean that she has deeply internalised society's notions of how women should behave. She doesn't really have a framework to help her process her feelings of sexual desire, so she acts on them blindly, and ends up in a state of, well, cognitive dissonance. She's in a state of real turmoil, as Fuzzy says.

It's interesting come to think of it how many novels are about adultery. Madame Bovary of course (which isn't a novel I know very well), but also the 17th c French novel La Princesse de Cleves, where the young heroine feels so guilty for fancying someone who's not her husband that she ends up telling her husband about it, and that goes very very badly, as we might expect! And Les Liaisons dangereuses, where the saintly Presidente de Tourvel falls for the libertine Valmont, even though it goes against all her morals.

In the context of arranged marriages, women's desires are relegated to the background, and that's what causes trouble.

On a completely different topic, the weather feels surprisingly spring-like this week, with snowdrops and crocus starting to pop up, so I'm happy to be reading about Levin's spring-fuelled joy. Even though farm manure doesn't appeal to me much 😂

I'd forgotten about Tolstoy's wife making him edit out the sexy parts of War and Peace! Ha. I wonder what she thought of Anna Karenina.

17/2/23

Part 2, Chapter 13

•	It's spring, and Levin is surrounded by sprouting green plants. He feels a little like the plants in that he is full of new energy, but not sure in what direction he should grow.

•	He encounters a lot of problems with his farmers, who are not as productive as Levin is. He becomes angry at the carelessness of the workers on his estate, who do not take time for necessary upkeep of farm equipment. Furthermore, they continue not to follow his new recommendations for repairs. Levin is furious over the slovenliness of farm work, against which he has been fighting all his life.
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•	He tries to convince his steward Kuzma to hire more workers, to cart manure earlier, and to plow a field continually to keep it fallow. While the steward agrees with Levin's plans, he seems resigned to the fact that it is never going to happen. He just doesn't think that he'll be able to get his tenants and workers to overcome their set ways.

•	Levin knows that he is fighting for the impossible as he tries to fight that tone of resignation in Kuzma's voice that he only describes as "as God grants," but he wants to get his peasants in gear and start farming more efficiently. He can't stop fighting for his reforms, even when there's so much resistance.

•	The good weather shakes Levin out of his disappointment, and the chapter ends with Levin feeling optimistic and ready to get his gun to go snipe shooting.

I do have sympathy for Karenin, for the record. It sounds like Anna was happy in her marriage until she met Vronsky. It would have been a passing flirtation if he hadn't pursued her. You are right countrygirl, Anna gave in to him at that point where she started looking out for him at Betsy's. She obviously has agency in this, but she told him to leave her alone early on and he didn't. You can really sense the turmoil in the dream where she imagines that she has two husbands.

That Vronsky is a bad one though

It's interesting that people have been happy to criticise the men but not Anna who is the one cheating.
I also think Karenin and Levin get an unfair rough ride. By the standards of the day and their class they are decent blokes. The best an aristocratic woman could really hope for was a tolerable man who didn't keep her short of money, didn't drink or gamble and didn't get too many servants pregnant. By our standards it's a low bar but things have changed.
Levin was criticised because Kitty is young, but that's when women were married off. And until relatively recently marriages were arranged and a contract rather than romantic.
Karenin does seem stuffy and dull but he treats Anna well by the standards of the day. Her boredom is understandable and Vronsky did pursue her but once back in St Petersburg she went to Betsy's knowing well she would see him.

I'm guessing that in the context of the era the immediate remorse is meant to keep the reader's sympathies with Anna? (Also perhaps to imply that she's been heavily pressured into sex by vronsky?)

16/2/23

Part 2, Chapter 12

• Even after three months, Levin is still not over Kitty. He blushes every time he thinks about having been refused. He waits impatiently for news that she's been married, hoping that this will help him get over her.

•	Spring comes.

•	In the face of such beautiful weather, Levin resolves to lead a solitary and virtuous life.
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•	He gets a letter from Masha saying that his brother Nicholas's health has deteriorated, but that Nicholas refuses to get treatment.

•	Levin goes to Moscow, convinces his brother to get treatment, and succeeds in lending him some money.

•	Levin spends his time farming, reading, and writing book on farming. His life is full—only rarely does he feel the need to discuss topics with someone other than Miss Agatha, his nurse.

•	Levin's book on farming begins with the premise that the science of farming should not be reduced to questions of soil and climate alone, but should also taken into account the "known, immutable" (2, 12, 3) character of the worker (about which he does not elaborate).

I’ve caught up from a few chapters behind and feel cheated that my edition omitted the euphemistic spray of dots.

Not quite convinced that if Anna was going to feel so wretched so immediately, she would have gone through with it at all. Agree that the cut to remorse happened too quickly.

I agree with cassandre that Anna was plunged into regret and remorse very quickly. Pleasure doesn't enter into it at all.

Do you recall how Tolstoy's wife had a hand in W+P and insisted that he cut out Pierre and Hélène's honeymoon scene? No! We can't have that in this erudite work...

Ha, fair enough! But he's paradoxically drawing our attention to the fact he's NOT describing it.

they also make me think that Tolstoy being a little prudish by refusing to describe the actual sexual intercourse
I guess he wouldn't have got published if he had!

The two lines of dots are an interesting textual strategy! They're attention-grabbing, but they also make me think that Tolstoy being a little prudish by refusing to describe the actual sexual intercourse.

And I agree, Desdamona, the affair doesn't seem to bring Anna any happiness at all! It's a bit unfair IMO on Tolstoy's part not to let Anna have any pleasure before the regrets set in. We've skipped straight over the pleasure stage into the stage of shame and self-loathing. Hmm. I'm not keen on the way Tolstoy handles female sexual desire here.

Took them nearly a year from meeting to DTD, that's deferred gratification for you. Doesn't seem to be bringing much happiness to Anna though, and I imagine Veronsky is the type who enjoys the thrill of the chase and loses interest once he's made his conquest.