Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas
explored in a literary work.
Social Change in Nineteenth-Century Russia
Tolstoy sets his tale of adultery and self-discovery against
the backdrop of the huge historical changes sweeping through Russia
during the late nineteenth century, making the historical aspects
of the novel just as important as the personal and psychological
aspects. In the Russia of Anna Karenina, a battle
rages between the old patriarchal values sustaining the landowning
aristocracy and the new, liberal—often called “libre penseur,”
or freethinking, in the novel—values of the Westernizers. The old-timer
conservatives believe in traditions like serfdom and authoritarian
government, while the Westernizing liberals believe in technology,
rationalism, and democracy. We see this clash in Levin’s difficulty
with his peasants, who, refusing to accept the Western agricultural
innovations he tries to introduce, believe that the old Russian
ways of farming are the best. We also see the confusion of these
changing times in the question of the zemstvo, or
village council, in which Levin tries to participate as a proponent
of democracy but which he finally abandons on the grounds that they
are useless.
The guests at Stiva’s dinner party raise the question
of women’s rights—clearly a hot topic of the day, and one that shows
the influence of Western social progress on Russia. That Dolly and
Anna suffer in their marriages, however, does not bode well for
the future of feminism in the world of the novel. Courtship procedures
are equally uncertain in the world of Anna Karenina.
The Russian tradition of arranged marriages is going out of fashion,
but Princess Shcherbatskaya is horrified at the prospect of allowing
Kitty to choose her own mate. The narrator goes so far as to say
plainly that no one knows how young people are to get married in
Russia in the 1870s. Taken together, all
this confusion created by fading traditions creates an atmosphere
of both instability and new potential, as if humans have to decide
again how to live. It is only in such a changing atmosphere that
Levin’s philosophical questionings are possible.
The Blessings of Family Life
Anna Karenina is in many ways
a recognizable throwback to the genre of “family novels” popular
in Russia several decades earlier, which were out of fashion by
the 1870s. The Russian family novel portrayed
the benefits and comforts of family togetherness and domestic bliss,
often in a very idealized way. In the radically changing social
climate of 1860s Russia, many social progressives attacked
the institution of the family, calling it a backward and outmoded
limitation on individual freedom. They claimed that the family often
exploited children as cheap labor. Anna Kareninajoins in
this family debate. The first sentence of the novel, concerning the
happiness and unhappiness of families, underscores the centrality of this idea.
While the novel takes a pro-family position in general, it
is nonetheless candid about the difficulties of family life. The notion that
a family limits the freedom of the individual is evident in Stiva’s
dazed realization in the first pages of the novel that he cannot
do whatever he pleases. This limitation of freedom is also evident
in Levin’s surprise at the fact that he cannot go off to visit his
dying brother on a whim but must confer with his wife first and
respond to her insistence that she accompany him. Yet despite these
restrictions on personal liberty, and despite the quarrels that
plague every family represented in Anna Karenina, the novel
portrays family life as a source of comfort, happiness, and philosophical
transcendence. Anna destroys a family and dies in misery, whereas
Levin creates a family and concludes the novel happily. Anna’s life
ultimately loses meaning, whereas Levin’s attains it, as the last
paragraph of the novel announces. Ultimately, Tolstoy leaves us
with the conclusion that faith, happiness, and family life go hand
in hand.
The Philosophical Value of Farming
Readers of Anna Karenina are sometimes
puzzled and frustrated by the extensive sections of the novel devoted
to Levin’s agricultural interests. We are treated to long passages
describing the process of mowing, we hear much about peasant attitudes
toward wooden and iron plows, and we are subjected to Levin’s sociological
theorizing about why European agricultural reforms do not work in
Russia. Yet this focus on agriculture and farming fulfills an important
function in the novel and has a long literary tradition behind it.
The idyll, a genre of literature dating from ancient times, portrays
farmers and shepherds as more fulfilled and happy than their urban
counterparts, showing closeness to the soil as a mark of the good
life. Farmers understand growth and potential, and are aware of
the delicate balance between personal labor and trust in the forces
of nature. In Anna Karenina, Tolstoy updates the
idyll by making his spokesman in the novel, Levin, a devoted farmer
as well as an impassioned philosopher—and the only character in
the novel who achieves a clear vision of faith and happiness.
For Levin, farming is a way of moving beyond oneself,
pursuing something larger than one’s own private desires—a pursuit
that he sees as the cornerstone of all faith and happiness. His
days spent mowing the fields bring him into closer contact with
the Russian peasants—symbols of the native Russian spirit—than anyone
else achieves. Other characters who harp on the virtues of peasants,
such as Sergei, rarely interact with them. Levin’s connections with
farmers thus show him rooted in his nation and culture more so than Europeanized
aristocrats like Anna. He is in closer touch with the truths of
existence. It is no accident that Levin finally finds faith by listening
to his peasant Fyodor, a farmer. Nor is it accidental that Levin’s
statement of the meaning of life in the novel’s last paragraph recalls
agriculture. Levin concludes that the value of life is in the goodness
he puts into it—just as, we might say, the value of a farm lies
in the good seeds and labor that the farmer puts into it. Ultimately,
Levin reaches an idea of faith based on growth and cultivation.
