Since reading this book, I’ve wondered if naming it after Anna has lead to it being misinterpreted. For me, I see Tolstoy as a moralistic writer and the love affair between Anna and Vronsky seems to be a cautionary tale. I don’t feel that the book has its sympathies with Anna and that we shouldn’t interpret the novel as her tragedy, as we would with a book like Madame Bovary.
Instead, I see the relationship between Levin and Kitty as the one at the heart of the book and think that the title of it should have mentioned them instead of Anna.
by WyndhamHP
4 Comments
It’s just a title.
Well Anna Karenina does appear in the novel. However why should we assume by her name also appearing as the title to have more sympathy for her than Bovary or Jane Eyre or whatever other book is titled after an important character?
Sofia was now excited for him, for them, and on March 19 wrote her sister Tatyana: “Last night Levochka suddenly unexpectedly began writing a novel of contemporary life. The subject of the novel—an unfaithful wife and all the drama proceeding from this.”
His first plan, a story in four parts plus an epilogue, looks like this:
Prologue. She leaves her husband under happy “auspices.” She goes <to meet> to console the bride and meets Gagin [the name of the future Vronsky].
Levin and Kitty are not mentioned in this famous original rough outline. They are probably added later. In fact,
“Levin is often considered a semi-autobiographical portrayal of Tolstoy’s own beliefs, struggles, and life events.[10] Tolstoy’s first name was “Lev,” and the Russian surname “Levin” means “of Lev.” According to footnotes in the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation, the viewpoints Levin supports throughout the novel in his arguments match Tolstoy’s outspoken views on the same issues. Moreover, according to W. Gareth Jones, Levin proposed to Kitty in the same way as Tolstoy to Sophia Behrs. Additionally, Levin’s request that his fiancée read his diary as a way of disclosing his faults and previous sexual encounters parallels Tolstoy’s own requests to his fiancée Behrs.”
https://lithub.com/reading-the-first-drafts-of-anna-karenina/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Karenina
In my reading, the novel is thematically about people being caught up in a changing world (changing social roles, changing values/morals, changing economic relationships). Anna symbolises this condition; sympathetic, tragic, and not easily fitted into the moral categories of the world she lives in.