Anna Karenina

Author: (Russia) Leo Tolstoy Ge Chongyue
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-01-01
Features: Anna Karenina has two seamlessly integrated and mutually responsive parallel main lines. These two main lines, centered around Anna and Levin respectively, address two aspects of issues. In the primary main line, the central figure is Anna, with characters associated with her including her husband Karenin, her lover Vronsky, her brother Oblonsky's family, as well as members of three circles of high society in St. Petersburg and some aristocrats in the military. The characters in Anna's storyline are mostly involved in moral and ethical issues. In this line, the author primarily aims to depict the intense changes in moral and ethical concepts among the aristocracy in the upper class of that time, due to the influence of bourgeois thought, in areas such as family and marriage. Anna Karenina is a young woman with outward beauty, sincere emotions, a rich inner world, and full of vitality. She marries a St. Petersburg bureaucrat, Karenin, who is much older than her. For many years, she lives a life of a virtuous wife and mother. By chance, she meets the charming and dashing young officer Vronsky and falls deeply in love with him. She leaves her family and follows Vronsky, only to face the hostility of the entire upper class. She bravely resists, but the happiness does not last long. Eventually, her relationship with Vronsky begins to crumble, and in the end, she takes the path of suicide.