The recurrent theme of bouncing between reality and imagination in Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina is complicated because there is no strict binary between the two. Furthermore, “reality” looks different from character to character. What one character might think is true is not true for another. Therefore, the exploration of what reality and imagination looks like in Anna Karenina is telling of how the different characters move through the world around them. This movement is based on external environments (such as society) and also internal landscapes (such as thoughts and emotions) and the complicated relationship between the external and the internal. In the novel, movement is anything from the physical motions of walking or talking to the movement of the mind from thought to thought. Movement also relates to how perspective can change from moment to moment. All of this coexists within one character in endless combinations and iterations.

The way characters can frame the world around them has a direct correlation with gender. In particular, Anna’s movement from being full of light and life to being darkened by all that is ugly in the world stands in stark contrast to Levin’s movement from darkness to lightness. Movement is different based on gender, especially in nineteenth century Russia—the setting of the novel – and, because Anna’s movement in her external world is thwarted, her internal world is thus affected. Anna’s movement is captured in painted form by three different men in the novel. The first man is her husband, Alexei; the second man is her lover, Vronsky; and the third man is the male protagonist of the novel, Levin. Each man has a different way of viewing her as she appears in certain paintings and portraits. Quite literally, the male gaze can imagine Anna in different ways.

Alexei Alexandrovich, Anna’s husband, has an interesting moment of looking at a portrait of Anna hanging on a wall in their house after he finds out that she loves someone else. In his reaction, the reader can hear how his perspective of this picture correlates to his present emotional reality:

Above the armchair, in a gilt frame, hung an oval portrait of Anna, beautifully executed by a famous painter. Alexei Alexandrovich looked at it. The impenetrable eyes looked at him insolently and mockingly, as on that last evening of their talk. The sight of the black lace on her head, her black hair and the beautiful white hand with its fourth finger covered with rings, splendidly executed by the painter, impressed him as unbearably insolent and defiant. After looking at the portrait for about a minute, Alexei Alexandrovich gave such a start that his lips trembled and produced a ‘brr’, and he turned away (284).

Alexei frames the portrait with how he is feeling and uses this image of her “impenetrable eyes” to see that what he feels is somehow manifested within her (and captured within this painting). The portrait itself never changed, but Alexei’s perspective did.

   Different characters have different realities based on gender. Society restricts Anna in ways that her lover, Vronsky, is not restricted. It is not till the later half of the novel that Vronsky realizes the impact that society has on the movement of Anna: “though society was open to him personally, it was closed to Anna” (528). Before this point, however, Anna and Vronsky try to live outside of Russian society and they enter this ideal and picturesque Italian life. But even in Italy, the way Anna is depicted by men is still something to note. During their time in Italy, Vronsky is happy and occupied with painting and so he decides to paint Anna: “He liked the graceful and showy French manner more than any other, and in this manner he began painting a portrait of Anna in Italian costume, and to him and to everyone who saw it this portrait seemed very successful” (466). Vronsky imagines fitting Anna into the kind of painting and style that he likes, the “graceful and showy French” style and in “Italian costume.” He sees how Anna can fit the frame of what he desires. And to note, his portrait “seemed” successful because he is not quite done with it and, in fact, he never finishes it, he never finishes what he started. Another famous Russian painter living in Italy, named Mikhailov, paints a fascinating portrait of Anna. The completion of Mikhailov’s portrait puts Vronsky’s to a stop: “He [Vronsky] merely stopped painting Anna’s portrait after Mikhailov finished, deciding that it was now superfluous” (478). Vronsky moves on from wanting to paint Anna in a certain light to feeling disengaged or disenchanted; and interestingly, around this time in the novel, Vronsky and Anna’s relationship begins to trail off as well.

The other painter, Mikhailov, paints this striking portrait of Anna: “From the fifth sitting the portrait struck everyone, especially Vronsky” (477). The portrait resonates with Vronsky in particular because it displays a “special beauty in her” and the “sweetest inner expression” and Vronsky thinks that only someone who knows Anna, like himself, would be able to find this inner expression, “though he [Vronsky] had learned of that sweetest inner expression of hers only from the portrait” (477). This is another rift between the real life Anna and a framed Anna. Vronsky uses the framed version of Anna to see the real-life version of her.

Levin, the male protagonist, also has an interesting reaction to Mikhailov’s painting of Anna and the real-life Anna. Levin gets a chance to look at the painting and his mind wanders from thought to thought:

And the male voice that had been speaking fell silent… Levin gazed at the portrait, stepping out of its frame in the brilliant light… He even forgot where he was… It was not a painting but a lovely living woman… Only, because she was not alive, she was more beautiful than a living woman can be… Anna came to meet him from behind the trellis, and in the half light of the study Levin saw the woman of the portrait… at the same height of beauty that the artist had caught. She was less dazzling in reality, but in the living woman there was some new attractiveness that was not in the portrait (696-697).

Levin is transported away from reality for a second by the effect of this “dazzling” portrait. Does Levin see the real woman? Or the woman of the portrait? For Levin, there is this interplay between reality and imagination on a moment to moment basis. While Vronsky projects that “sweetest inner expression” from the portrait onto the real-life Anna, Levin sees something new in “the living woman” separate from the portrait (to some extent).

This quote also starts with an important establishment—that of the male voice falling silent. This is part of the move towards listening and looking and taking in one’s surroundings as opposed to dominating what is around. To some degree, this shifts the narrative from the male gaze projecting a certain frame around Anna to the male voice falling silent. This establishment is connected to having the ability to see that other people have different realities. Towards the very end of the novel, Levin finds this inexplicable peace. His senses are open and to quote an example of this openness: “his ears were ceaselessly filled with various sounds, now of a busy worker bee flying quickly by” (803). He is listening to and absorbing the smaller details of what surrounds him. Thinking about Levin’s trajectory and where he ends up shows how the movement of him and Anna are comparable and yet completely different.

Levin and Anna have an interesting connection because they both go through periods of being deeply depressed. Tolstoy also connects them with imagery of light—with light-oriented words—which is an interesting choice because of their character movement and how their movement changes throughout the novel in polar opposite ways. The light in the scene when these two characters meet moves from being “brilliant” to being “half light” to even “less dazzling.” Levin sees the picture as “dazzling” but Anna as “less dazzling in reality”—not with the same amount of light as in the painting. He sees a different kind of attractiveness in her in person. This relationship with light and perspective continues till the end of the novel.

In the first half of the novel, Levin’s state of depression changes his vision; “darkness covered everything for him” (352). Levin sees the world in this limited and narrow way: “‘This whole world of ours is just a bit of mildew that grew over a tiny planet. And we think we can have something great—thoughts, deeds! They’re all grains of sand… everything somehow becomes insignificant’” (375). Levin tries to finish this thought—but he goes somewhere he is not expecting to go, he continues, “all the same there is this good in life that…” but he trails off—he is unable to finish his thought about the good in life (375). However, not even a couple of pages later he becomes lifted out of this “insignificant” point of view. His perspective—the way he frames the world—is shifted because of a rekindled love with a character named Kitty and this love ignites his whole world.

Levin’s thoughts move from this narrow-tunnel-vision of a mildewed world to this incredibly wide-open and spacious perspective of looking around and seeing the universe and people throughout the expanse of time. At the end of the novel he thinks to himself:

And would the astronomers be able to understand or calculate anything, if they took into account all the various complex movements of the earth… The visible movement of the luminaries around the fixed earth, on the very movement which is now before me, which has been that way for millions of people throughout the ages (816).

His thoughts account for the movement that he is connected to—he feels connected to movement throughout the entire universe. The smallness is vanquished with his ability to look around—and to listen—to hear all the sounds around him and see the vastness of the stars and to be able to think about the millions of other people besides himself.

In contrast, Anna’s vision becomes more and more warped with ugliness. After the first act of sex with Vronsky, her world immediately starts to get smaller: “her situation presented itself to her in all its ugly nakedness” (150). This ugliness is alluded to until the very end—when everything around her is tarnished. The use of the word “ugly” is overpowering; the reader can hear Anna, they can see what she is seeing during the infamous scene at the train station (765). The movement of her mind becomes quicker and darker and to quote some of what is running through her mind: “The bell rang, some young men went by, ugly, insolent and hurried” (765). A couple of sentences later, more ugliness is depicted: “An ugly lady with a bustle… and a little girl, laughing unnaturally, ran by under the window…[and Anna thinks] ‘The little girl – even she is ugly and affected’” (765).  Everything is moving in a hurried and ugly pace around her.

Though Anna and Vronsky both want to be together, Anna takes the blame for it. The society that is open to Vronsky is closed to Anna. Because society is closed to Anna, she stops being able to move freely, which ostracizes and disconnects her from the world. Anna is on the train sitting across from this young couple and she thinks to herself, “‘you won’t get away from yourselves’” (762). Anna is trying to get away and she cannot and she projects this constricting lens onto those around her: “It was as if Anna could see their story and all the hidden corners of their souls, turning her light on them” (766). She cannot accept or escape herself—because society has cornered her and affected her. The movement of her mind reflects how she has internalized this ugliness—the constriction and control of her motion. And so this once beautiful and picturesque Anna is sent spiraling out of control—because “she” never actually existed. Society made it acceptable to create the “dazzling” fantasy picture of her and this image is destroyed when she no longer fits the frame.

In Anna’s reality, she is not allowed to forgive or accept herself—but in Levin’s reality, he is able to accept himself (because society more readily accepts him). Levin is able to move more freely. When Anna steps out into society, people are unforgiving towards her. Anna tells Vronsky that when she did go out, someone at the theater, to quote, “said it was a disgrace to sit next to me” (549). Eventually, Anna loses her last glimpse of light:

And, drawing her head down between her shoulders, fell on her hands under the carriage, and with a light movement… sank to her knees… And the candle by the light of which she had been reading… flared up brighter than ever, lit up for her all that had once been darkness, sputtered, grew dim, and went out for ever (768).

Anna’s darkness at the end is complete—whereas Levin’s darkness holds light—he sees the stars shine within the dark night sky. Levin, however, slept with someone besides his love, Kitty, gets mad easily, and is totally imperfect—but he moves from darkness to light—while Anna’s glimpse of light is forever extinguished. Each character moves differently—how they move through life is telling of what they think and what they can think in regards to reality and to their reality.

On the very last page of the novel,  Levin finally realizes that thought he had originally been unable to finish about the good in life: “I’ll get angry in the same ways… but my life is not only not meaningless but has the unquestionable meaning of good which it is in my power to put into it!” (817). The last page ends with Levin realizing his reality—that he is in control of the good he puts into the world around him. But I am not satisfied with this nice ending—Anna’s death is still present to me. Levin’s thinking is centered around the “good” in life because he feels he can be good according to the world he lives in.

The theme of the male voice falling silent is echoed in one of the last scenes with Vronsky as well, at a point after Anna’s death. The reader finds out that he has a toothache and “The nagging pain in the strong tooth, filling his mouth with saliva, prevented him from speaking” (780). This is fascinating because Vronsky uses his mouth throughout the novel—usually to talk and to tell—but something else is going on here. This imagery of the strong and habitually active male mouth is silenced. There is something to the power of silence and to the power of listening—and being in the place where you have to listen. Vronsky is in a place where he cannot keep telling, he cannot keep painting his desires—but he is faced with listening to reality. Vronsky does feel, to quote, “ineffaceable regret… [and then] He ceased to feel the toothache, and sobs distorted his face” (781). He feels regret and this actually cures his “nagging” toothache—the recognition of his emotional reality moves between the internal and the external and makes physical the regret he is feeling.

Movement can be anything from the physical movement of walking or talking to the movement of the mind from thought to thought to the movement in the way perspective changes about life from moment to moment—as Anna and Levin experience with darkness and light. Just as Tolstoy set out to prove that Anna should die—and should be condemned—instead he wrote an 800-page novel about how complicated her life was and how society infiltrates movement. As author Milan Kundera says in his book The Art of the Novel:

When Tolstoy sketched the first draft of Anna Karenina, Anna was a most unsympathetic woman, and her tragic end was entirely deserved and justified. The final version of the novel is very different, but I do not believe that Tolstoy had revised his moral ideas in the meantime; I would say, rather, that in the course of his writing, he was listening to another voice than that of his personal moral conviction. He was listening to what I would call the wisdom of the novel (Kundera 58-9).

Tolstoy could not help but write about how Anna moved through society and how society moved her—this happened by listening to her and letting the reader listen to her internal and external movements (and the relationship between the two). Perhaps the male voice falling silent is what Tolstoy’s novel engenders: as Anna’s life and death not only show the confines of society, but also how her life did take on a movement of its own and we can choose to listen to that movement and all it illuminates.

Works Cited

Tolstoy, Leo. Anna Karenina: a Novel in Eight Parts. Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. Penguin Books, 2002.

Kundera, Milan. The Art of the Novel. Translated by Linda Asher. Faber and Faber, 1999.