After Tolstoy was finished with “War and Peace”, he continued analyzing Dekabrists’s movement, its roots and consequences. He was very interested in the events, followed the beginning of XVII century and their historical pre-conditions. He dreamed of writing a history romance novel about Russia’s life under Peter the Great, and he clearly pictured his future heroine. One day Tolstoy was daydreaming and his imagination created a perfect aristocratic female hand. He started working on it trying to picture the woman who had such a perfect hand. First his imagination drew shoulder then neck and finally he saw the whole image of a beautiful woman in a gorgeous dress looking at him with great sadness in her eyes. The dream has disappeared but Tolstoy couldn’t get the image out of his head. The woman was with him day and night and the only way to get rid of his obsession was to bring it alive in his story.

The writer was always interested in relationships between a men and a woman, especially after they were married. He called it “misl’ semeinaya”, what in Russian m

And of course there is no secret for a reader whose side the author is on.

The upper class society forgave Voronski his affair with Anna but it never forgave her. The rules were very different for men and women at that time. All her former friends and acquaintances closed their doors to Anna. But Vronski could still have the life he used to have before he met Anna. His affair made him even more interesting in the eyes of the society. Tolstoy demonstrates the hypocrisy and corruption of the Russian society. He doesn’t approve of its rejection of Anna. But he doesn’t approve Anna’s behavior as well. He blames the society actually not for rejecting Anna, but for doing the same things she did, but quietly. Most of the society women themselves had extra-marital affairs but they turn on Anna when her affair becomes public. The moral of the society is that whatever happens, and everything is possible, must be hidden and secret. The rules are not written, but they exist; everybody knows them and has to follow. Vronski’s cousin Princess Betsy is a clear example of that hypocrisy, having love affairs from time to time and making fun of her old husband, but wearing a mask of a very respectable lady.

Tolstoy discusses issues of marriage, love, family, carnal desire, jealosy, faith and hypocrisy. He looks at these issues from different sides and interconnects them with attitudes of his time. Though it is a romance novel, Tolstoy shows life of people of different professions, their values and social statutes. He lets the reader learn about the lives of teachers, doctors, governors, servants, village men; basically all the classes that are formed after of serfdom was abolished in Russia (kreposnoe pravo)

eans spirit of marriage. He built his own marriage on the principals he believed in, but was perfectly aware that the others lived by completely different rules. He wanted to prove his truth by showing that the beauty and smiles of the women from aristocratic circles, who all were married and seemed happy from outside, but were lost and confused inside. He discussed his idea with his wife, who gave up her aristocratic background to become somebody Tolstoy wanted her to be. She wrote in her journal that Tolstoy’s goal was to uncover all lies of the upper society, but he really wanted to make his heroine pitiful. He sincerely believed that it was the society that turned women into those unnatural and pretending creatures but even the best of them were not able to get away from the net the society built around them.

Some topics in this essay:
Saint Petersburg, Karenin Karenin, Anna Karenina, Anna Anna, Bibikov Tolstoy’s, Ivanovich Koznishev, Anna Vronski, Levin Tolsoy, Vronskyi Anna, Alexandrovich Karenin, saint petersburg, upper class, anna karenina, rules rules, book tolstoy, romance novel, novel tolstoy, tolstoy wrote, upper society, anna affair,