Anna Karenina — Part 1

Contents

Chapter 1

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

• Prince Stepan “Stiva” Arkadyevich Oblonsky had an affair with the family’s former French governess.
• His wife, Princess Darya “Dolly” Alexandrovna Oblonskaya, finds a note from the governess that Stiva left in his study.
• Stiva is in despair, but not actually remorseful. He’s more ashamed of his “idiotic smile” when Dolly confronted him than anything else.

Chapter 2

There was no solution, but that universal solution which life gives to all questions, even the most complex and insoluble. That answer is: one must live in the needs of the day – that is, forget oneself.

• Dolly is the mother of seven children: five living and two dead.
• Stiva wishes he had hidden the affair better.
• Stiva receives a telegram from his sister Anna Arkadyevna Karenina saying she will be visiting tomorrow.
• She is coming alone, not with her husband Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin.

Chapter 3

Except deceit and lying nothing could come of it now; and deceit and lying were opposed to his nature.

• Stiva receives a letter from someone who wants to buy a forest on Dolly’s estate. He wants to sell it, but this is bad timing.
• He reads the liberal paper. He doesn’t really have views of his own, but just goes along with the popular views and fashions.
• Tanya (his eldest girl, and favorite) and Grisha (his youngest boy) are running around, and he gives them chocolates.
• The widow of a captain named Kalinin comes to see Stiva with an impossible request. He tries to give her advice.
• Stiva resolves finally to face his wife.

Chapter 4

He looked at her, and the fury expressed in her face alarmed and amazed him. He did not understand how his pity for her exasperated her. She saw in him sympathy for her, but not love.

• Dolly is conflicted about whether to take the children to her mother’s.
• Stiva enters Dolly’s bedroom and tells her Anna is coming today.
• They have a heated confrontation. Stiva begs for forgiveness, but Dolly yells that he is loathsome and repulsive, and tells him to go away.
• In private, Dolly grieves about how she loved him. She questions whether she still loves him, or possibly loves him even more.

Chapter 5

Levin suddenly blushed, not as grown men blush, slightly, without being themselves aware of it, but as boys blush, feeling that they are ridiculous through their shyness, and consequently ashamed of it and blushing still more, almost to the point of tears.

• Stiva got his job through Anna’s husband Alexei. But he has many connections, and would have got a good job even without Alexei.
• Everyone likes Stiva for his good humor and bright disposition.
• Stiva is with his colleagues Philip Ivanich Nikitin and Mikhail Stanislavich Grinevich when his friend Konstantin “Kostya” Dmitrievich Levin arrives.
• Levin is the half-brother of a famous author, Sergey Ivanovich Koznyshev.
• Levin owns over six thousand acres in the Karazinsky district.

Chapter 6

But Levin was in love, and so it seemed to him that Kitty was so perfect in every respect that she was a creature far above everything earthly; and that he was a creature so low and so earthly that it could not even be conceived that other people and she herself could regard him as worthy of her.

• Dolly’s parents are the Prince Shcherbatsky and Princess Shcherbatskaya.
• She has one brother, the younger Prince Shcherbatsky.
• She has two younger sisters, Princess Natalia Alexandrovna Lvova and Princess Katerina “Kitty” Alexandrovna Shcherbatskaya.
• Levin is in love with the whole family, and especially Kitty.
• He has been living in the country, but came back to Moscow to propose.

Chapter 7

The professor, in annoyance, and, as it were, mental suffering at the interruption, looked round at the strange inquirer, more like a bargeman than a philosopher, and turned his eyes upon Sergey Ivanovich, as though to ask: What’s one to say to him?

• Levin is staying with his half-brother Koznyshev in Moscow.
• Koznyshev argues with a philosophy professor on the line between psychological and physiological phenomena in humans.
• Every time the conversation approaches the spiritual, they retreat.

Chapter 8

There was a struggle in his heart between the desire to forget his unhappy brother for the time, and the consciousness that it would be base to do so.

• Levin was determined to tell Koznyshev about Kitty, but after the scene with the professor, he can’t bring himself to do it.
• When Koznyshev asks about the district council, Levin says he resigned.
• Their brother Nikolay Dmitrievich Levin has turned up in Moscow. He is a ruined man who has squandered all his money and estranged himself.
• Koznyshev shows Levin a note from Nikolay asking to be left alone.
• Levin decides he will find Kitty first, then visit Nikolay in the evening.

Chapter 9

He knew she was there by the rapture and the terror that seized on his heart. […] There was apparently nothing striking either in her dress or her attitude. But for Levin she was as easy to find in that crowd as a rose among nettles. Everything was made bright by her. She was the smile that shed light on all round her.

• Levin finds Kitty at the Zoological Gardens skating grounds.
• Everyone, including Kitty, knows that Levin is the best skater.
• He repeatedly compares her to the sun in his mind.
• They skate together. He is extremely nervous and excited in her presence.
• He tries to imitate a skating trick that a younger man does.
• When she asks how long he’s staying, he says “It depends on you,” and then is immediately horrified at what he said.
• Kitty knows she doesn’t love him, but she likes him and she is confused.
• Before Kitty leaves with her mother, Levin gets invited to their home.
• Stiva arrives and finds Levin. They go to a restaurant for dinner.

Chapter 10

His whole soul was filled with memories of Kitty, and there was a smile of triumph and happiness shining in his eyes.

“You must understand,” said he, “it’s not love. I’ve been in love, but it’s not that. It’s not my feeling, but a sort of force outside me has taken possession of me.”

• Stiva orders a lot of food, including three dozen oysters. Levin eats them, but he would have preferred simple bread and cheese.
• Stiva thinks the aim of civilization is pleasure; Levin strongly disagrees.
• Stiva guesses that Levin has come to propose to Kitty. He approves of it, and says Dolly is sure that Kitty will say yes.
• Levin is overcome with joy. He almost cries and can barely stay in his seat.
• He talks of his sins in contrast to Kitty’s innocence; from Stiva’s point of view, Levin is pretty innocent himself.

Chapter 11

“That’s your strong point and your failing. You have a character that’s all of a piece, and you want the whole of life to be of a piece too […] You want a man’s work, too, always to have a defined aim, and love and family life always to be undivided – and that’s not how it is. All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.”

• Stiva tells Levin about Kitty’s other suitor, Count Alexei Kirillovich Vronsky. He is from Petersburg, son of Count Kirill Ivanovich Vronsky.
• Levin’s happiness fades away and he is extremely disappointed.
• Stiva thinks Levin still has good odds, but that he should propose soon.
• Stiva tries to get advice on his situation with Dolly. He speaks about his loathing for “fallen women,” and acts as though it’s understandable and inevitable that he was unfaithful to Dolly.
• Levin is disgusted by this, but he also feels guilty for his own sins.
• As the dinner goes on they each are thinking more of their own problems.

Chapter 12

She was afraid that her daughter, who had at one time, as she fancied, a feeling for Levin, might, from extreme sense of honor, refuse Vronsky, and that Levin’s arrival might generally complicate and delay the affair so near being concluded.

She wished for what her mother wished for, but the motives of her mother’s wishes wounded her.

• Kitty is eighteen years old. It’s her first winter out in society.
• Her father likes Levin. Her mother does not; she strongly favors Vronsky. She’s anxious because he still hasn’t proposed.
• Her mother reflects on how marriage customs have changed since her day.
• A week ago, Vronsky told Kitty that his mother was due to come from Petersburg to visit. Kitty’s mother thinks this is a good sign.
• Kitty doesn’t want to talk about Levin. She feels conflicted and overwhelmed by the whole situation.
• Kitty promises to have no secrets from her mother.

Chapter 13

And only then for the first time the whole thing presented itself in a new, different aspect; only then she realized that the question did not affect her only – with whom she would be happy, and whom she loved – but that she would have that moment to wound a man whom she liked. And to wound him cruelly.

She was breathing heavily, not looking at him. She was feeling ecstasy. Her soul was flooded with happiness. She had never anticipated that the utterance of love would produce such a powerful effect on her. But it lasted only an instant.

• Kitty is extremely nervous about Levin and Vronsky meeting.
• She recalls happy childhood memories of friendship with Levin.
• Being with Levin feels perfectly simple and clear, while with Vronsky she feels there is a false note; but the future seems misty with Levin, while with Vronsky she can imagine brilliant happiness.
• Levin arrives early and very awkwardly and nervously proposes to Kitty.
• She feels ecstasy for an instant, but then remembers Vronsky and refuses.
• Levin is crushed but feels that rejection was inevitable.

Chapter 14

She had already had time to look at Vronsky, and looked round at Levin. And simply from the look in her eyes, that grew unconsciously brighter, Levin knew that she loved that man, knew it as surely as if she had told him so in words.

She felt for him with her whole heart, the more because she was pitying him for suffering of which she was herself the cause. “If you can forgive me, forgive me,” said her eyes, “I am so happy.”

“I hate them all, and you, and myself,” his eyes responded, and he took up his hat.

• Levin stays around until he can leave inconspicuously.
• Kitty’s friend, Countess Nordston, wants Kitty to marry Vronsky.
• The Countess and Levin despise each other and make fun of each other.
• Vronsky arrives. Levin doesn’t hate him, but is curious to know what he has that makes Kitty prefer him.
• They discuss table-turning; Levin doesn’t believe in it and speaks heatedly.
• Kitty’s father arrives and takes Levin’s side of the argument.
• Vronsky tells Kitty he hopes she will be at the great ball next week.

Chapter 15

Whether she felt remorse at having won Levin’s love, or at having refused him, she did not know. But her happiness was poisoned by doubts.

• Kitty thinks she did the right thing, but she feels bad for Levin.
• Her father is furious at her mother for supporting Vronsky.
• He thinks Vronsky isn’t serious and that Levin is a much better man.

Chapter 16

He could not believe that what gave such great and delicate pleasure to him, and above all to her, could be wrong.

• Vronsky never had a real home. He has no memory of his father.
• He is in the circle of wealthy Petersburg army men.
• He doesn’t love Kitty. He finds it fun to flirt with her and doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with it. He has no intention of marrying.

Chapter 17

What he had just heard about Kitty excited and delighted him. Unconsciously he arched his chest, and his eyes flashed. He felt himself a conqueror.

• Vronsky goes to the railway station for his mother and runs into Stiva, who is there waiting for his sister Anna Karenina.
• Vronsky remembers the name Karenina and thinks he might know her.
• Stiva tells Vronsky that Levin probably proposed to Kitty.
• In his heart, Vronsky neither respects nor loves his mother.

Chapter 18

It was as though her nature were so brimming over with something that against her will it showed itself now in the flash of her eyes, and now in her smile. Deliberately she shrouded the light in her eyes, but it shone against her will in the faintly perceptible smile.

• Vronsky’s eye is caught by a woman getting out of the train.
• The woman turns out to be Anna Karenina, and she has been chatting with Vronsky’s mother during the train ride.
• Anna is worried about leaving her eight year old son alone at home.
• A worker was run over by the train in an accident. Vronsky gives the widow 200 roubles, seemingly to impress Anna with his generosity.

Chapter 19

If one forgives, it must be completely, completely.

• Anna arrives at the Oblonskys’ and meets Anna. She sees all the children and remembers their names and birthdays.
• They talk about Stiva’s unfaithfulness. Anna is kind and sympathetic with Dolly, but thinks Stiva is remorseful, encourages her to forgive him.

Chapter 20

Kitty felt that Anna was perfectly simple and was concealing nothing, but that she had another higher world of interests inaccessible to her, complex and poetic.

• Anna tells Stiva to go and ask Dolly for forgiveness, which he does.
• Kitty is very enamored of Anna, the “fashionable Petersburg lady.”
• Anna tells Kitty that she met Vronsky, and she approves of their match.
• She almost mentions the 200 roubles, but hesitates because she feels it had something to do with her, and should not have happened.

Chapter 21

Anna glancing down at once recognized Vronsky, and a strange feeling of pleasure and at the same time of dread of something stirred in her heart.

• Stiva and Dolly come back. From their lighthearted bantering, Anna and Kitty guess that they have fully reconciled.
• Anna gets up to find an album with a picture of her son, Seryozha.
• Vronsky arrives to inquire about the dinner tomorrow for a “celebrity” who has just arrived (Anna), but leaves when he catches sight of her.
• Kitty thinks Vronsky came for her, not Anna.

Chapter 22

Kitty looked into his face, which was so close to her own, and long afterwards – for several years after – that look, full of love, to which he made no response, cut her to the heart with an agony of shame.

• Kitty and her mother arrive at the ball. She feels extremely confident.
• She had already given the first quadrille to Vronsky, but has to give the second to some beardless youth who asks her.
• She waltzes with Yegorushka Korsunsky, the renowned director of dances.
• Korsunsky asks Anna to dance. She refuses at first, but then she sees Vronsky and accepts to avoid acknowledging him. Kitty notices.

Chapter 23

No one but she herself understood her position; no one knew that she had just refused the man whom perhaps she loved, and refused him because she had put her faith in another.

• Kitty refuses five men for the mazurka, assuming Vronsky will ask her, but he dances it with Anna instead.
• It makes her miserable, but she can’t help but watch them.
• The Countess Nordston notices what happened. She finds Korsunsky and gets him to dance the mazurka with Kitty instead of her.
• Korsunsky tries to convince Anna to stay for supper, but she doesn’t.

Chapter 24

“Yes, she was bound to choose him. So it had to be, and I cannot complain of anyone or anything. I am myself to blame. What right had I to imagine she would care to join her life to mine? Who am I and what am I? A nobody, not wanted by anyone, nor of use to anybody.”

Levin felt that, in spite of all the ugliness of his life, his brother Nikolay, in his soul, in the very depths of his soul, was no more in the wrong than the people who despised him.

• Levin leaves the Shcherbatsky’s and goes to visit Nikolay.
• He is consumed by self-doubt and self-loathing. He imagines Kitty and Vronsky together, and thinks, of course Kitty was bound to choose him.
• He remembers how Nikolay used to live like a monk, but then descended into “senseless debauchery” and got into all sorts of scandals.
• Nikolay is hostile at first, but then softens and invites him in.
• He is with Mr Kritsky and Marya “Masha” Nikolaevna.
• Kritsky was expelled from university. He seems like a bad person.
• Masha lives with Nikolay. He says he rescued her from a brothel.

Chapter 25

He saw that this association was a mere anchor to save him from self-contempt.

• Nikolay and Kritsky are trying to promote communism by starting a locksmith’s association in the village of Vozdrem.
• Nikolay gets angry at the mention of their half-brother Sergey Ivanovich.
• Levin struggles with the conversation as Nikolay becomes more unhinged.
• Masha tries to get Levin to stop drinking, but he threatens to beat her.
• Eventually he passes out and they take him to bed.

Chapter 26

He felt himself, and did not want to be anyone else. All he wanted now was to be better than before.

• Levin goes home and starts feeling much better. He resolves to be happy with what he has, and to not expect marriage.
• But part of him worries he’ll just fall back into his old ways.
• He’s annoyed that the buckwheat was scorched by the new drying machine, but overjoyed to find that Pava, his best cow, has calved.

Chapter 27

His ideas of marriage were, consequently, quite unlike those of the great majority of his acquaintances, for whom getting married was one of the numerous facts of social life. For Levin it was the chief affair of life, on which its whole happiness turned. And now he had to give up that.

• Levin lives in a big house he inherited from his parents.
• He has no memory of his mother, but he imagines her as a sacred, holy ideal of a woman. He wants his future wife to be like that.
• His mind is jumping all over the place, still hoping for a wife and happiness, and remembering what happened in Moscow.

Chapter 28

“I’ve been the cause of that ball being a torture to her instead of a pleasure. But truly, truly, it’s not my fault, or only my fault a little bit.”

But at the very moment she was uttering the words, she felt that they were not true. She was not merely doubting herself, she felt emotion at the thought of Vronsky, and was going away sooner than she had meant, simply to avoid meeting him.

Dolly could scarcely suppress a smile. She loved Anna, but she enjoyed seeing that she too had her weaknesses.

• Anna is determined to go home the day after the ball.
• She confesses to Dolly that she’s made Kitty jealous by dancing with Vronsky. That’s why Kitty hasn’t come to dinner with them today.
• Dolly thinks it’s for the best if Kitty and Vronsky don’t marry.

Chapter 29

Anna Arkadyevna read and understood, but it was distasteful to her to read, that is, to follow the reflection of other people’s lives. She had too great a desire to live herself.

She felt as though her nerves were strings being strained tighter and tighter on some sort of screwing peg. She felt her eyes opening wider and wider, her fingers and toes twitching nervously, something within oppressing her breathing, while all shapes and sounds seemed in the uncertain half-light to strike her with unaccustomed vividness.

• Anna starts traveling home. She tries to read a novel, but can’t focus.
• Her mind jumps between extreme emotions, feeling guilty, then happy, wondering if she’s going crazy, then feeling happy again.

Chapter 30

What am I coming for?” he repeated, looking straight into her eyes. “You know that I have come to be where you are,” he said; “I can’t help it.”

Though she could not recall her own words or his, she realized instinctively that the momentary conversation had brought them fearfully closer; and she was panic-stricken and blissful at it.

• Vronsky finds Anna at the railway station before her train leaves.
• She boards the train. Her dream-fever state intensifies and she can’t sleep.
• She arrives in Petersburg, disappointed to see her husband, Alexei.

Chapter 31

He felt that all his forces, hitherto dissipated, wasted, were centered on one thing, and bent with fearful energy on one blissful goal.

“Ah, yes! The husband.” Only now for the first time did Vronsky realize clearly the fact that there was a person attached to her, a husband.

He could recognize in no one but himself an indubitable right to love her. But she was still the same, and the sight of her affected him the same way, physically reviving him, stirring him, and filling his soul with rapture.

• Vronsky gets on the same train, in a different compartment.
• He can’t stop thinking about Anna. He can’t sleep all night either.
• He’s unhappy to see Alexei when they arrive in Petersburg.
• He walks right up to them. Alexei is vaguely aware of who he is, and annoyed by the interruption. Vronsky asks to call on Anna.
• Alexei tells Anna to go and see the Countess Lidia Ivanovna.

Chapter 32

The feeling of causeless shame, which she had felt on the journey, and her excitement, too, had completely vanished. In the habitual conditions of her life she felt again resolute and irreproachable.

• Anna arrives home to her son. He’s charming, but she’s a bit disappointed.
• The Countess Lidia Ivanovna arrives and talks a lot without listening. Anna thought she liked her, but today she sees her with all her defects.
• Anna remembers one time when Alexei said he “had the fullest confidence in her tact, and could never lower her and himself by jealousy.”
• Anna convinces herself that the episode with Vronsky was nothing and that there is no need to tell Alexei anything.

Chapter 33

She felt so lighthearted and serene, she saw so clearly that all that had seemed to her so important on her railway journey was only one of the common trivial incidents of fashionable life, and that she had no reason to feel ashamed before anyone else or before herself.

• Anna and Alexei have dinner with a bunch of guests.
• Anna doesn’t go out in the evening because her dresses were not ready. She is very annoyed at her dressmaker.
• Alexei is a busy, punctual man. His motto is “unhasting and unresting.” He tries to read everything and stay up to date with the intellectual world, but he doesn’t have any real appreciation of art.
• When they go to bed, Anna’s mind is still going back to Vronsky.

Chapter 34

But there was another class of people, the real people. To this class they all belonged, and in it the great thing was to be elegant, generous, plucky, gay, to abandon oneself without a blush to every passion, and to laugh at everything else.

• Vronsky let his friend Petritsky stay at his place in Petersburg.
• He finds Petritksy there upon returning from Moscow, along with the Baroness Shilton and the calvalry captain Kamerovsky.
• Petritsky is a drunk, always in debt, and always getting into scandals, yet he is a favorite of his comrades and superiors.
• The baroness is having an affair with him, and trying to divorce her husband, but Petritsky later tells Vronsky he’s sick of her.
• Vronsky eases back into his Petersburg life listening to Petritsky’s stories.