NovelContinental · 1878Study guide · no full textDemanding

Anna Karenina

The novel's famous opening is a trap: every unhappy family is unhappy differently, and the plot proves it twice over with Anna and with Levin.

Love Marriage Gender Mortality

Study guide

This work is still in copyright, so there is no full text on the page. What you get instead: the context, the cast, the ideas and the themes — enough to read it well, and to know exactly what to watch for in the first thirty pages.

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

The cast, in the Character Atlas →Literary devices →Where it sits in time →

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The castFull atlas →

Anna Karenina

Society wife who becomes an outsider

Anna Karenina · Leo Tolstoy

Wants: To be loved in public as she believes she is loved privately.
Undone by: She needs the world to admit something it will never admit, and that need becomes the measure of everything.

Alexei Vronsky

Officer, from a wealthy family

Anna Karenina · Leo Tolstoy

Wants: A life that feels like a choice rather than an inheritance.
Undone by: He can want something completely and still not think about it.

Now read the first page with all of this in mind.

The notes here are the map; the book is the journey.

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