WOMEN, MORALITY AND SOCIETY IN TOLSTOY'S ANNA KARENINA

Abstract

Tolstoy's 1878's novel Anna Karenina is one of the most studied novels in the world literature. It questions the place of women in the society, the moral choices they make and their consequences in return they get, are still, even today, a pressing issue in the society. The novel opens with an epigraph from Saint Paul which declares that the power of judgment belongs to God alone, but society harshly imposes this authority upon Anna. This paper argues, through close reading and feminist literary analysis, that the structural imbalance of Oblonsky's infidelity and Anna's punishment is fundamental to the novel's design. It's not incidental. In the novel, the parallel narrative of Konstantin Levin provides a contrast to the moral quest of the male characters, and this contrast makes the possibility of moral growth for men, but denied entirely to women.