Book Review - Tolstoy's Anna Karenina

“Women, they say, sometimes love their man for his vices”. Tolstoy brings to the fore some of the heart breaking cruelties of life. There is only so much that a man can do, after which he has to wait and hope for the lady of his life to fall in love with him. This exasperating truth is experienced so very brutally by Karenin and Levin, both of whom can easily be called gems of human beings.
Anna, while she remains torn in two – one side asking her to do the “right” thing and the other asking her to succumb to the new attraction, comes out as a mortally wounded woman. Confused and absolutely unsure of her life, her persona and esteem for herself reduces by the day after her liaison starts, and she emerges as a mere dwarf, compared to the awe inspiring beauty that she was before it.
Levin is a simple and straight forward man, one with no false pretensions. He has a philosophical bent of mind, but one who is happy on the whole, and cherishes the little joys that his life has to offer. He, as against some of the other landlords and highly placed men in Russia, is a philanthrope and even in the eyes of his workers, does not come across as a person wanting to make merry from the last penny that could be squeezed out of their pockets.
What is most striking, though is that he belongs to a rare species of people who can appreciate true love. In the space of the few hours between Kitty’s acceptance of his proposal, and their decision to get engaged the next morning, he realizes along with his countless readers that life is not just worth living, but is a joy in itself. His attitude during the period suggests that he has suddenly come to realize that all those villagers, peasants and countless other Russians have been placed around him so that he could love them and that they could love him. If this character is autobiographical of Tolstoy, then Tolstoy was not only a great writer, but also a truly beautiful person.