...notmyessay Wesleyan University WesScholar Division I Faculty Publications Arts and Humanities 1995 Anna Karenina: Tolstoy 's Polemic with Madame Bovary Priscilla Meyer Wesleyan University, pmeyer@wesleyan.edu Follow this and additional works at: http://wesscholar.wesleyan.edu/div1facpubs Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Arts and Humanities at WesScholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Division I Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of WesScholar. For more information, please contact dschnaidt@wesleyan.edu, ljohnson@wesleyan.edu. Recommended Citation Priscilla Meyer. "Anna Karenina: Tolstoy's Polemic with Madame Bovary" Russian Review 54.2 (1995): 243-259. Anna Karenina: Tolstoy's Polemic with Madame Bovary PRISCILLA MEYER D id Tolstoy intend a dialogue with Flaubert's Madame Bovary when he wrote Anna Karenina? Boris Eikhenbaum agrees with the French critics who found traces of Tolstoy's study of French literature in Anna Karenina, though he emphasizes the complexity of Tolstoy's struggle with the tradition of the "love" novel.' George Steiner long ago concluded that "all that can be said is that Anna Karenina was written in some awareness of its predecessor."2 But the evidence of that awareness is so abundant and suggestive that it is worth examining the possibility of a more detailed dialectic than Eikhenbaum and Steiner suppose.3 Tolstoy arrived in Paris on 21 February 1857. Less than...
Words: 9437 - Pages: 38
...____“He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.” ____“Yet such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.” ___“As the hours crept by, the afternoon sunlight bleached all the books on the shelves to pale, gilded versions of themselves and warmed the paper and ink inside the covers so that the smell of unread words hung in the air.” ___“From the very beginning— from the first moment, I may almost say— of my acquaintance with you, your manners, impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form the groundwork of disapprobation on which succeeding events have built so immovable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.” ____Perhaps I've spent too long in the company of my literary romantic heroes, and consequently my ideals and expectations are far too high.” ____“All I wanted was a new life for my son to grow up free, and now you took the only thing that meant anything to me, I will never fly again, I will hang up my wings.” ____“The best love is the kind that awakens the soul and makes us reach for more, that plants a fire in our hearts and brings peace to our minds, and that's what you've given...
Words: 926 - Pages: 4
...The 19th century was a time of great political and social upheaval in Russia. Beginning with the abolition of serfdom in 1861, Russia experienced the age of the Great Reforms, leading to a complete overhaul of the country’s social and political climate. This age of restless transformation led to the realization of a new cultural phenomenon: suicide. Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina supports the notion that a national suicide “epidemic”, as the journalists of the time interpreted the statistics, was a by-product of the decomposing societal and moral order produced by the inception of material progress. Furthermore, Anna Karenina mirrors the “cultural institution” of suicide that erupted in the 1860’s and offers a realistic, albeit fictional, representation of the suicide phenomenon regarding both peasants and nobles. Leo Tolstoy, through use of railroads as a symbol in Anna Karenina, shared views similar with his contemporaries on the negative impact of material progress on the mental health of Russian society. Approximately 30 years before the reforms of the 1860’s, an Englishman who traveled to St. Petersburg, Thomas Raikes, Esq., commented that Russians had not yet experienced the progress of civilization that accounted for the misery leading to suicide. At the time, Russians were not yet privy to the amount of responsibility over their social and political conditions as they would be when the reforms took place, therefore they still lived free of the passion and anguish which...
Words: 2024 - Pages: 9
...Comparison Paper ANNA KARENINA/DOCTOR ZHIVAGO Sonya | Russian Literature | February 10, 2016 Summary of Anna Karenina A crisis develops in the Oblonsky household when Dolly finds out about her husband's affair. Stiva's sister, Anna Karenina, arrives to reconcile the couple and dissuades Dolly from getting a divorce. Konstantin Levin, Stiva's friend, arrives in Moscow to propose to the eighteen year old Kitty Shtcherbatsky. She refuses him, for she loves Count Vronsky, a dashing army officer who has no intentions of marrying. Meeting the lovely Madame Karenina, Vronsky falls in love and begins to pursue her. Kitty falls ill after a humiliating rejection by Vronsky. At the German spa where she takes a rest cure she tries to deny her womanly nature by becoming a religious do-gooder. Realizing the hypocrisy of this new calling, Kitty returns to Russia cured of her depression and ready to accept her ultimate wifehood. Consummating her union with Vronsky, Anna steps into a new life with much foreboding for the future. By the time she confesses her adultery to the suspecting Karenin, she is already pregnant with Vronsky's child Devoting himself to farming, Levin tries to find life meaningful without marriage. He expends his energies in devising a cooperative landholding system with his peasants to make the best use of the land. Seeing his brother Nicolai hopelessly ill with tuberculosis, he realizes he has been working to avoid facing the problem of death....
Words: 2518 - Pages: 11
...Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close Why I’m not where you are, is a chapter from the novel “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” the main characters is Oskar Schell, his grandpa and his grandma. The chapter is about Oskars’s Grandpa, who loses his ability to speak, but not suddenly, he loses his words one at the time, so therefore he has yes and no tattooed into his palms. And wherever he goes he brings a note book so he can write answers when people ask him questions. When Oscar’s grandpa loses his ability to speak, he also loses his freedom and is trapped inside his own body. When he loses the last word, which is “I”, he also loses his personality. He begins to lose the ability to talk, on the day he loses his wife Anna. Each main character has lost someone they loved, and that is why the chapter and the novel is about how people reacts when they lose loved ones and how they get over it. Oskar has lost his dad in 9/11 and that is grandpa’s son, and the letter grandpa writes is to his unborn son, Thomas, Oskar’s dad, grandpa’s name is also Thomas. So grandpa writes the letter to his unborn child long time before Thomas is born, he writes how he feels when he loses his ability to speak. The themes in the novel are very clear, lose, love, lose of love, loosing yourself and death. The novel is taking place in New York and Manhattan and that is where grandpa meets his new wife, she takes care of him when she find him homeless on the street and that is where grandma askes grandpa...
Words: 287 - Pages: 2
...Analysis of How Much Land Does a Man Need by Leo Tolstoy Anna Gregor, Yahoo! Contributor Network Dec 23, 2009 "Share your voice on Yahoo! websites. Start Here." * More: * Tolstoy * Leo Tolstoy * * tweet * Print FlagPost a comment AdChoices | | In the short story "How Much Land Does A Man Need" by Leo Tolstoy, Pahom is a peasant living on a small plot of land. When his wife brags that a peasant's life is safer than having money, because with money comes temptation, Pahom agrees, adding that he would not be "afraid of the devil himself" if he only had more land. He buys more land, but is unhappy, for no matter how much more land he gets, he wants more. He becomes greedier and greedier until he loses control of his life and, in the end, loses everything. This story shows us that even if we have enough to get by, the prospect of becoming wealthier is so alluring it can cause us to risk all the good things we already have. At the start, Pahom is a content, hardworking men. Unfortunately, he makes the mistake of thinking that more land would make his life better. Pahom says to himself "our only trouble is that we haven't land enough. If I had plenty of land, I shouldn't fear the devil himself"! When an opportunity arises for Pahom to acquire more land, he jumps at the chance, convinced that more would make him happy. He paid off his debts and had plenty of fertile land to grow his crops and raise his cattle, but he was only satisfied for a short...
Words: 764 - Pages: 4
...Effi Briest – Theodor Fontane Welcome to the finest German novel of the 19th Century. In 1919 Thomas Mann said that if one had to reduce one’s library to six novels, Effi Briest would have to be one of them. This was my fourth reading. It is, in fact, the only novel I have read during my teens, my twenties, my thirties and now my forties. I will, no doubt, read it again, because as simple as the plot may seem, and, as discretely as the author may tell it, this is a tale with layer upon layer of hidden meaning. There is no doubt that I share Thomas Mann’s regard of this novel. It is a tale in the tradition of 19th century adulteresses – a German Madame Bovary or Anna Karenina, if you will. Yet, it is from a completely different mould. Effi is a 17-year old girl, sacrificed on the altar of German, specifically Prussian, convention and proprietry. Innstetten, the husband, is a flawed, yet sympathetic character. Effi’s adultery isn’t brazen – in fact, unless you read closely you may miss it altogether. The real strength of this novel lies in the control Fontane has on his material. The structure is tight. The opening scenes between Effi and her parents are mirrored with great poignancy at the finale. There is never any sentimentality or melodrama. Effi’s downfall is reflected in the symbolism of the natural world. I was so struck with this that I’vve included some detail in the following paragraph. Don’t read it, however, if you mind spoilers. Effi is established...
Words: 765 - Pages: 4
...Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary are two novels written in two different languages, around the same time period (late 1800s). Though they belong to two separate countries and are separated in history by a margin of about twenty five years, their socio political setting, and situational complexities are quite similar. ‘Madam Bovary’ takes us on a journey through the life of the extremely complex character of Emma Bovary, who has adulterous affairs and lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life. Raised in a convent, a lover of sensuality, desirous of an expensive urban lifestyle yet not very smart about money, it is this dichotomy of traits that keeps Emma careening from one radically different situation to the next: first falling hard for her father's roving rural doctor Charles Bovary, thinking that their marriage will finally bring her the sophisticated Paris life full of passion and grandeur she's always dreamed of; but instead getting stuck in a provincial town where nothing ever happens and trying and failing at a domestic life. This leads to a hot-and-cold emotional affair with a young law student named Leon, followed by a much more serious affair with a major womanizer named Rodolphe. An unceremonial dumping by Rodolphe after she offers to leave her husband for him and bring her daughter along leads to a short period again in her life as a pious born-again Christian. A reacquaintance with Leon, the now successful young urban...
Words: 7108 - Pages: 29
...Anna Karenina Anna Karenina is a novel by the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy. It was born in the society where capitalism was developing and shifted from the old society to the new one in the late-19th-century feudal Russia, but the society wasn’t out of the shackles of feudalistic ideas. It describes the tragic story that the noble married woman called Anna fell in love with a young man, who is also an aristocrat in the aristocracy, and finally they break up and Anna kills herself. Tolstoy's style in Anna Karenina is considered by many critics to be transitional, forming a bridge between the realist and modernist novel. Anna married socialite and but she has affair with the affluent Count Vronsky. The story opens when she arrives in the midst of a family broken up by her brother's unbridled womanizing—something that prefigures her own later situation, though she would experience less tolerance by others. Vronsky is eager to marry her if she will agree to leave her husband Karenin, a senior government official, but she is vulnerable to the pressures of Russian social norms, the moral laws of the Russian Orthodox Church, her own insecurities, and Karenin's indecision. Although Vronsky and Anna go to Italy, where they can be together, they have trouble making friends. Back in Russia, she is shunned, becoming further isolated and anxious, while Vronsky pursues his social life. Despite Vronsky's reassurances, she grows increasingly possessive and paranoid about his imagined infidelity...
Words: 432 - Pages: 2
...brought by reality does not impact any of it. In “The Lady with The Little Dog” by Anton Chekhov, the extramarital love between Gurov and Anna is exhibited by the transformation of Gurov in terms of his perspective about women and about life. In the very beginning, Anna is described as “nobody knew who she was, and they called her simply ‘the lady with the little dog’”(361). This is, when Gurov is still a chauvinistic man who has been trapped in a loveless marriage for years. It may disgust the reader when it is indicated that he is an experienced seducer. His affairs always end badly, but he cannot resist starting new ones. His doomed adulteries have made him cynical and bitter. Gurov is unfavorablely characterized with manipulation, misogyny, and immorality, and yet Chekhov refuses to simplify his protagonist as a stock villain. Gurov is a creature of contradiction. For example, his way of belittling women, indicated by “almost always spoke ill of women”, “an inferior race”(362), accompanies an inexorable preference for their company. Gurov can never foresee that his encounter with Anna will change his life, neither can the reader. As shown in the later section, Gurov does not regard Anna as the “the lady with the little dog” anymore. His intense feelings toward her do not allow him to. Even after Gurov’s first brief encounter with Anna he seems to realize that there is more to her than meets the eye, “something pathetic about her,...
Words: 1094 - Pages: 5
...problems. This is what happens to the heroine of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina when she leaves one relationship for another, more destructive one. In the novel Anna Karenina, Tolstoy creates a character whose lack of communication destroys both of her romantic relationships and eventually herself. The reader is first introduced to Anna while she is visiting her brother’s family in Moscow. Here, she is described by nearly everyone she meets as charming and animated, and she seems to feel a fire within her. Upon returning home in Petersburg, the fire has gone out and it is clear to readers that Anna is bored, stuck in the routine of her love life while she thinks of Vronsky, a man she met in Moscow. “Not only was the animation that had simply been gushing out of her eyes and her smile in Moscow no longer there: on the contrary, the fire in her now seemed quenched or hidden somewhere deep inside her” (Tolstoy 134). This line provides foreshadowing for the steps Anna will take in trying to find the same fire and happiness she felt while in Moscow, instead of reaching out to her husband for help. Soon, Anna finds herself in an affair with Vronsky, sneaking to parties to meet up with him. While her husband, Karenin, senses her infidelity, he buries himself in his work and ignores the feeling. While both of them are unhappy, neither says anything to address the problem which drives them further apart. Soon after, Anna and Karenin attend a horserace in which Vronsky is racing. It is...
Words: 847 - Pages: 4
...Natasha Javeri ARLT100g: Love and Death in Russian Novel Professor Seifrid December 5, 2014 Role of Reading and Literature In the World of Characters from Eugene Onegin, Fathers and Children, and Anna Karenina Though it may not seem so at first glance, the theme of reading and literature is of great significance. This theme and its significance, though it can be seen in many novels, can be specifically analyzed in the Russian novels Eugene Onegin, Fathers and Children, and Anna Karenina. Reading has a way of influencing people, although, these characters may not even realize or change intentionally. Characters such as Tatyana, Onegin, Oblonsky, Anna, Nikolai, Pavel, and more all read, though to different extents and different types of literature, and in some way are influenced by the literature that they read. This influence can be in the way the act, the opinions they form, social trends they follow, the way they perceive the world, and much more. Basically, reading and the role of literature shape their lives; this can be in the social values they believe and hold to be true, the way the look at people, and the emotions they develop (or don’t develop). This is also significant within the time period of Russia or world of these characters set by the author. From a young age, Tatyana was not like others girls her age. She was not interested in dolls and talks of fashion and clothes or playing girlish games, but rather, she preferred to spend her time reading. Specifically...
Words: 2788 - Pages: 12
...101 Things I Will Teach My Daughters 1. Chocolate is only a temporary fix. 2. A properly-fitting bra is not a luxury. It is a necessity. 3. Your happiness is your happiness and yours alone. 4. How to apply red lipstick. 5. How to wear the crap out of red lipstick. 6. A boyfriend does not validate your existence. 7. Eat the extra slice of pizza. 8. Wear what makes you feel gracefully at ease. 9. Love the world unconditionally. 10. Seek beauty in all things. 11. Buy your friends dinner when you can. 12. Wear sunscreen like it’s your second job. 13. Try with all your might to keep in contact with far-away friends. 14. Make the world feel at ease around you. 15. Walk with your head up. 16. Order a cheeseburger on the first date if you want to. 17. Never, ever bite your nails. 18. Swipe on some lipstick, put on your leather jacket, and sneak into a bar somewhere. 19. Learn from your mistakes that night. 20. Dental hygiene is not multiple choice. 21. Your GPA is not a confession of your character. 22. There is strength in breaking down. 23. You don’t have to like yoga. 24. Pick a tea. 25. Take care of your feet. 26. Pick a perfume. 27. Even if you’re tall, wear the heels anyway. 28. Classy is a relative term. 29. Drink whiskey if you like whiskey. 30. Drink wine if you like wine. 31. Like what you like. 32. Offer no explanation. 33. Advil and Gatorade. 34. You are no less of a woman when you’re in sweats and gym shoes than a woman in stilettos and...
Words: 786 - Pages: 4
...Wesleyan University WesScholar Division I Faculty Publications Arts and Humanities 1-1-1995 Anna Karenina: Tolstoy's Polemic with Madame Bovary Priscilla Meyer Wesleyan University, pmeyer@wesleyan.edu Follow this and additional works at: http://wesscholar.wesleyan.edu/div1facpubs Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons Recommended Citation Priscilla Meyer. "Anna Karenina: Tolstoy's Polemic with Madame Bovary" Russian Review 54.2 (1995): 243-259. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Arts and Humanities at WesScholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Division I Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of WesScholar. For more information, please contact dschnaidt@wesleyan.edu, ljohnson@wesleyan.edu. Karenina: Anna Tolstoy's Polemic Madame Bovary PRISCILLA MEYER with id Tolstoy intend a dialogue with Flaubert's Madame Bovary when he wrote D Anna Karenina? Boris Eikhenbaum agrees with the French critics who found traces of Tolstoy's study of French literature in Anna Karenina, though he emphasizes the complexity of Tolstoy's struggle with the tradition of the "love" novel.' George Steiner long ago concluded that "all that can be said is that Anna Karenina was written in some awareness of its predecessor."2 But the evidence of that awareness is so abundant and suggestive that it is worth examining the possibility of a more detailed dialectic than Eikhenbaum and Steiner suppose.3 Tolstoy arrived in Paris on 21 February 1857. Less than...
Words: 8847 - Pages: 36
...The chapter starts with a quote by Tolstoy. At the end of the quote, Tolstoy said, “The degree to which we draw near this perfection cannot be seen; all we can see is the extent of our deviation” (Yancey 73). Those two lines stuck out to me than the other lines for some reason. In my interpretation of the quote Tolstoy said we cannot see if we are nearing Jesus in his perfection, yet we can see our own deviations from Jesus’ perfection. This quote reminded me that most people will always remember their failures more than their successes in their lives. People will probably remember all of the bad things they have done, the mistakes they have made, the lies they have said. Maybe if we recognize all the good things in our lives more, we can see ourselves being more like Jesus....
Words: 509 - Pages: 3
