Quote:
Originally Posted by SeattleUte
I disagree with both of you. For example, Tolstoy didn't approve of Anna's isolation from ther son by Russian law and society and religion. It's easy to sit and judge today, what with no-fault divorce, joint custody, laws favoring custody, particularly mothers. She was caught in a terrible trap made by her hidebound, judgmental and backward society.
Anyway, who cares what Tolstoy "intended?" The book now belongs to the ages. Tolstoy said a lot of things he may not have intended because he was trapped in his age and his book was not. I'm sure many careful readers of AK today are more compassionate for Anna and Vronsky than Tolstoy was in his own mind. I find the epigraph to the book very puzzling and judgmental sounding unless I just don't get it.
Btw, SU, compairng me to the kindly abbott from TBK was one of the nicer compliments I think I have recevied. DO you need a loan or something?
Tolstoy said more than he realized. Like all great novels this one has no easy answers. It more raises the great issues than anything else.
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I am not trying to judge them, and I recognize TOlstoy's criticism of Russian society, but Tolstoy ultimately, through the rise of Levin, as Levin put it, and otherwsie, shows the descent of Anna and Vornsky and how the relatiojship itslef was doomed. THeirs was a tremendous passion that had to manifest; it could not be denmied, and she was willing to sacrifice everyhting for it. But in doing so, she also lost the very thing she was trying to obtain and this was not as a result of social standards (except to the extent that they informed her own view of herself, I suppose) but as a result of her own choices which could not be changed, but which were doomed to failure. My heart ached for Anna, but I htink even she would agree that it was her chocies and not the society that put her where she ended up.