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A character in Anna Karenina

Anna Karenina

Anna Arkadyevna Karenina, a beautiful, warm St Petersburg wife and mother who falls in love with Count Vronsky.

What they want

She wants to live openly with Vronsky and keep her son, and the world she lives in will not allow both.

The book

Anna KareninaLeo Tolstoy, 1877

A woman leaves her husband for a cavalry officer, and a landowner in the country tries to work out what life is for.

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Who they are in the book

Spoiler-free

Anna is Stiva Oblonsky's sister, married to Alexey Karenin, a senior official who, Stiva reminds her, is twenty years older than she is. She loves her son, Seryozha, and she is admired everywhere in St Petersburg society.

Her love for Vronsky takes over her life. She will not lie about it, and that honesty is what society cannot forgive.

How Anna Karenina Is Portrayed

Appearance, manner, and tone — as the book sketches them, in our words.

  • The Moscow stationIn Part One, Chapter 18, she arrives from St Petersburg in the same carriage as Vronsky's mother. A guard is run over on the line, and she calls it an omen of evil.
  • PeacemakerIn Part One, Chapter 19, she talks her sister-in-law Dolly into forgiving Stiva.
  • Black velvet at the ballIn Part One, Chapters 22 and 23, she appears in black velvet instead of the lilac Kitty expected, and dances the mazurka with Vronsky.
  • Her husband's earsIn Part One, Chapter 30, as her husband meets her train in St Petersburg, she wonders why his ears look like that.
  • The confessionIn Part Two, Chapter 29, after the steeplechase, she tells Karenin in the carriage that she loves Vronsky and is his mistress.
  • Seryozha's birthdayIn Part Five, Chapters 29 and 30, she gets into her old house early in the morning to see her son on his birthday, and has to leave when his father comes.

Anna Karenina quotes

Lines spoken by or about Anna Karenina, each verified verbatim against the text and located in the book.

I love him, I am his mistress; I can't bear you; I'm afraid of you, and I hate you.... You can do what you like to me.
— Anna, to Karenin · Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, Part Two, Chapter 29, translated by Constance Garnett
And the light by which she had read the book filled with troubles, falsehoods, sorrow, and evil, flared up more brightly than ever before, lighted up for her all that had been in darkness, flickered, began to grow dim, and was quenched forever.
— Narration · Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, Part Seven, Chapter 31, translated by Constance Garnett
Their ending, and the commentary — spoilers aheadHow the book leaves them, what happened after, and what the record says. Open when you're ready.

In Part Seven, Chapters 30 and 31, after a quarrel with Vronsky, Anna takes the train to Obiralovka and throws herself under a goods train. Her daughter by Vronsky is taken in by Karenin.

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