Tolstoy: The Message Of Anna Vronsky

Anna glances at Vronsky's note, and dismisses it as she approaches the train platform. Seemingly emotionless, Anna prepares for her jump onto the rails. As she is about to make her jump, her red handbag gets stuck and she is unable to make her jump. She misses her chance with the first carriage, and must wait until the second carriage approaches. The time has come, and Anna makes her final descent onto the train tracks. She is overwhelmed with emotion while on the tracks, and questions why she is where she is, and how she could have possibly ended up here. She is struck and killed as she tries to get up in a struggle to return to the train platform. In this scene, along with many others, Tolstoy attempts to portray a message about the effects

The first example is early in the novel when Tolstoy depicts the beliefs of Vronsky about people in society. Vronsky creates 2 categories for people, one category is old fashioned, and the other is modern. He believes that old fashioned people believe in strict morals and live life the traditional way. Oppositely, the modern people have looser morals and live a more carefree life. He identifies himself as one who is modern. Tolstoy portrays him to be an allegorical figure of modernity, even though this later changes. Tolstoy shows how society can cause one to classify people and decide who to associate themselves with based on these classifications. Another example of the effect of society presented by Tolstoy on Vronsky is when he first began to go after Anna. During this time in Russian society, it was not frowned upon for a man to go after a married women. However, it was extremely frowned upon for a married women to be in a relationship with someone other than her husband. This explains why Vronsky had nothing to lose in attempting to hook up with Anna. Tolstoy shows how these societal norms meant that Vronsky was able to go all in on Anna, but Anna had to really think about getting in a relationship with Vronsky. A third example of Tolstoy showing how society affects Vronsky is when Vronsky tells Anna that his life now revolves around winning her love over. Previously, Vronsky had stated that he

The first example is when Anna hesitated to get in a relation with Vronsky. Unlike Vronsky, Anna was a bit hesitant in engaging in a relationship with him because she knows it would ruin her image in society if people found out that she was in a relationship with someone other than her husband. In this time of Russian society, women were expected to follow strict societal rules. Engaging in a relationship with someone other than their husband was extremely frowned upon. Tolstoy expresses this rule of society by showing how Anna took caution and was secretive about about her newly formed relationship with Vronsky. Unfortunately for her however, this relationship was oxymoronic as it was an open secret. The relationship was supposed to be low key, but everyone new about it. A second example where Tolstoy shows how societal rules impact Anna is when she was extremely worried from being away from Seryozha. Anna was very worried when she had to leave Seryozha as she has been his main provider for his entire life. While being away from her son, Anna claims that she feels as if she is “alone and her soul is split in two,” (Tolstoy 351). This feeling of isolation is justified as this is how she is supposed to feel in this society. According to society, she is supposed to always be there for, and take care of her children which explains why she was so unhappy not being able