Anna is a beautiful, aristocratic, sharply intelligent, intensely charismatic woman.

Nearly everyone
male, female, young, oldis magnetically attracted to her, and at the beginning of the novel, she is the
brilliant center of society. However, her relentless pursuit of love and her extramarital affair with
Vronsky cause her to be cast into social exile: she falls from an object of worship to a pariah.

Anna believes deeply in love: her love for Vronsky, her desire to reconcile Dolly and Oblonsky, her
love for her son, Seryozha. Anna is also deeply jealous, particularly later in the novel: she clings
furiously to Vronsky when she can sense that their relationship is souring. Anna comes to hate her
husband, Karenin, because she sees his ambition as maintaining his reputation in society rather than
following his passions.

As the novel progresses, she becomes increasingly passionate and dominated by strong torrents of
emotion. Even though Anna is deeply flawedshe commits adultery and abandons her childrenthe
reader nevertheless identifies with her.

The reader comes under Annas charismatic spell, and even though the other characters and even the
narrator disapprove of her actions, the reader remains sympathetic with Anna throughout, despite her
faults.

Princess Darya (Dolly)

Oblonskys wife, Kittys sister, and Annas sister-in-law, the long-suffering Dolly has perhaps the
most realistic version of marriage and motherhood that Tolstoy depicts throughout the
novel. Dolly is emotional, but ultimately, she takes a pragmatic approach to life . At

the very beginning of the book, she must cope with Oblonskys adultery; although she is
furious and nearly hysterical, she rallies and pulls herself together for the sake of her children. Dolly is
always plagued with money troubles: Oblonskys lavish ways stretch their modest means, so she is the
one who must figure out how to make ends meet.
Dolly is one of the few characters to remain loyal to and sympathetic with Anna throughout. Even
though Dollys married life is by no means perfect, she makes her choices for the sake of her family,
and she ultimately seems to be content with her life.

Princess Katerina (Kitty)

, Dollys younger sister, is a sensitive, excitable, somewhat high-strung young girl who begins the
novel in love with Vronsky. After he rejects her in favor of the dazzling Anna, she spirals into a
depression. But when she goes to the German spa, she has a realization: she must be true to herself.
She marries Levin and settles into the model of a loving wife and caring mother. When Levin's brother
Nikolai is sick, Kitty is able to maintain a level head and care expertly for him, even though Levin is
thrown into so much emotional turmoil that he becomes paralyzed. Similarly, Kitty is calm and happy
in her pregnancy and labor, since she understands what to do.

Kitty and Levin are in sync with each others thoughts and feelings. Their marriage is an equal
partnership. Kitty matures from a high-strung girl into a loving and honest wife and mother.

Anna, Like Levin, seeks a personal resolution between spontaneous, unreflecting life and the claims of
reason and moral law.

Being a woman, however, whose human destiny is to raise children and be mistress of her household,

Anna is more victimized by culture and society than her male counterpart and is more sensitive to the
social restrictions on her quest for personal meaning.

Because she is claimed primarily by her position in an advanced and corrupt society, Anna is doomed
at the outset.
Responding only to her inner emotions, she is the most natural character in the novel. The strength of
her inner nature enables Anna to cast off from conventional society and seek love as her basic
definition.

Tolstoy makes it obvious that Anna's marriage will never satisfy her passionate nature.

Karenin, an outstanding example of an individual dehumanized by sophisticated, rational society

, is the first one Anna must reject. She must seek the love of a freer, yet honorable, individual.

Presenting her with a military man for a lover, Tolstoy develops Anna's tragedy with a cruel logical
consistency.

Vronsky's brilliant promise in his career implies he has honor, daring, and a sense of life and death any
good soldier requires.

Opposed to these good qualities is his limited imagination, the military virtues of sacrificing
individuality for a sense of corpsmanship, a frivolous attitude toward women, and his rigid code of
behavior according to his military standards of "honor" and "prestige." We see the same values that
attract Anna to Vronsky provide limitations which doom their liaison to failure.

Tolstoy seems to say that Anna's search for love is hopeless: Neither Karenin nor Vronsky have the
inner power to respond to her emotional intensity.

Had Anna fallen in love with Levin, a possibility Tolstoy presents in Part 7, she would have affirmed
her love commitment through her children and husband in Levin's country environment.

Anna's downfall derives from Tolstoy's basic moral philosophy: Unselfish seeking of goodness obtains
a state of grace, whereas a predatory self-assertion results in damnation.

We see how Anna becomes cruel, vindictive, and self-destroying as she exists according to her single
goal to maintain her love relationship.
This becomes harder to maintain as Anna loses, one by one, the outside values of the social order
which structure not only her existence, but Vronsky's as well.

Shut off from her son, her friends, her protective status, Anna's love provides her with the only source
of vitality.

Under the pressure to live only through her love, she denies her femininity as the vehicle of bearing
children;

Her charms have become the singular weapon of the witch. Thus, we see why Vronsky shrinks from
her heightened beauty: It is to her witchlike metamorphosis that Vronsky responds so coldly, driving
Anna, in her turn, to a state of jealous desperation which further repels him.

Tolstoy shows how Anna, seeking self-gratification in love, drives herself from salvation, away from
God, toward satanism and self-destruction.

Unlike Levin who had discovered love of God, Anna's search concludes at the dead end of hate, and
death is her only recourse.

Princess Betsy is the center of Annas brilliant, high-class social circle in Petersburg. She is graceful, liked by all,
and canny, as she knows all the intricacies of her complicated network. Betsys social circle is elite but ethically
relaxed; however, when Anna and Vronskys affair becomes highlighted publically, Betsy hypocritically snubs
Anna, even though Betsy herself has a reputation for moral laxity and is not exactly faithful to her own
husband.