Oh, I love Emma Bovary because she's so sympathetic in her narcissism--she wants to be adored, and be lusted after, and lust herself, and lead a life of eternal pleasure, which is impossible but also a very natural and easy thing to want. And all the people around her are just as awful in their own silly little desires, which is comforting.
It's been ages since I read Anna Karenina but I remember Kostya's thoughts and doubts being treated as important and eventually reconcilable to goodness, while the spiritual quality of the women characters relies entirely upon their fidelity and nothing else. (The other men are all spiritual washouts, too, in fairness.) At least Emma lives in an equally fallen world. But I could have totally mischaracterized Anna Karenina out of reading it as a feminist student and interpreting too far in one certain way?
Anna herself is the superior, in terms of cultivation and sensitivity, of any character in the book. And her life with Alexei really does seem empty and pitiable (and would be even more so after his spiritual conversion). Yes, I do not think Tolstoy believes Anna can live the life she is leading and be good, and he shows the ways she is tainted by it, but she has a pre-existing goodness and nobility that means there is something available for her to lose! I don't think her value is reducible to her fidelity: I think the Anna we see in the first book--serious, kind-hearted, helpful, not seduced by high society--is very similar to the Kostya we see at the end of the novel.
It makes it harder to read, though. Here's a creature with wisdom and a soul (Emma has neither), damned in this life and the next. I just didn't have the energy at the time to care about Kostya's struggle when his was easier in ways he couldn't even comprehend.
That said, this is encouraging a reread to see if this was all college pretension on my part.
Perhaps it;s just bc I'm non-Christian, but I never felt like either Anna or Kostya's eternal salvation was at issue! Certainly not in the way it was at issue in, say, Ivan Ilyich.
Oh, I love Emma Bovary because she's so sympathetic in her narcissism--she wants to be adored, and be lusted after, and lust herself, and lead a life of eternal pleasure, which is impossible but also a very natural and easy thing to want. And all the people around her are just as awful in their own silly little desires, which is comforting.
It's been ages since I read Anna Karenina but I remember Kostya's thoughts and doubts being treated as important and eventually reconcilable to goodness, while the spiritual quality of the women characters relies entirely upon their fidelity and nothing else. (The other men are all spiritual washouts, too, in fairness.) At least Emma lives in an equally fallen world. But I could have totally mischaracterized Anna Karenina out of reading it as a feminist student and interpreting too far in one certain way?
Anna herself is the superior, in terms of cultivation and sensitivity, of any character in the book. And her life with Alexei really does seem empty and pitiable (and would be even more so after his spiritual conversion). Yes, I do not think Tolstoy believes Anna can live the life she is leading and be good, and he shows the ways she is tainted by it, but she has a pre-existing goodness and nobility that means there is something available for her to lose! I don't think her value is reducible to her fidelity: I think the Anna we see in the first book--serious, kind-hearted, helpful, not seduced by high society--is very similar to the Kostya we see at the end of the novel.
It makes it harder to read, though. Here's a creature with wisdom and a soul (Emma has neither), damned in this life and the next. I just didn't have the energy at the time to care about Kostya's struggle when his was easier in ways he couldn't even comprehend.
That said, this is encouraging a reread to see if this was all college pretension on my part.
Perhaps it;s just bc I'm non-Christian, but I never felt like either Anna or Kostya's eternal salvation was at issue! Certainly not in the way it was at issue in, say, Ivan Ilyich.