Anna Karenina

Chapter-by-chapter summary

Spoiler warning: this section covers the whole plot, including the ending. The novel has eight parts and over two hundred short chapters, so this guide goes part by part.

Part 1: A Broken Household and a Fatal Meeting

In Moscow, Stiva Oblonsky has been caught cheating on his wife, Dolly, and the household is falling apart. His sister Anna comes from Petersburg to help patch things up. At the same time, the country landowner Levin arrives to propose to Dolly’s younger sister Kitty, but Kitty turns him down because she is waiting for the dashing officer Vronsky to ask her. At the railway station, Anna meets Vronsky, and a worker is killed by a train while they are there. At a ball, Vronsky dances with Anna and ignores Kitty, who is crushed. Anna returns to Petersburg and Vronsky follows her. Why it matters: both plots begin here, and the train becomes a symbol that Tolstoy keeps returning to.

Part 2: Passion and Public Scandal

Kitty falls ill and her parents take her abroad to a spa, while Levin goes back to his estate. In Petersburg, Anna and Vronsky become lovers. Her husband, Karenin, a senior government official, warns her only about gossip, not about her feelings. At a steeplechase, Vronsky’s mare Frou-Frou falls and is badly injured, and Anna reacts so openly that Karenin notices. On the drive home she tells him the truth. He answers coldly and asks only that appearances be kept up. Why it matters: the race shows Vronsky’s recklessness, and Karenin’s reply shows how much he values form over feeling.

Part 3: The Farm and the Forbidden Affair

Levin throws himself into running his farm and thinking about Russian peasants. In a famous scene he mows hay alongside his workers and feels a rare, simple happiness. He visits Dolly and tries to forget Kitty, but a glimpse of her carriage on the road shows him that he still loves her. In Petersburg, Karenin refuses to separate from Anna and warns that he will take their son Seryozha if the affair goes on. Why it matters: honest work and love on the land are set against a marriage held together by appearances and threats.

Part 4: Illness, Forgiveness and Flight

Karenin asks a lawyer about divorce, but under the law of the time the evidence he holds, Vronsky’s love letters, is not enough. Anna gives birth to Vronsky’s daughter and nearly dies; at her bedside Karenin forgives Vronsky. Vronsky, ashamed, tries to end his life and survives. When he is posted to Tashkent, Anna leaves with him for Italy and leaves Seryozha behind. Meanwhile Stiva brings Levin and Kitty together, and they become engaged. Why it matters: one couple leaves society behind, while the other enters its most traditional promise.

Part 5: Marriage and Exile

Levin and Kitty marry, and their first months are awkward and full of quarrels. When Levin’s brother Nikolai is dying of consumption, Kitty nurses him calmly, and Levin sees her strength. Kitty becomes pregnant. In Italy, Anna and Vronsky live cut off from friends, and Vronsky grows bored. Back in Petersburg, Anna is shut out of society while Vronsky is still welcome. She secretly visits Seryozha on his birthday and Karenin finds out. At the theatre, women openly snub her, and the couple retreat to Vronsky’s country estate. Why it matters: two very different marriages show how love can deepen in one home and turn into isolation in another.

Part 6: Summer in the Country

Dolly spends the summer with her children and her mother at Levin and Kitty’s house. Levin grows jealous when the guest Veslovsky flirts with Kitty, and he asks him to leave; Veslovsky goes to stay with Anna and Vronsky. Dolly visits Anna’s luxurious estate and senses anxiety under the comfort. Vronsky asks Dolly to persuade Anna to seek a divorce. When Vronsky leaves for the provincial elections, Anna is eaten up by jealousy and writes to Karenin asking for a divorce. The couple then move to Moscow. Why it matters: Anna’s world is getting smaller while her fear of losing Vronsky grows.

Part 7: Moscow and the Station

Levin goes to Moscow for the birth of his child and is drawn into the city’s expensive social life. He visits Anna, is charmed by her, and Kitty becomes suspicious, but they make peace. Kitty gives birth to their son Mitya after a hard labour. Anna has come to depend on morphine and suspects that Vronsky will marry someone else. Stiva asks Karenin for a divorce in which Anna is not blamed, but Karenin refuses on the advice of a French clairvoyant. After a bitter quarrel, Anna sends Vronsky a telegram, visits Dolly and Kitty, and then throws herself under a freight train at a station. Why it matters: Tolstoy brings back the image of the train from the first part, with a very different meaning.

Part 8: After Anna

Sergei Koznyshev’s book is ignored, and he turns to the Pan-Slavic cause. Stiva gets the post he wanted, and Karenin takes in Anna’s daughter, Annie. Vronsky joins the Russian volunteers fighting in Serbia. Levin, after Nikolai’s death, struggles with the meaning of life and has dark thoughts. A talk with a peasant about living for one’s soul and for God gives him a new direction. During a thunderstorm, afraid for Kitty and the baby, he realises how much his son already means to him. He accepts that he will keep making mistakes but that his life can still be turned toward what is good. Why it matters: the book ends not with a solved puzzle but with a quiet decision.

Characters

• Anna Karenina: The heroine: intelligent, charming and emotionally intense, married to a senior official and mother of Seryozha. She comes to Moscow to repair her brother’s marriage and ends up changing her own life. Tolstoy shows both her warmth and her growing torment.
• Count Alexei Vronsky: A rich, handsome cavalry officer who first courts Kitty, then falls for Anna. He is brave and loyal in his way, but proud and restless, and he struggles to understand how much Anna gives up for him.
• Alexei Karenin: Anna’s husband, a senior government official, orderly, formal and uneasy with feelings. He cares about reputation and rules, and the book lets us see his hurt as well as his coldness.
• Konstantin Levin: A sincere, awkward country landowner and old friend of Stiva. He cares about his farm, about the peasants, and about big questions of faith and death. Many readers see him as partly modelled on Tolstoy himself.
• Kitty Shcherbatskaya: Dolly’s younger sister, who refuses Levin because she hopes for Vronsky, and is badly hurt when he turns to Anna. Illness and disappointment make her stronger, and she later marries Levin.
• Stiva Oblonsky: Anna’s charming, easygoing brother, a government official who loves good food and company. His affair sets the story in motion, yet he stays popular, a contrast to how Anna is treated.
• Dolly Oblonskaya: Stiva’s wife and Kitty’s older sister. Worn down by money worries and many children, she must decide whether to forgive her husband. She becomes one of the book’s most humane observers.
• Seryozha: Anna and Karenin’s young son. He adores his mother, and being separated from her is one of the heaviest costs of Anna’s choice. His birthday visit in Part 5 is one of the book’s most tender scenes.
• Countess Lidia Ivanovna: A society woman with strong religious views who becomes Karenin’s close adviser after Anna leaves. She shapes his decisions and shows how piety can be mixed with social power in this world.
• Sergei Koznyshev: Levin’s well-known half-brother, a writer and thinker who likes talking about ideas, public causes and politics, while Levin prefers practical life. Their conversations show two ways of looking at the same country.

Writing about this book

For an essay or a book-club talk, start from a question rather than a plot summary. These questions give you plenty to work with:

• Why does Tolstoy pair Anna’s story with Levin’s? What does each of them want that the other already has?
• Stiva and Anna break the same marriage vow but are treated differently. Why, and does anything like that still happen today?
• Where does Tolstoy invite sympathy for Karenin, and where does he take it away?
• Trains, horses and the countryside seem to mean more than the events around them. What might they stand for?

A simple plan: pick one scene, such as the steeplechase, the mowing or the theatre snub; explain what the characters feel and choose in it; then link it to one theme. Use your own words and keep quotes short. The novel does not give one neat answer, so writing about what puzzled you is a perfectly good way to begin.