Charlotte Rheingold (Comparative Literature, Economics)
Mentor: Susanna Lim
Oral Presentation
Panel B: “Character Creation” Oak Room
Concurrent Session 1: 9:00-10:15am
Facilitator: Matt Nelson
Although she is no role model to be emulated, readers have been enchanted by the character of Anna Karenina for generations. Her alluring personality and passionate individualism obscure her true nature— that of an adulteress who ultimately abandons her family. For Tolstoy, family represented the most sacred of relationships, yet he too is charmed by Anna despite her violation of his own ideal. How can one of literature’s most well-loved characters also be one of the most selfish and reckless? The answer lies in the fact that her personality abstracts her conduct and makes the reader willing to overlook her self-serving decisions. I will argue that Anna’s conduct is what ultimately leads to her downfall, and not her personality, because the same tendency to flout societal regulations is also seen in the morally upright character, Levin. I will reveal through a series of close readings and secondary sources that Anna’s faults lie in the nature of how she executes her decisions, not the decisions themselves, like having an affair, which Russian high society did not entirely frown upon.