Honors Theses

Document Type

Thesis

Date of Completion

5-2024

Academic Year

2023-2024

Department

English

Academic Major

English

Second Academic Major

Theological Studies

Faculty Advisor

Russell Keck, Ph.D.

Abstract

Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina depicts the world as an endless array of choices and experiences to which one assigns meaning to. His characters, like real people, must navigate their world of complex ethical systems using their own moral ethos. Readers and critics alike critique Anna as a heroine for living out her moral ethos, pitting it against the social and feminist ethos of late 19th century upper class Russian society. Anna’s story is either interpreted as a cautionary tale or Anna is portrayed as a feminist heroine who tragically died for love. Throughout this paper, I argue that Anna is both admirable as a feminist hero yet she must pay the consequences of her actions in a society that rejects her.

Anna Karenina is a rich novel that portrays a complex, sympathetic, but ultimately didactic judgment of Anna’s ethos against the ethos of her society. I define ethos as the individual or societal values, expectations, and morals used as a guide to everyday living. Anna chooses to leave the safety of the societal ethos to pursue her own virtues and morals. She pitts herself against the social ethos, which prizes both traditional values with competing Western values. This paper examines the additional ethical systems and their primary themes. The first is the social ethical system which explores moral hierarchy and double standard. The second examines the three primary couples of the book and their ethical systems, focusing on the theme of love and marriage. The final and most important ethical system is that of the family and motherhood. Anna ultimately fails her society but fails herself and her family even more so. Anna is a heroine who sees herself locked into her life trajectory when her ethos and individual choices come with consequences that she decides she cannot live with.

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