Signaling Superficiality and Sexism: The Purpose of Part VIII in Anna Karenina

The death of the title character generally signals the end of the story in literature, cinema, television, comics, and other narrative art forms. Yet Leo Tolstoy's novel, Anna Karenina, proves to be an exception to this supposed rule. The story extends for a whole eighth of the novel beyond Anna's famous suicide. Several reasons for the inclusion of this eighth part exist: to emphasize how inherent selfishness is to Anna's society; to show the limitations of women's roles in Russia during this period; to demonstrate the ineffectiveness of suicide; and to put Levin's life and destiny in relief to Anna's. Overall, Part VIII's inclusion underlines Anna's insignificance and desperation as a woman in a superficial and sexist society.

Even before Part VIII begins, the reader witnesses Anna's self-centered behavior. The most prominent examples of Anna's selfishness include committing adultery; abandoning her little boy for her own personal satisfaction; demanding that Vronsky share her societal isolation; and not caring for her newborn daughter. Also, consider this: The novel's title certainly implies that the primary story is Anna's, despite Tolstoy's near-equal attention to Levin's adventures. That, however, could be interpreted as how Anna viewed the world during her lifetime, rather than how Tolstoy or other the novel's other characters view it. Anna's plight absolutely consumed her, even though she experienced no material hardships where such self-centeredness would be justified. (Think, for example, to an extremely impoverished character like Crime and Punishment's Katerina, who must constantly put herself first simply to survive another day, in contrast to Anna, who not only has enough bread but gourmet food, as well.)

Part VIII therefore emphasizes Anna's selfishness, a trait developed in part because of her society's gender role constraints. In the final segment of the novel, the reader witnesses how Anna's selfishness persists even once her life has ended. By killing herself, Anna causes Vronsky cruel pain in the form of "an incessant, gnawing toothache which even prevented him from speaking with the expression he would have liked" (780). Vronsky's mother claims that Anna "ruined" him, causing him to "