Leo Tolstoy often wrote about marriage and relationship in his novels. One of the most famous books of the writer is dedicated to the theme of love is the ironic novel Anna Karenina. There are two narrative lines of the story: the relationship of a married lady Anna Karenina and Vronsky opposes the marriage of Konstantin Levin and Kitty Shtcherbatskaya. The essay discusses the difference between the relationship of two main couples of the novel, Levin and Kitty, Anna and Vronsky. The investigation is held according to the postulates in the modern social psychology and touches the issues of self-expansion, social exclusion, experience of negative emotions, moral sentiments and cooperation, warmth and competence as dimensions of social cognition.
At first sight, lovely Anna gives the impression of an intelligent woman, with a good heart. But being in love with Alexei Vronsky, and the further development of their relations has shown that she lives only by the passions. According to the investigation of Tilburg University, dedicated to the differential influences of shame and guilt, “emotions can act as commitment devices” (de Hooge, Zeelenberg and Breugelmans, 1025-1026). It explains the final suicide, which committed Anna. From a psychological point of view, her choice in favor of love caused a deep negative moral emotion like guilt. Thoughts of Anna were focused on the search for personal happiness. She does not care even for her own children. It is a bright example of choosing in favor of personal interest, or according to the researchers from Tilburg University, an ‘individual reward’ (de Hooge, Zeelenberg and Breugelmans, 1025-1026).The theory of moral emotion and cooperation explains how, in order to be with Vronsky, Anna leaves her son and daughter. According to the story, over time, Anna loses her simplicity and naturalness, and becomes entangled in a relationship lies. It seems to her that Vronsky had lost interest in her love and started new relations with Sorokina. In the Universal Dimensions of Social Cognition: Warmth and Competence, the researchers of the Department of Psychology from Princeton and Lawrence Universities, describes Warmth and Competence as fundamental aspects of the evaluation (Fiske, Cuddy and Glick, 77-78). Thus, the doubts of Anna have a huge impact on her behavioral reactions. Under the influence of fear and judgements before competence, she thinks that if she goes away from Vronsky, he will be glad. She admits that he is her everything and requires from him more and more affection. She cannot find happiness in life and ran away from thoughts that her life is a misery. The only way out that she sees for herself is death. According to her thoughts, death should punish Vronsky, and help him to get rid of her.
Relationship of Levin and Kitty develops in a different way. Initially, Kitty denies Levin considering the affair with Vronsky to be more serious. Later, good feelings occur between Kitty and Levin, and they get married. For Tolstoy, Levin is a positive character. Levin did not like an idle life in the city, because a simple life of ordinary people in the village is closer to his soul. Levin's thoughts are busy looking for the meaning of life and the universal truth. In religion and faith Levin initially did not find an answer to his questions and, in spite of his prosperous and happy family life, also comes to thoughts of suicide. He hides lace, in order not to hang himself, and takes away from the eyes the gun not to shoot himself. In Levin's life there are a lot of dark moments: his brother's death, suicidal thoughts. But there are happy moments in it, when Levin returns to his estate. As, according to the study dedicated to the warmth and competence, they both are “universal dimensions of human social cognition” (Fiske, Cuddy and Glick, 77-78), Levin feels better being closer to the farmers with their work and the simple rural life. In this simplicity, away from the dirt and the temptations of the city, Tolstoy sees salvation for his hero, as well as he found salvation for himself. For a while, Levin finds a way out only after a conversation with the old man Fokanitch, who “lived for his soul, in truth, in God’s way” (Tolstoy, n.d.). After the conversation, it seems to Levin that his relations with people will be different from that moment, and in his life will be filled with “an undoubted sense of goodness” (Tolstoy, n.d.).
Demonstrating relationship between emotional responses and moral judgements (Greene et al., 1145), recent studies of the novel, provide its understanding of a family verbalized by Tolstoy: as a service, forced labor (Dolly); as captivity (Vronsky), slavery (Levin, Anna); the path (Anna). By creating his work, Tolstoy, at the same time, creates a certain world. in this context, culture provides a background, in which the interaction with the linguistic environment arises metaphors. The writer uses them in abundance. For example, Tolstoy, calls passion a form of evil (Tolstoy, n.d.), because he considers it to be sinful and vicious. It distorts the essence of a man and destroys him. The use of religious and cultural code matrices imply extreme feelings of the characters: passion, jealousy, suffering and love. The novel has a lot in common with the study of Roy F. Baumeister, who searched for the meaning of human fulfillment in love and investigated the role of “unrequited love” (Baumeister, Wotman and Stillwell, 377). In the Tolstoy’s novel, the theme of unrequited love occupies one of the most important places. It causes desperation of Anna, her feeling of rejection by Vronsky. Tolstoy, exploring the nature of passion, penetrates into the depths of human nature, the mysteries of the mind, reveals the motives that drive human actions. Because of named convictions, Tolstoy uses a lot of units with negative rich semantics: fight, crime, murder, court, penalty, drop, service, slavery, torture, death or crush. As a piece of art, Anna Karenina, is the author’s reflection of the objective reality with the help of certain words. Artistic reflection includes the personal attitude of the artist to the represented, the expression of his opinions, feelings, and values. The metaphors express the author’s idea in the novel brighter than single words or phrases. It occurs in the story of Leo Tolstoy as an internal basis for the stage, as a latent idea of the plot, even as a symbol of that time. Tolstoy considers that love and passion exist independently from human mind, as a part of the cultural code. Passion is uncontrolled, like a destructive element of fire: passion is blind, is not subjected to reason, empties and sears the soul, destroys a man.
Conclusion
Anna Karenina is a beautiful and profound work about a heartbreaking rejection, social exclusion in a result of guilt and shame, incapacity to find answers to the internal questions about the purpose of life. Tolstoy reveals the characters and transmits their experience, showing in detail the customs and daily life of his era. Society's attitude to marriage and personal life, as described in the novel, by today's standards seems to be wild and absurd. Secular society has turned away from Anna Karenina and labeled her as a "criminal woman". People avoided her. Even divorce, which was not so easy to implement, could not solve the problem. Family is a sacred formation in the view of the majority of the characters of the novel. On the example of a family of Levin, Tolstoy shows in his understanding, the ideal family relationships, which are based not on the passion and physical attraction but a mutual respect. Levin wanted to marry a peasant girl, admiring the chaste love and joyful peasant labor. Thus, conceptualization of the novel consists in common respect, the possibility of the existence of a family without marriage, feeling of loneliness, even in the complete family and a woman’s role in society. The metaphor occupies an important place in the novel. It reflects Tolstoy’s knowledge about the world, his personal understanding of the values of his epoch, as well as the system of cultural and national values itself. Metaphors in the novel Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy provides a valuable picture of the world of post-reform era in Russia. Cultural values, manifested in words of the novel, reflect the history of the people.
Works Cited
Baumeister, Roy F., Sara R. Wotman, and Arlene M. Stillwell. "Unrequited Love: On Heartbreak, Anger, Guilt, Scriptlessness, And Humiliation.". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 64.3 (1993): 377-394. Web.
De Hooge, Ilona E., Marcel Zeelenberg, and Seger M. Breugelmans. "Moral Sentiments And Cooperation: Differential Influences Of Shame And Guilt". Cognition & Emotion 21.5 (2007): 1025-1042. Web.
Fiske, Susan T., Amy J.C. Cuddy, and Peter Glick. "Universal Dimensions Of Social Cognition: Warmth And Competence". Trends in Cognitive Sciences 11.2 (2007): 77-83. Web.
Greene, Joshua D. et al. "Cognitive Load Selectively Interferes With Utilitarian Moral Judgment". Cognition 107.3 (2008): 1144-1154. Web.
Tolstoy, Leo. Anna Karenina. Moskva: Pravda, 1964. Print.
