S5E6:  How to Be a Fallen Woman in 19th Century Russia:  Leo Tolstoy’s ANNA KARENINA with Special Guest, Rev. Heather Coates

There will be SPOILERS, so if you’ve gotten this far in life without hearing about the ending to this novel o' novels, don’t push your luck further:  go block off a month to read it, and then hit play!

Sonja and Vanessa are thrilled to welcome their dear friend, Rev. Heather Coates, who fell in love with Russian literature, and was eager (willing?) to re-read Tolstoy’s 1878 (in full book form) novel about a love affair that spans the hundreds of miles between Moscow and St. Petersburg.  

Heather offers some tips on how to navigate the names in Russian novels, and Sonja offers a little bio of Tolstoy.  In our lively discussion, we ask if this is the best novel ever written–as many have said it is.  Can you have this novel without the railway?  Is it a novel about a person or a culture?  Can Tolstoy love Anna and kill her at the same time? Should this novel even be named after Anna?  And what does her slice of the story add to the “fallen woman” narrative? Should you read this novel?  And is it possible to read without vodka breaks?

Along the way, Heather finds some mushrooms for Sonja, Sonja reveals she’s a romantic after all, and Vanessa finds a way to link a character to Jay Gastby–again. 

REFERENCES:

If you are interested in Tolstoy taking down Shakespeare, here is a link to "Tolstoy on Shakespeare:  A Critical Essay on Shakespeare" –emphasis on the word “critical”. It was published in 1906, four years before Tolstoy dies, so well into his super religious/cranky old man phase, which explains a lot.

Also, please know that we are always thinking about how a writer’s biography intersects with their work, and Tolstoy is no exception.  While we give a brief overview of Tolstoy here, we are aware that he and his wife, Sophia Tolstaya, was a writer and artist in her own right, and by all accounts, absolutely essential to Tolstoy’s success as a writer (and, perhaps, day-to-day survival as a human). It is ironic that a man who could “write” women so well was terrible at treating his own wife well.  It is one of the famous awful marriages in literature.  Just search Tolstoy+Sophia+marriage, and loads of articles will come up.  Also, if you are interested in hearing from Sophia herself, she was a life-long diarist, and there are translations of her diaries and a full biography available in English.