Weekly “what are you reading” thread number don’t know

What Karenin did wrong was not putting any effort in creating excitement in Anna’s life…that’s why his character was written that way. Just think of your female (XX) SO as a pet dog - it is abusive to leave it home alone all day, let alone for many days at a time. You need to spend time and play with it to make it feel like it’s doing something useful (go fetch, good boy!). You can see Anna desperately looking for shit to do even with Vronsky, going so far as to writing a children’s book.

Karenin was always going to be a bad guy because Tolstoy hated spineless bureaucrats. Which is very fair and based. But as modern readers, he seems like a great guy until the weird scene at the end where he becomes a man baby god lover.

As for Anna, I think she was always doomed. Her fundamental flaw was always feeling like she was on the verge of achieving happiness through outside means. Any time she gets what she wants she realizes the happiness is temporary and immediately starts seeking a new shiny toy. Vronsky, leaving Russia, charity work in the country, divorce, her children, the English girl. Lots of times her life is by anyone elses definition good. But her refusal to look inward and find a shred of meaning in her existence, and if I pretend to be Tolstoy instead of a heathen her refusal to come to terms with a higher power, will always leave her empty. She's basically the opposite of the good guy characters like Levin and Dolly. This culminates of course in her thinking she can find peace under a train, which ultimately like everything before, she immediately regrets. lol woman moment

Of course she does have some valid points. Her brother can sling all the peepee he wants with considerably less noticeable consequences and society does treat her completely unfairly. But in the end I don't think any of that mattered because she was just a fundamentally miserable person. Unless she had have dated me, I could have fixed her.