Write your own Anna Karenina story

Stepan Arkadyevitch Oblonsky (Stiva)

A charming, handsome, and well-connected Moscow aristocrat of thirty-four who serves as president of a government board. He is inherently good-natured and liberal by habit rather than conviction, beloved by nearly everyone he meets. His marriage is thrown into crisis when his wife discovers his affair with the family's French governess. He acts as a social hub connecting most of the novel's major figures.

Darya Alexandrovna Oblonskaya (Dolly)

Stepan's wife and a devoted but worn mother of five living children. Once beautiful, she is now thin and anxious, consumed by household and maternal duties. She is devastated by her husband's infidelity but finds herself unable to leave him due to love, practicality, and concern for her children. She is a sister of Kitty Shtcherbatskaya.

Anna Arkadyevna Karenina

Stepan Oblonsky's beloved sister, she is expected to arrive in Moscow and may help mediate the marital crisis between Stiva and Dolly. She is married to the influential government official Alexey Alexandrovitch Karenin. Her arrival is anticipated with hope by the household, and her full role in the story is central to the novel's title and drama.

Konstantin Dmitrievitch Levin

A thirty-two-year-old country gentleman and landholder, old friend of Oblonsky, and secretly in love with Kitty Shtcherbatskaya. He is earnest, idealistic, socially awkward, and deeply uncomfortable with city life and bureaucratic routine. He has come to Moscow with the express purpose of proposing marriage to Kitty. He is the half-brother of the celebrated author Sergey Koznishev.

Kitty Shtcherbatskaya

The youngest daughter of the Shtcherbatsky family and the object of Levin's devoted love. She is young, charming, and socially accomplished, often seen skating at the Zoological Gardens. Levin regards her as a near-perfect, almost otherworldly figure. Her feelings toward Levin and others are a central source of romantic tension in the early narrative.

Alexey Alexandrovitch Karenin

Anna Karenina's husband and a high-ranking government official in St. Petersburg. He secured Oblonsky's lucrative government post in Moscow, illustrating his considerable influence. He is largely an off-page presence in the opening chapters but looms over the narrative as Anna's husband.

Sergey Ivanovitch Koznishev

Levin's elder half-brother, a celebrated intellectual author known across Russia. He engages in philosophical debates and represents the world of ideas and urban intellectual life that contrasts with Levin's rural practicality. He is well-respected but somewhat cold toward his younger brother.

Matvey

Oblonsky's loyal and long-serving valet, possessed of an affectionate, gently presumptuous familiarity with his master. He serves as a confidant and quiet moral barometer in the Oblonsky household, managing practical affairs and offering subtle counsel during the marital crisis.

Matrona Philimonovna

The sturdy, stern-faced nurse of the Oblonsky household and a primary ally of Darya Alexandrovna. She urges Oblonsky to beg his wife's forgiveness and works to maintain order in the disrupted household. She represents the pragmatic, traditional moral voice of the domestic staff.

Moscow

The primary urban setting of the opening chapters, home to old noble families, government boards, fashionable social venues, and the Oblonsky household. Moscow is portrayed as a city of sociable aristocratic life, bureaucratic routine, and romantic opportunity, contrasted with both the countryside and the more formal world of St. Petersburg.

St. Petersburg

The imperial capital, home of government ministries and high officials such as Karenin. It represents formal power, political influence, and polished court society, and is contrasted with the warmer, more socially intimate world of Moscow.

The Oblonsky Home (Study and Bedroom)

The domestic space in which the novel's opening drama unfolds—Oblonsky sleeps on the leather sofa in his study, exiled from his wife's bedroom after she discovered his infidelity. The house's various rooms (drawing room, dining room, nursery, wife's bedroom) each play a role in mapping the fractured domestic geography of the marriage.

The Zoological Gardens

A fashionable Moscow public venue where Kitty Shtcherbatskaya is known to skate in the afternoons. Oblonsky suggests Levin go there to see Kitty, making it a key site of romantic potential in the early narrative.

Government Board Office

Stepan Oblonsky's place of work in Moscow, where he presides over bureaucratic proceedings with characteristic easy charm. It is the site of his reunion with Levin and illustrates the comfortable, patronage-driven world of Imperial Russian civil administration.

The Shtcherbatsky Family

An old, noble, cultivated Moscow family with whom the Levins have long maintained close friendship. The family consists of three daughters—Dolly (married to Oblonsky), Natalia (married to the diplomat Lvov), and Kitty—as well as a son who died young. They embody the refined, ceremonious world of Moscow aristocratic family life that Levin both admires and feels excluded from.

The Oblonsky Household

The Moscow domestic establishment of Prince Stepan Oblonsky and Darya Alexandrovna, encompassing servants, children, governesses, nurses, and household staff. At the novel's opening it is in complete disarray due to the marital scandal. The household serves as a microcosm of upper-class Russian domestic life and its tensions.

Imperial Russian Class and Patronage System

Social position in this world is maintained through family connections, noble birth, and networks of mutual favor. Oblonsky holds a lucrative government post not through merit but through his brother-in-law Karenin's influence, illustrating how the aristocracy perpetuates itself through patronage. The system allows well-connected men to live comfortably regardless of actual industry or talent.

Liberalism vs. Conservatism in 1870s Russia

The educated nobility is preoccupied with questions of political liberalism and conservatism, debated in newspapers and drawing rooms alike. Oblonsky holds liberal views as a matter of social fashion rather than conviction, while Levin's skepticism of institutions like the district council reflects a disillusioned conservative-agrarian outlook. The tension between reformist ideals and entrenched tradition runs throughout the social fabric.

Marriage, Infidelity, and Divorce Norms

In Imperial Russian aristocratic society, marriage is a near-indissoluble institution, and divorce carries enormous social stigma. Wives like Dolly are practically trapped even in deeply unhappy marriages, constrained by dependence, children, and social convention. Male infidelity, while morally condemned, is tacitly common; the scandal lies more in discovery than in the act itself.

The Philosophical Debate: Mind vs. Body

Levin arrives at Koznishev's home to find his brother deep in debate with a professor over where to draw the line between psychological and physiological phenomena in human beings—a hot intellectual question of the era. This reflects the broader cultural clash between materialist science and idealist or spiritual philosophies percolating through educated Russian society.