Are there aspects of Anna Karenina that Tolstoy doesn quite pull off?
The only thing that is under-motivated for me is Vronsky’s suicide attempt. Tolstoy doesn’t make it very clear why Vronsky does it. Vronsky is obviously humiliated that Karenin doesn’t challenge him to a duel, which would be the normal thing for a wronged husband. Karenin rationalizes it in his own mind by convincing himself that he’s too important to Russia to go around challenging people to duels. Anna’s interpretation is that Karenin is a coward, which is probably true. For Vronsky’s part, he would be much happier if Karenin took a shot at him. He would then fire his own pistol in the air, and that would expunge the humiliation, and he would feel very much better. It’s almost in that spirit that he shoots himself in the book, because Tolstoy says he feels better afterwards. What’s odd is that it’s hardly mentioned again, either as something that’s a physical problem for Vronsky or indeed an emotional problem for him and Anna. How did you deal with it? I tried to strengthen Vronsky’s
