ANNA KARENINA and IRENE FORSYTE: so similiar yet so diffirent

Women in literature: some are pretty, some are kind, a few may possess virtues; there are witches and there are saints, mothers and lovers, and not much more.

Female characters were – historically - all too often presented and viewed by most male authors in stereo-typical straitjackets. Their images were plain, stale and almost lifeless, they were rarely viewed in all their complexity. They provided a decorative contour to the plot, or a brush-stroke of colour to the setting. Women made secondary appearances, leaving to the male characters the roles of importance and weight.

So it was until authors such as Leo Tolstoy came along with his  “Anna Karenina” and John Galsworthy with his “Forsyte Saga”. These two authors had the audacity to put a woman centre stage and made of her a complex and interesting character around which the whole story evolves. They revolutionized the whole literary world that finally accepted the idea of a woman as an independent figure that could be - and was - of greater interest than the male characters.

Whatever our personal attitude may be towards Anna Karenina and Irene Forsyte we cannot deny that these are two of the most fascinating female characters in literature. Anna and Irene are both stunning, brilliant, irresistible, aristocratic women who contrast with everyone else. They move with grace, they talk politely, they look at you lovingly, they shine in company and are able to talk about anything. Their beauty is never vulgar nor too evident; their faces are painted beautiful with a subtle hue, showing only a peek of the true beauty of the gentle soul. But despite the outward impression of being seemingly calm and reserved, both women have a burning fire of passion hidden deep within that tears them apart. It is exactly that desperate contradiction between  social duty and the heart’s pulsating passion that makes the characters so challenging for Tolstoy and Galsworthy to create and so attractive to the reader to discover..

Each story has the same beginning: a young girl, left without money, unhappy and desperate accepts the offer of marriage from an older wealthy man, without ever loving him. The husbands Alexei Karenin and Soames Forsyte both move in high society, important and influential figures. Both husbands are described as devoted and loyal to their wives, but lacking passion and obvious expressions of love. Both are more than happy to spend money on Anna and Irene, giving them expensive jewelry or building houses, but no outlay of cash can leave the women content or happy. Both marriages seem to be prefect on the outside: a rich man possessing a young, gorgeous wife, but the relationships are fatally flawed.

The characters of Anna and Irene, though, seduce by their complexity. These are no bodice-ripping adulteresses. The longing they feel is no superficial pleasure hunt but rather a developed spirituality and a gnawing lust for beauty that is beyond the understanding of their husbands. No amount of expensive gifts or the pleasures of being in high society can leave them content. Their needs, hidden inside the dark, hot, unexplored embers of their souls go beyond anything material or superficial.

This sensual and spiritual ache is something that neither Soames nor Alexei are able to perceive; it is something unattainable and unimaginable for such men. Anna and Irene, young and beautiful, have a strong desire for passion and romantic love that they had never experienced.

Thus it comes to pass that Anna meets Count Vronsky who is courting her friend and a family relation Kitty Tscherbatskaya. And Irene meets a young architect, Philip Bossiney, a fiancé of her dear friend and relative Jules Galsworthy. Both Anna and Irene, visibly in love with these men, however make serious attempts at refusing them. But both stories are very similar: the passion is so overpowering that soon after they start extramarital affairs.

Neither Alexei Vronsky nor Philip Bossiney seem to have any moral scruples about breaking their previous engagements or breaking a family.

While Irene’s love for Bossiney can be described as spiritual and based on common interests in the first place, Anna’s love of Vronsky is more carnal, based mainly on passion. “Looking at him she felt physically humiliated and couldn’t speak. He felt what only a murderer could feel when he sees the lifeless body.” From the very beginning of their affair, the love between Anna and Vronsky is perceived as something dangerous and impure. It is as if like the horse with the broken spine that he shoots, Vronsky breaks also the structural core of  Anna’s life and in  consequence her life will have to end as well.

It is here perhaps that we see the biggest difference between the two women: while Irene fulfills her desires by finding her soulmate, Anna ends up with a seducer who believes himself to be in love but disappoints her expectations and ruins her life.

As we penetrate the novels we see how Alexei Karenin is more bothered with his image and his family status than by the betrayal itself. In an astounding insight into upper-class morality Tolstoy exposes how Alexei sees it as disrespectful to himself to be jealous of Anna. It bothers and irritates her: “I would respect him more if he killed Vronsky, if he killed me.”

Soames on the other hand does everything possible to vindicate himself with Bossiney and ruins him with a lawsuit. Galsworthy calls him “the man of property”. This is exactly how Soames sees Irene – his legal property. And to prove the right to his possession he uses her for his sexual needs without her consent. Soames is the opposite of the gentleman Alexei – as he fails to conquer Irene’s heart his love turns into madness.

While Karenin does his best to ignore the harm and the public humiliation and even agrees to divorce, Soames follows his obsession with Irene that makes of him a miserable man. Soames, consumed by his unreciprocated love, siezes every possibility to approach Irene. But he fails in all his attempts, always wondering how he deserved to experience such hatred and disrespect.

I confess I have always pitied these two men for what they must have experienced. They both behaved at times more than respectfully, loving and forgiving their wives no matter what. They both would have accepted their return and would have loved them even more than before.

But the biggest difference between the Russian Anna and the English Irene is the attitude of the authors, their “fathers”. While Galsworthy does his best at remaining impartial, we still are more inclined to pity Irene and her loneliness after Bossiney’s death. And as the story progresses Galsworthy gives Irene another chance and her happiness is finally restored. As for Anna, Tolsoy is less merciful to her. Throughout the whole novel he opposes her unholy, impure love to Vronsky to his ideal love that he creates between Kitty and Levin (little Leo- the one who expresses his ideas). Tolstoy views the passion that consumed Anna as something diabolic, a spiritual death that could only end with physical death.

And while Galsworthy seeks happiness for Irene (whose story was inspired by his own wife), and keeps on punishing Soames with all the unhappy events that come his way, Tolstoy is more complex in his analysis of the main character.

Undeniably Anna is nobler than Irene. She despises herself for having an affair, she despises her husband for forgiving her, she despises Vrosnky for not understanding her nature and she despises the judgmental society in which she is entombed. It is only as we look anew at the picture that Tolstoy so masterfully painted with words, we finally see how beautifully complex Anna is. And that her complexity, her Russian-ness creates the biggest difference. This is why she, looking for forgiveness, throws herself under the train and Irene, having no scruples about the broken marriage and the broken lives of either Soames or Jules, re-establishes her happiness, finding respect and understanding of those who previously hated her.

Anna and Irene are like no other women in literature. Indeed they may have become icons for a new blossoming of female characterization. No longer are women madonnas or whores, beautiful or sinful; they are all of the above, in large part due to these magnificently complex portraits of the deep recesses of the female soul.

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