1. I would like to thank all of you for attending my baccalaureate exam and supporting me
throughout this process. Today I will be defending my thesis, “The Female Spectacle:
Objectification of the Female Form in Lev Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina”.
My inspiration for this thesis stemmed from my interest in the gender dynamics and complexity
of characters within this novel. Lev Tolstoy’s realist writing and focus on the prosaic allows for a
close study of women’s roles, as well as the limitations placed upon them by society.
I began writing this thesis by exploring the role of the male gaze within the novel. The
consequences of the male gaze are varied, with Anna eventually committing suicide and Dolly
going into isolation to counteract her husband’s whims. By focusing on this topic, I was able to
reflect further on the nature of the narrator, and where we can see Tolstoy’s own beliefs reflected
in his characters.
I organized this thesis by studying women’s roles within society, particularly marriage and
motherhood, and how the male gaze interacts with those roles. I devoted each chapter to a
particular female character within the text, allowing for a broader understanding of women in
Tolstoy’s novel while also looking closely at each female character’s plight.
To provide for further understanding of nineteenth-century Russian society, I briefly studied
women’s rights within this time period. This study provided context for Anna’s anxieties
surrounding divorce and child custody, and demonstrated the complexity of determining if an
affair is sanctioned by society.
Russia was influenced by the Orthodoxy to maintain a strict patriarchal system that often barred
women from maintaining any freedoms, aside from the right to own property. The insufficient
agency of Anna, Dolly, and Kitty in the novel reflect the law in Tolstoy’s society.
A 1753 decree resolved the issues of property in Russia, in which married women were granted
control of their property and reflected an ideal of separate spheres of land in marriage. However,
this law had limits: any land provided as a dowry was subjected to the husband’s purview, which
often lead to the language of property shifting from hereditary estates under women’s rights to
land taking the place of funds in the dowry.
The “marriage crisis” experienced in the nineteenth-century stemmed from changes in society,
particularly influenced by the expanding relationship with Western Europe. With this crisis came
the increase in divorce and separations, women in all classes sought divorces for behaviors such
as adultery, abandonment, and exile, but could not petition for abuse alone. This loophole
allowed husbands to continue their harmful behavior without any consequences, and led women
to claim adultery for a means out.
While marriage law became more conservative in the latter half of the nineteenth century, judges
became more sympathetic to women’s plights, and they began to create loopholes for women to
ensure their safety. Separation was still illegal in the justice system, but justices circumvented
this by refusing to return a runaway spouse or making an exception to the need for a husband’s
signature to maintain a passport.

2. Accusing a wife of adultery in petitions for divorce became a means of limiting their agency; in
the earlier years of divorce law, an adulterer was barred from remarrying and often lost custody
cases because of their perceived moral deficiencies. The innocent party in adultery cases was
given custody of the children in the belief that they exemplified the morality society wished for
children to learn.
Anna Karenina was published in a series of publications from 1873 to 1877. Inspired by
Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin and the image of Anna drawing from Pushkin’s daughter, Maria, the
novel opens with the realization that Stiva, Dolly’s husband, has had an affair. In order to
convince his wife to come back to him, he enlists the help of his sister Anna, who meets Vronsky
and begins an affair with him. While Anna is staying with the Oblonskys, Kitty is being courted
by Levin and Vronsky, and faces betrayal as Anna takes Vronsky as her lover. Kitty eventually
accepts Levin’s proposal and takes on the role of wife and mother. Dolly, after moving to the
country and visiting Anna, comes to accept and appreciate her role as mother, and returns to care
for her children.
The state of women’s rights and its effect on the female characters within Anna Karenina can be
seen most prevalently in my first chapter. Anna suffers from the guilt of abandoning her previous
domestic duties for her affair with Vronsky, renouncing this action during her daughter’s birth
and her suicide. Many of Anna’s actions stem from the sexual objectification of her form, in
which her male counterparts actively “other” her. The comparable language used in the racing
scene with Vronsky’s horse, Frou-Frou, and Anna’s first sexual encounter with Vronsky
demonstrate the harm of Vronsky’s neglect and his objectifying gaze. Frou-Frou’s death in the
racing scene also foreshadows Anna’s suicide, the effect that Tolstoy intended to achieve by
highlighting the similarities of the scenes.
The objectification of Anna continues in the creation of her portraits. Three portraits are
discussed within the novel; the one that sits in Karenin’s study, the unfinished portrait by
Vronsky, and the painting by Mikhailov. Each of the paintings are used to demonstrate how the
men in Anna’s life feel about her; Karenin believes her to be mocking him, Vronsky attempts to
credit his own artistic capabilities with the truths Mikhailov reveals, and Levin becomes
enchanted by it. Even as Anna participates willfully in the creation of these portraits as a means
of framing herself, none of the men take into account this framing.
The second chapter focuses on Dolly’s plight as a mother and wife, particularly with Stiva’s
affair being brought to light at the start of the novel. Stiva reflects throughout the text about
Dolly’s preoccupation with her children, and his own loss of interest in her sexually. Stiva’s
actions desexualize Dolly, and it is only after the reader begins to see the novel through Dolly’s
perspective that glimpses of her sexuality are seen. Dolly often suffers from Stiva’s neglect,
having to raise their children alone while he squanders their money. Dolly becomes the voice of
wisdom for her female counterparts, but also suffers from the same inability to understand
another that all characters in this text face.
Kitty’s tale within the final chapter appears quite like a novel of education; focusing at length on
the trials she faces before marriage, she is juxtaposed to the crumpling marriages of Dolly and
Anna, both of whom have already become women as the novel starts. This approach allows Kitty

3. to at first idolize her counterparts, but also to learn from them; she sees in Anna a manipulative
sexuality she does not wish to emulate as the ball closes and in Dolly the sacrifice of her very
being for her children. Kitty, who relied on extremes in her actions as a means of understanding
her own true desires, decides to be between them; she is both doting mother and wife, as well as
fully fleshed out woman, complete with her own interests and quiet sexuality.
In conclusion, the objectification and sexualization of women within the novel causes the
suffering of each of the female characters in their own, distinct ways. The limitations placed on
them by society, paired with the male gaze, restrict Anna, Dolly, and Kitty’s decisions. As
Tolstoy states at the beginning of the novel, happy families are all alike, every unhappy family is
unhappy in its own way.
Thank you.