Hello everyone! This is the third installment of Middlebrow, a newsletter that makes literature fun and accessible (hopefully). Today’s post is a shorter one. Enjoy!

“Happy families are all alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

We all know Anna Karenina’s first line, but that’s not the best passage — not by a long stretch.

I have a complicated relationship with the novel of troubled love — how meta!

Tolstoy knows his psychology. Anna Karenina is a beautiful (and long) treatise on how screwed up we are about love, how we all yearn to be totally and completely understood by our lovers, and how futile that is. And this longing can drive us to destruction.

That is some seriously deep stuff. The problem is that you have to wade through almost 1,000 pages to get to the good bits. This is why I love and hate Tolstoy and Anna Karenina, which seems fitting.

What Tolstoy understood about the dynamics between women and men

In one of his moments of brilliant lucidity, Tolstoy writes:

“… you men have your eye on a girl, you visit the house, you make friends, you watch, you wait to see if you’re going to find what you love, and then, once you’re convinced of your love, you propose …” “Well, it’s not quite like that.” “Never mind, you propose when your love has ripened or when the scale tips towards one of your two choices. But a girl isn’t asked. She’s expected to choose for herself, but she can’t choose and only answers yes or no.” “Yes,” thought Levin, “a choice between me and Vronsky,” and the dead man reviving in his heart died again and only weighed his heart down painfully. “Darya Alexandrovna,” he said, “one chooses a dress that way, or I don’t know what purchase, but not love. The choice has been made and so much the better ... And there can be no repetition.” “Ah, pride, pride!” said Darya Alexandrovna, as if despising him for the meanness of this feeling compared with that other feeling which only women know. “At the time you proposed to Kitty, she was precisely in a position where she could not give an answer. She hesitated. Hesitated between you and Vronsky. Him she saw every day, you she had not seen for a long time. Suppose she had been older - for me, for example, there could have been no hesitation in her place. I always found him disgusting, and so he was in the end.” — Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

Here’s a scenario we’ve all seen before: a jilted suitor (Levin) grows bitter and resentful over his failed marriage proposal. He sees Kitty’s rejection as a judgment of his worth where she finds him wanting. This wounds his pride, and he blames her. Dolly’s (Darya Alexandrovna Oblonsky) response shows that things are not so simple.

Tolstoy manages to capture the skewed dynamics between men and women in a few lines of dialogue. We still see vestiges of this today, even as most of us have evolved beyond the strictures of 19th-century Russian high society. Mind you, having women be able to say yes or no to a proposal instead of their parents was pretty darn liberal back then.

Men, women, and the choices of love

The previous passage illustrates significant informational and power asymmetries. Men gaze upon all women as potential matches, taking their pick after much deliberation. Women can only choose from the men who approach them and can do so only one at a time. Men have the power to choose, and women have only the power to veto. This dynamic doesn’t always end well.

Levin spent years deliberating over whom to marry and settled on the young and spirited Kitty. He imagined a bright future: how swimmingly they will get along, how she will liven up his somber disposition, and how she will love the countryside. Too bad Kitty had no idea about this, even if much of this was true. As Levin sweeps in from the wings, she faces a binary choice: an unknown certainty or a known possibility. Kitty could say yes to an assured future with a man she has fond memories of but hasn’t seen in years. Or she could hold out for a possible proposal from a questionable man she knows well. Forced into a yes/no answer, she made a choice most people would: No. Too much hinge on this choice: her and his happiness.

We see echoes of this dilemma even now. As much as womankind has progressed in many societies. We can now vote, hold property, and work alongside men in the professional context. In most societies, however, men remain the primary instigators of romantic relationships. So we keep seeing Levins and Kittys everywhere. Perhaps we need to be gentler with women who say no too hastily. They face an asymmetry of choice.

Tinder and the disappearance of Levin

With the rise of dating apps that reduce every person’s choice to a binary yes or no, it is only now that we see things changing.

Now, men and women are all like Kitty. Is this real equality? Or are we all just missing out equally? What will happen when there are no Levins left?

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Middlebrow is a little publication that makes literature accessible and fun! Written by yours truly, Cristina, a writer and bibliophile. Check out my website to get in touch: Stringing Words Together.