Gossip in Petersburg

Beginning Part 2 of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina

Tomorrow evening for the Provo Great Books Club we will discuss the first half of Part 2 of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.

At the beginning of Part 2, with the powerful impression made by Anna’s first appearance and actions still lingering in our minds, Tolstoy invites us to the bedside of the suffering Kitty who has been devastated by Vronsky. Kitty is sick and emotionally volatile, and her doctor doesn’t help.

Tolstoy’s portrait of the celebrated physician is one of my favorite portions of the book thus far. Tolstoy must have disliked doctors and modern medicine almost as much as Rousseau did (a topic that I’ve addressed in writing), and the two of them combined might have disliked doctors and modern medicine almost half as much as I do. Poor Kitty was damaged as much or more by her doctor than she was by Vronsky:

At the end of the winter, in the Shtcherbatskys’ house, a consultation was being held, which was to pronounce on the state of Kitty’s health and the measures to be taken to restore her failing strength. She had been ill, and as spring came on she grew worse. The family doctor gave her cod liver oil, then iron, then nitrate of silver, but as the first and the second and the third were alike in doing no good, and as his advice when spring came was to go abroad, a celebrated physician was called in. The celebrated physician, a very handsome man, still youngish, asked to examine the patient. He maintained, with peculiar satisfaction, it seemed, that maiden modesty is a mere relic of barbarism, and that nothing could be more natural than for a man still youngish to handle a young girl naked. He thought it natural because he did it every day, and felt and thought, as it seemed to him, no harm as he did it and consequently he considered modesty in the girl not merely as a relic of barbarism, but also as an insult to himself.

Doctors and physicians, please take note:

There was nothing for it but to submit, since, although all the doctors had studied in the same school, had read the same books, and learned the same science, and though some people said this celebrated doctor was a bad doctor, in the princess’s household and circle it was for some reason accepted that this celebrated doctor alone had some special knowledge, and that he alone could save Kitty. After a careful examination and sounding of the bewildered patient, dazed with shame, the celebrated doctor, having scrupulously washed his hands, was standing in the drawing-room talking to the prince. The prince frowned and coughed, listening to the doctor. As a man who had seen something of life, and neither a fool nor an invalid, he had no faith in medicine, and in his heart was furious at the whole farce, specially as he was perhaps the only one who fully comprehended the cause of Kitty’s illness. “Conceited blockhead!” he thought, as he listened to the celebrated doctor’s chatter about his daughter’s symptoms. The doctor was meantime with difficulty restraining the expression of his contempt for this old gentleman, and with difficulty condescending to the level of his intelligence. He perceived that it was no good talking to the old man, and that the principal person in the house was the mother. Before her he decided to scatter his pearls. At that instant the princess came into the drawing-room with the family doctor. The prince withdrew, trying not to show how ridiculous he thought the whole performance. The princess was distracted, and did not know what to do. She felt she had sinned against Kitty.

Rousseau’s descriptions of doctors are very similar to Tolstoy’s descriptions of Kitty’s doctor. How did Kitty respond to her medical examinations, diagnoses, and prescriptions?

And the mother, accompanied by the doctor, went into the drawing-room to Kitty. Wasted and flushed, with a peculiar glitter in her eyes, left there by the agony of shame she had been put through, Kitty stood in the middle of the room. When the doctor came in she flushed crimson, and her eyes filled with tears. All her illness and treatment struck her as a thing so stupid, ludicrous even! Doctoring her seemed to her as absurd as putting together the pieces of a broken vase. Her heart was broken. Why would they try to cure her with pills and powders? But she could not grieve her mother, especially as her mother considered herself to blame.

Kitty was right. The charade of modern medicine is ludicrous, and the attempt to “cure” broken hearts and troubled souls with “pills and powders” is not only futile but harmful. Tolstoy understood these things even before the rise of Big Pharma. I was proud of Kitty when she finally stood up to her ridiculous doctor, but naturally he diagnosed Kitty’s courage as “nervous irritability.”

Gossip is a major theme of much of the first portion of Part 2 of Anna Karenina. In the petty and vapid high society of Petersburg, amidst the swirling gossip, Anna flirts with Vronsky and takes great pleasure in her powers of seduction. Vronsky, and even his mother, also revel in Anna’s allure. Anna and Vronsky are the subject of much gossip, and Anna’s husband, the statesman Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin, struggles within himself to decide what to do about the problem. It is not a flattering depiction of the Petersburg aristocracy.

When Anna returns home after flirting with Vronsky, she shocks even herself with her reactions to her husband’s questions. Meanwhile, Levin enjoys life in the countryside, farming and planting and hunting, and he mostly enjoys a visit from Oblansky. Levin has everything he wants and everything he needs, except for Kitty. He is grateful for everything, but he still pines after Kitty.

Join us tomorrow evening to discuss the first half of Part 2 of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, and every Wednesday thereafter at 7:00 pm MST for subsequent discussions with the Provo Great Books Club.