"Anna Karenina" is the second after Leo Tolstoy's "War and Peace" novel. On the occasion of the Anna Karenina novel, Tolstoy said: "In order for the work to be beautiful, you must love, the main thought in it. So, in Anna Karenina, I love family thought ... " By laying the foundation of his work" family thought, "Tolstoy builds his plot on two parallel and opposing thematic lines in terms of searching and finding meaning and happiness in life - Anna - Vronski - Karenin and Levin - Kitty.
Although Tolstoy is looking for the beauty of his artistic work in "family thought," Anna Karenina is not a family or love novel, but a socio-psychological novel in which great social and ethical issues are revealed through family intimate- personal relationships and hero's experiences. The issue of the novel is distinguished by its personal, social and universal human significance. The philosophical problem we find in other Tolstoy works of art is what the meaning of human life is. As it is known, he is excited not only by Levin of "Anna Karenina", but also by Pierre Bezuhov and Andrei Bolkonski of "War and Peace", Nehliadov of "Resurrection", etc. the heroes close to the heart of the author. However, this problem in Anna Karenina gets its own nuance and is realized through other private problems such as the rights of the human person, her emotional and spiritual loosening, the social and personal behavior of man, family, marriage, love, motherhood debt and sentiment, and along with them - the way Russia should develop.
Tolstoy pays special attention to the so-called. A "feminine question", which was particularly excited by the Russian society of that time. Approximately all the more significant writers from the second half of the 19th century are involved in the solution to this question. - Turtenev, Goncharov, Chernishevsky, Dostoevsky and Lev Tolstoy through the novel "Anna Karenina" also tells her unspoken word of writer and thinker. He comes out with his concept of the woman's place in the family and society, about her right to happiness and adultery, and so on. It is not by accident that "moral attitude towards the subject" links the central storylines in which the fate of Anna and Levin is revealed. Through these two images, the author resolves in a different way the central problem - the problem of the meaning of human life and the happiness of man in family and society. The novel starts with "family thought": "All happy families are alike, every miserable family is unhappy on their own." This applies equally to all the families included in the work - Anna, Levin, Dolly, etc. . The attitude towards the family occupies an extremely important place in the character retreat. It determines his happy or tragic fate. This is especially true for the woman - for the mother-mother and for the wife-wife. Tolstoy believes that her purpose is to recreate life, but not to commit adultery. Every departure from the family necessarily brings it to a tragic end. With particular force, this thought appears in the image of Anna - one of Lev Tolstoy's most fascinating artistic creatures.