by Jillian Fell

Created on: October 12, 2008   Last Updated: October 18, 2008

Though Leo Tolstoy was undoubtedly influenced by a plethora of ideas, situations, and circumstances; certain themes surfaced repeatedly throughout his writing career and therefore showed that they were the things that most heavily molded his writings. One of these was his culture. Tolstoy's essays, novels, and short stories are all woven within the author's experience of the Russian culture of language, politics, and history.

In Anna Karenina, one of the characters, Levin, is the second oldest son of a noble class family and he manages their family estate. This character is based on Tolstoy himself, and also his house, Yasnaya Polyana. Yasnaya Polyana is the house in Central Russia where Tolstoy was born (August 1828), lived, and is now buried. He managed the family estate until the day of his death in late 1910.

Tolstoy's history, experiences, and character are visible in his writing, but none more so than in the character of Levin who struggled as Tolstoy did with the idea of being above' the people who ran his estate because without them, he would have nothing except some unmanageable land that generated no income.

Tolstoy's wife, Sophia, often read his drafts and she recognized her husband right away in the character he had written, saying, "Levin is you Lyova, minus the talent. (Pevear 13)."

Tolstoy's zeal for fairness comes out often in Levin, especially Part Three of Anna Karenina when Levin takes to mowing the hay with his workers during the summer. "They finished another swath and another. They went through long swaths, shorts swaths, with bad grass, with good grass. Levin lost all awareness of time and had no idea whether it was late or early (Tolstoy 251)." Tolstoy shows his experience for this kind of hard labor in the passages describing the work of mowing hay.

The Russian dichotomy of Tsar, nobles, and serfs is an expansive topic in his books. Nobles owned' land because it was given to them by the Tsar in return for their service (politically) to him and the serfs worked and lived on the land of the nobles. In 1861, Alexander II emancipated the serfs but they were only free in theory, since in order to pay back the debt of the small portions of land that they were given by the Tsar, they had to stay on the same land and work in the same way. So nothing really changed for them after 1861; and nobles were infamous for cheating and exploiting their workers. All of this happened during Tolstoy's lifetime and clearly affected his writing.

Master and Man

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>