Character guide

Count Alexey Kirillovitch Vronsky

major

Also known as Vronsky, Count Kirill Ivanovitch Vronsky, Count Vronsky, Alexey Kirillovitch

Vronsky moves through drawing rooms and barracks with the easy confidence of a man who has never been refused anything, keeping his own apartment, his horses, and his bachelor freedoms carefully intact. What begins as a flirtation sharpens into an obsession that pits his ambition against his passion, and his famous composure against a love he cannot manage or abandon. His choices force the novel's central question: what does a man of honor owe to the world that made him?

Anna Arkadyevna Karenina

major

Also known as Anna, Anna Karenina, Madame Karenina

Anna is the wife of a rising statesman and the mother of a son she adores, moving through salons with a charm that makes strangers confide in her within minutes. Yet her marriage is a performance of duty without warmth, and her visit to her brother's household shows her both the cost of passion and the pull of it. Her magnetism and her restlessness set the whole novel's machinery turning, drawing Vronsky, unsettling Kitty, and exposing the double standards that will judge her.

Alexey Alexandrovitch Karenin

major

Also known as Karenin, Alexey Alexandrovitch

Karenin moves through committees, reports, and correct opinions with a precision that has carried him to the top of Petersburg bureaucracy. Confronted with his wife's confession, he reaches first for the language of duty, forgiveness, and social propriety, unable to name what he actually feels. His cold rectitude is not villainy but a kind of blindness, and it makes him both pitiable and dangerous as the marriage around him comes apart.

Konstantin Dmitrievitch Levin

major

Also known as Levin, Konstantin Levin, Kostya, Kostya Levin

Levin divides his time between his estate, his farming, and his restless attempts to think his way into a belief he can live by. He loves Kitty Shcherbatskaya with a directness that terrifies him, and he measures himself against a society he finds both false and necessary. His courtship, his work, and his arguments with his brother and his guests form the novel's counterweight to Anna's story, a slow search for meaning that does not depend on passion.

Kitty Shcherbatskaya

major

Also known as Kitty, Princess Shtcherbatskaya, Kitty Shtcherbatskaya, Kitty Levin

Kitty enters the novel as a debutante with two suitors and a mother who is managing both, and leaves Moscow humiliated by a refusal she did not see coming. At a German spa she falls under the spell of the devout Varenka and a world of self-denial that seems to offer a way out of her grief. Her recovery is quiet and interior, and it prepares her for a marriage that will test her ideals against the ordinary demands of a household.

Stepan Arkadyevitch Oblonsky

supporting

Also known as Stiva, Prince Stepan Arkadyevitch Oblonsky, Oblonsky, Prince Oblonsky

Stiva has just been caught with the governess, and his wife Dolly has locked herself in her room, but he still greets each day with the same genial appetite for dinners, positions, and pretty women. He is genuinely fond of everyone and genuinely incapable of taking anything seriously, including his own debts and his sister's marriage. His talent for being liked is what stitches the novel's two worlds together, moving between Petersburg offices and Moscow households without ever quite noticing the damage he leaves behind.

Darya Alexandrovna Oblonskaya

supporting

Also known as Dolly, Darya Alexandrovna, Darya

Dolly lives at the center of Moscow's Oblonsky household, managing children, debts, and a husband whose affairs she has learned to absorb. Her letter urging Levin to bring a sidesaddle to Kitty shows how instinctively she brokers other people's happiness, even when her own marriage is the cautionary tale. That mix of generosity and exhaustion makes her the novel's moral witness: she sees what the men around her refuse to, and she keeps choosing the family anyway.

Nikolay Dmitrievitch Levin

minor

Also known as Nikolay Levin, brother Nikolay, Nikolay

Konstantin Levin's consumptive, nihilist brother, whose tragic life deeply affects Levin.

Sergey Ivanovitch Koznishev

minor

Also known as Koznishev, Sergey Ivanovitch, the celebrated Koznishev

Levin's intellectual half-brother, a well-known author and philosopher.

Seryozha Karenin

minor

Also known as Seryozha

The young son of Anna and Alexey Alexandrovitch Karenin.

Vassenka Veslovsky

minor

Also known as Veslovsky, Vassenka

A cheerful, somewhat tactless young nobleman who visits Levin's estate and flirts with Kitty.

Countess Lidia Ivanovna

minor

Also known as Countess Lidia Ivanovna, Lidia Ivanovna, Lidia

A pious society lady who becomes Karenin's close confidante and advisor after his separation from Anna.

Mihailov

minor

A talented but socially awkward painter in Italy whom Vronsky and Anna commission for a portrait.

Princess Betsy Tverskaya

minor

Also known as Betsy, Princess Betsy, Princess Tverskaya

A fashionable and morally lax society hostess, cousin to Vronsky and friend to Anna.

Mademoiselle Varenka

minor

Also known as Varenka

The gentle, self-sacrificing companion of Madame Stahl, whom Kitty befriends at a German spa.

Nikolay Ivanovitch Sviazhsky

minor

Also known as Sviazhsky, Nikolay Ivanovitch

A progressive neighboring landowner and district marshal whose views Levin debates.

Prince Yashvin

minor

Also known as Yashvin

A fellow officer and gambler, Vronsky's closest friend in the regiment.

Agafea Mihalovna

minor

Also known as old Agafea Mihalovna

The elderly, devoted housekeeper on Levin's country estate.

Marya Nikolaevna

minor

Also known as Marya

The devoted but coarse common-law wife of Levin's dying brother, Nikolay.

Madame Stahl

minor

Also known as Stahl

A mysterious, invalid Russian lady at the German spa, revered for her piety.

Petritsky

minor

A fellow officer and roommate of Vronsky's in the barracks.

Countess Nordston

minor

Also known as the Countess Nordston

A sharp-tongued society friend of the Shcherbatskys who mocks Levin's first proposal to Kitty.

Princess Myakaya

minor

Also known as the Princess Myakaya

A blunt and outspoken society lady known for her 'sharp tongue'.

Turovtsin

minor

A good-natured, quiet gentleman often present in Oblonsky's and Betsy's social circles.

Mademoiselle Linon

minor

Also known as Mlle. Linon

The elderly former governess of the Shcherbatsky sisters.

Matvey

minor

Stepan Arkadyevitch Oblonsky's loyal valet.

Lizaveta Petrovna

minor

Also known as Lizaveta

The midwife who attends Kitty during her childbirth.

Korney

minor

Also known as Korney Vassilievitch

Levin's elderly butler at his country estate.

Ryabinin

minor

A shrewd merchant who buys timber from Stepan Oblonsky and later from Levin.

Ivan Parmenov

minor

Also known as Ivan

A peasant on Levin's estate who represents Levin's idealized view of peasant life.

Frou-Frou

minor

Also known as Frou

Vronsky's beloved mare, which he rides in the fateful steeplechase.

Laska

minor

Also known as Gray old Laska, Old Laska

Levin's skilled and beloved hunting dog.

Mitya

minor

The infant son of Levin and Kitty.

Annushka

minor

Anna Karenina's personal maid.

Princess Shcherbatskaya

minor

Also known as Mamma, mamma

Kitty and Dolly's mother, a traditional society matron concerned with her daughters' marriages.

Prince Shcherbatsky

minor

Also known as Papa, papa

Kitty and Dolly's father, an old-fashioned aristocrat skeptical of modern suitors like Vronsky.

Marya Philimonovna

minor

The old nurse in the Oblonsky household who helps care for Dolly's children.

Vassily Lukitch

minor

Seryozha Karenin's French tutor.

Kapitonitch

minor

The kindly old hall-porter at the Karenin residence, devoted to Anna and Seryozha.

Golenishtchev

minor

An old school friend of Vronsky's, a liberal intellectual living in Italy.

Monsieur Landau

minor

Also known as Landau, Jules Landau

A French mystic and 'clairvoyant' who influences Countess Lidia Ivanovna and Karenin.

Professor Katavasov

minor

Also known as Katavasov

A scientist and friend of Sergey Koznishev who visits Levin's estate.

Metrov

minor

A professor whose lecture on biology Levin attends with Katavasov.

Prince Serpuhovskoy

minor

A successful army comrade of Vronsky's who encourages him to pursue a military career.

Mihail Vassilievitch Sludin

minor

Also known as Sludin, Mihail Vassilievitch

A conservative landowner and candidate during the provincial elections Levin attends.

Nevyedovsky

minor

The young, successful candidate elected as provincial marshal with Sviazhsky's support.

Mihail Stepanovitch Snetkov

minor

Also known as Snetkov, Mihail Stepanovitch

The old provincial marshal of nobility whom Levin and his allies oppose in the elections.

Tanya

minor

The eldest daughter of Stepan and Dolly Oblonsky.

Grisha

minor

A young son of Stepan and Dolly Oblonsky.