Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy shows the fall of a high society woman as she gives up everything for love. She resists society's expectations that women submissively reject their passions and live to raise a family. Anna and her lover Vronsky attempt to create their own life, separate and independent from society, believing that only their love can support each other. However, they tragically discover that isolation is not a life they can bear. Vronsky's love does not mature; he doesn't know how to develop it beyond passion. She needs ambition, achievement, and admiration, and Anna wants Vronsky or approval completely: at least enough courtesy or civility not to be openly scorned and humiliated in public. Unable to empathize and appreciate what the other needs and what the other has given up for each other, hostility and resentment build up. Anna's suicide is as much a punishment intended for Vronsky as an escape from his own despair, as well as a way to eternally secure his love for her. The final irony then is that Levin and Kitty get what Anna and Vronsky so desperately sought, a fulfilling and happy life, free from society. Both Anna and Vronsky come from the aristocracy, and both enjoy the decorum and pleasure that come with high society. Anna glides effortlessly from one social circle to another just as Vronsky advances relentlessly and confidently through the ranks of the army. Both are sophisticated and worldly, and both are vain. When Vronsky followed Anna to Petersburg, “she was overcome with a feeling of joyful pride… of knowing that he was there to be where she was.” Vronsky “felt like a king…” and was proud to attract such a prestigious woman. To Vron...... in the center of the sheet......ty. They took a miscalculated risk believing they could separate themselves from an elite group on which they depended and of which they were the product. They acted on their passion for each other. But the passion dies. Vronsky could not reassure Anna that his love for her was unshakable, "Assurances of love seemed so banal to him...", and Anna was not sure enough to trust his love. Tolstoy's happy family is conventional. Woman is wife, mother and domesticity; the husband is worker, provider and authority. “All happy families are the same; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." If we consider this statement to be true, what does Tolstoy then say about society, feminism and relationships? So what is a life worth living? Works Cited Tolstoy, Lev Nikolaevitch, Richard Pevear, Larissa Volokhonsky, and John Bayley. Anna Carenina. London: Penguin, 2003. Print.