The Democracy of Minor Characters #1:
"The Character of Stepan Arkadyevitch Oblonsky in Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina :"
[Prefatory Note: The following is from a longer unpublished essay, as all my essays are unpublished, The Democracy of Minor Characters . The essay began with a focus on Tolstoy's use of minor characters in his great novels and proceeded with the contention, that we can imagine a separate novel for all the minor characters in all the great novels of literature. I also made the rather fey suggestion that one might show a Shelleyian progress of minor characters from the 18th through the mid-20th century. It is as if all the world's novels were written by the single hand of humanity and that the real focus of the novels, the key to their actual motifs, and what in fact unifies them all, was the development of the life of minor characters… If the minor characters "live" then the novel feels alive. And then eventually, in some future novel, the once minor character re-emerges, with different clothing, in a different city, at a different time -- perhaps smoking a cigar instead of a pipe, or with nervous little hands instead of nervous little feet -- as a major character in his or her own right. And if the "future novel" is well written it will in turn be populated by more minor characters, that will also inspire future writers, consciously or unconsciously, to repopulate the world of our imaginations. Of course to some extent this also is the work of the theater as we can see for ourselves when the gravediggers with whom Hamlet converses, emerge many years later waiting for Godot.
A sad lament: Up until now all of my essays only meet with the criticism of moths, now posted here on the internet, they only meet the little bytes of "ones" and "zeros." Perhaps this is because I haven't tried hard enough or because my literary essays are largely "appreciative" and militantly anti-theoretical. Still there is more possibility for a reader's eyes to meet my words here than anyplace else. ]
The Opening of "Anna Karenina"
It is curious that the first character we meet in Tolstoy's Anna Karenina is Stephen Oblonsky. As we know from the first two paragraphs, "Everything was upset in the Oblonsky's house." The reader is then provided with a brief montage of sentences of the way that the household was upset as a result of the "intrigue" between the husband and a former French governess. Basically we are privy to an establishing shot, which could be a story in-itself, but soon we come to focus upon a person who we might expect would be a major character in the novel.
"On the third day after his quarrel with his wife, Prince Stephen Arkadyevich Oblonsky - Stiva, as he was called in his set in Society - woke up at his usual time, eight o'clock, not in his wife's bed room but on the morocco leather covered sofa in his study. He turned his plump, well-kept body over on the springy sofa as if he wished to have another long sleep, and tightly embracing one of the pillows leant his cheek against it, but then suddenly opened his eyes and sat up."
Stephen is next launched into an enthusiastic attempt to remember a ridiculous and amusing, dream until by habit he reaches for his dressing gown which isn't where his hand autmatically searches for it because he is not sleeping in his own bed. "And then he suddenly remembered that he was not sleeping there but in his study, and why. The smile vanished from his face and he frowned."
In fact, everything that we will ever need to know about Stephen is in the first two paragraphs that introduce him -- his wish to prolong his basic bodily pleasures; his need to reside in his desires and avoid the harshness of reality; his comfort in his habits, and his simple assumption that all in his life would be good if he were allowed to go easy in his pursuits, his habits undisturbed by the pain he may cause to others. A careful reader, well adapted to the style of expression of 19th century novels, might well be able to guess from the fact that this portrait is complete in-itself, that Oblonsky is not going to become a major focus of the novel "Anna Karenina."
In fact Oblonsky is a minor character whom Nabokov calls in his "Lectures on Russian Literature" a plot device. Oblonsky gets characters from place to place, in this case, bringing Anna Karenina, his sister, to Moscow, where she will meet her future lover Vronsky. Oblonsky carries messages between the characters, setting off the next movement of the novel, he casually gives other characters information that they need to know, and he conveniently (and rather vehemently) explains the Shcherbatsky family to the reader, where resides one of our major characters Kitty Shcherbatsky, the love interest of the other main character of the novel, Levin. Finally, Stephen provides all of the characters with a connection in Moscow, when they need such a connection for plot purposes, and this is especially true for Stephen's connection with Levin, who is often hidden away on his estate, sulking or in a kind of mystical ecstasy. One can almost think of him as a kind of Polonius - a figure of fun who serves as a shuttle between the characters, moving them from place to place:
"An attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious and meticulous,
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, almost ridiculous -
Almost, at times, the Fool."
T.S Eliot, "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock."
Oblonsky must seem a bit of a busy-buddy, a stage manager, who won't remain off stage. He will "swell a progress, start a scene or two" and make sure the major characters get their proper cues and hit their marks on stage. All of this Nabokov notices in his peculiar way. If one looks closely at the 19th century novel, many have a "stage-manager" of some sort or other. Already in Part 1 of the novel Oblonsky gracefully brings Anna on stage, calling her forth from Petersburg to mend his upset household and place a Band-Aid on his marriage. He also introduces us to Levin who has come to Moscow to see Kitty. He is a very helpful character.
And yet Oblonsky, who is almost a fool, is given psychological exposition in depth. A reader can't put down the novel without feeling that she has experienced a character in full. In spite of variations of time and place, this is a person who might walk into my life, and if I was as attentive as Tolstoy I could recognize Oblonsky standing in front of my eyes. Oblonsky is the nearest person to a friend to the painfully self-conscious and un-self-forgetting Levin. And this seems right. Who else but the easy going and always self-forgetting Stephen, could be so tolerant, and one suspects secretly amused, of Levin's angst and self-loathing?
It is at this point that we can begin to see why this "minor character" can live inside of this novel, and perhaps be the subject of some not-yet written novel, even though he doesn't change one wit from the first page to the last time that we see him being rewarded for all of his services. Oblonsky, who moves about from place to place more than any other character (except for perhaps Anna), remains in complete stasis, always the same. In effect, Stephen Oblonsky and his situation, is the background, the societal norm, from which society would judge the two main characters of the novel, Levin and Anna. Stephen Oblonsky, who is himself unjudgmental, is a measuring rod of society's condemnation of both Anna and Levin's unhappiness. He is basically happy in his dalliances and his unexamined life and in the end he is successful in his career. Simultaneously he is "Tolstoy's" narrative judgment against the kind of society that would make this kind of life its measure of what is good and successful. As well as Oblonsky himself, his marriage, serves as a contrast of the kind of failed marriage and failed amoral character which passes for success and happiness in the world at large. Everything in Part 1 of "Anna Karenina" is an emblematic portrait turned upside down (like Marx's description of ideology as a camera obscura) by the thrill of ironic misrecognition when compared with the rest of the novel. It is as if Stephen is performing a parody of the adultery that will lead to Anna's demise. It is as if Stephen is engaged in the pretense of the moral agony that Levin will go through in order to learn to live with his spouse.
It is as if Stephen can have his cake and eat it too -- a cliche that fits well his attitude toward life. Stephen is "Tolstoy's" insight into the sexual hypocrisy of a society that condemns what Stephen wants but winks at adultery as his adultery, as long as he is "socially correct." It is another irony of the novel that Stephen and Anna are brother and sister, for while Stephen remains "in" society during all of his dalliances, Anna is excluded from proper society for her adultery. Beneath their differences, Stephen's and Anna's sexual longing are the same. Yet Anna wants more than just a dalliance, she wants a heightened reality, which gives meaning to the world. She looks for it in love. Levin looks for it in "religion." Stephen does not look for it at all. What Anna can not share with her brother is the everyday hypocrisy that allows her to do one thing and pretend to do another. This hypocrisy is simply Stephen's easy-going nature. Levin does not share in this hypocrisy, either, as we can see in Levin's conflicted empathy with Anna the one time he meets her late in the novel.
Stephen is constitutionally happy and does not suffer the vengeance of society or of his inner demons that will kill Anna and propel Levin on a painful search. Stephen is what his society accepts without thinking. All of the conflicting desires and inconsistencies of character felt by Anna and Levin are simply not on the schedule of Stephen's easy going habits. Anna and Levin both desire a singular union with one lover within one family, and yet also desire sexual fulfillment and sexual freedom; Anna and Levin both desire to live up to their ideal of a good life and yet know that their personal actions contradict their ideals. Anna and Levin both believe that all of their rage for life and attraction to death, that all that is their beneath the surface of their skin and consciousness, can not be resolved in a way that will lead to good. It does not seem to matter whether that "good" is judged by society's standards, or by their own peculiarly high standards that set them apart from the society that judges them, there is no resolution to their conflict. But Oblonsky is the well-adjusted man who sees none of this.
I hope I have shown that Stephen Oblonsky, even though a minor character, is an important part of "Anna Karenina. The depth of insight into a character who is a lovable hypocrite shows us much about Tolstoy's art. But more than this it provides us with an in-depth experience, in a way that is impossible to define, of psychological and sociological patterns that are more interesting and more profound than all of the psychology and sociology yet invented.
I will end this part of my essay with a slogan that I hope to show is true: The so-called "human sciences" are facets of the ideology of our time. The best novels give us experiences, which reveal our own truths.
Jerry Monaco
Shandean Postscripts to Politics, Philosophy & Culture
Hopeful Monsters: Poetry, Fiction, Memories by Jerry Monaco
Part 2 of of a series on Anna Karenina is located at
Moral Intentions and Artistic Tensions in Anna Karenina
I am going to post this now without rereading. I will edit later. Reader forgive me for the typos and the syntax.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
