is at once to the front of the book; the situation out of which
the whole novel develops is made by a particular crisis in her life.
She meets and falls in love with Vronsky--that is the crisis from
which the rest of her story proceeds; it is the beginning of the
action, the subject of the earliest chapters. And the difficulty lies
in this, that she must be represented upon such a critical height of
emotion before there is time, by Tolstoy's method, to create the right
effect for her and to make her impulse really intelligible. For the
reader it is all too abrupt, the step by which she abandons her past
and flings herself upon her tragic adventure. It is impossible to
measure her passion and her resolution, because she herself is still
incompletely rendered. She has appeared in a few charming scenes, a
finished and graceful figure, but that is not enough. If she is so
soon to be seen at this pitch of exaltation, it is essential that her
life should be fully shared by the onlooker; but as Tolstoy has told
the story, Anna is in the midst of her crisis and has passed it
before it is possible to know her life clearly from within. Alive and
beautiful she is from the very first moment of her appearance;
Tolstoy's art is much too sure to miss the right effect, so far as it
goes. And if her story were such that it involved her in no great
adventure at the start--if she could pass from scene to scene, like
Levin, quietly revealing herself--Tolstoy's method would be perfect.
But as it is, there is no adequate preparation; Anna is made to act as
a deeply stirred and agitated woman before she has the _value_ for
such emotions. She has not yet become a presence familiar enough, and
there is no means of gauging the force of the storm that is seen to
shake her.

It is a flaw in the book which has often been noticed, and it is a
flaw which Tolstoy could hardly have avoided, if he was determined to
hold to his scenic plan. Given his reluctance to leave the actually
present occasion, from the first page onwards, from the moment Anna's
erring brother wakes to his own domestic troubles at the opening of
the book, there is not room for the due creation of Anna's life. Her
turning-point must be reached without delay, it cannot be deferred,
for it is there that the development of the book begins. All that
precedes her union with Vronsky is nothing but the opening stage, the
matter that must be displayed before the story can begin to expand.