Anna Karenina · Chapter
Kitty's Crisis of Conscience explained
A cheerful family picnic, buoyed by Prince Shcherbatsky's high spirits, contrasts with Kitty's inner turmoil.
What happens
A cheerful family picnic, buoyed by Prince Shcherbatsky's high spirits, contrasts with Kitty's inner turmoil. Following her father's arrival, she confronts Varenka about the Petrovs, leading to a heated confession where Kitty denounces her own 'sham' attempts at virtue and self-improvement. After a tearful reconciliation, Kitty experiences a profound disillusionment with the world of sickly piety she had embraced and resolves to return to Russia, her eyes opened to her own hypocrisy.
Themes in this chapter
Hypocrisy and Social Pretense
Kitty's central crisis: she realizes her attempts at moral perfection and helping the sick were a 'sham' performed 'to seem better to people, to myself, to God' rather than arising from genuine feeling.
Search for Meaning
Kitty's entire journey at the spa culminates here. She rejects a path of principled, self-sacrificing virtue after finding it inauthentic, seeking a more genuine way of life back in Russia.
Characters to notice
- Kitty Shcherbatskaya
Experiences a crisis, accusing herself of living a 'sham' by forcing virtue and self-improvement. She feels alienated from the world of sickness and resolves to return to Russia.
- Mademoiselle Varenka
The target of Kitty's outburst; tries to soothe her and reveals the Petrovs' quarrel was partly about Kitty's presence. Accepts Kitty's apology.
- Prince Shcherbatsky
His jovial, earthy nature and critique of foreign 'institutions' provides a stark contrast to the artificial world Kitty has been inhabiting, triggering her reevaluation.
- Princess Shcherbatskaya
Observes the family picnic and notices Kitty's distress, calling her away to show her father a necklace.
Key passages
“"It serves me right, because it was all sham; because it was all done on purpose, and not from the heart."”
Kitty condemns her own actions as calculated performances, not genuine expressions of her character.
The core of her confession to Varenka.
“"I can’t act except from the heart, and you act from principle."”
Kitty draws a distinction between her own need for emotional authenticity and Varenka's life of disciplined virtue.
Highlights the conflict between innate feeling and adopted principle.
“"Her eyes were, it seemed, opened; she felt all the difficulty of maintaining herself without hypocrisy and self-conceit on the pinnacle to which she had wished to mount."”
Kitty gains painful clarity, seeing the hypocrisy required to sustain her idealized self-image.
The narrator describes the consequence of her outburst.