Anna Karenina · Chapter
The Birth explained
Levin endures the agonizing wait during Kitty's labor.
What happens
Levin endures the agonizing wait during Kitty's labor. He hears her terrible screams, believes she is dying, and is plunged into despair. After the crisis passes, he is overwhelmed with joy to learn Kitty is alive and well, and that she has given birth to a son. He struggles to comprehend the new reality of fatherhood.
Themes in this chapter
Family and Domesticity
The intense, transformative moment of childbirth solidifies Levin and Kitty's family unit, moving them from a couple to parents, though Levin initially feels alienated from his son.
Love and Marriage
Levin's anguish and subsequent joy are entirely tied to Kitty's survival, highlighting the depth of his marital love, which momentarily overshadows the arrival of the child.
Characters to notice
- Konstantin Dmitrievitch Levin
Experiences the terror of Kitty's labor, believing she will die, then an overwhelming, tearful joy at her survival and the birth of their son, though he feels disconnected from the baby.
- Kitty Shcherbatskaya
Endures a painful and frightening childbirth, calling for Levin and her mother. After the delivery, she is exhausted, serene, and blissful.
- Lizaveta Petrovna
The midwife who manages the delivery with stern concentration, later announces the healthy birth of a boy.
- Darya Alexandrovna Oblonskaya
Tries to reassure Levin during the labor, telling him 'it's nothing, it's all right.'
- Princess Shcherbatskaya
Present at the birth, sobbing with relief in answer to Kitty's question about the baby.
Key passages
“He had long ago ceased to wish for the child. By now he loathed this child. He did not even wish for her life now, all he longed for was the end of this awful anguish.”
Levin's desire for the child has vanished, replaced by a hatred for it and a desperate wish for Kitty's suffering to stop.
Shows the extreme psychological strain of the moment and the primacy of his love for Kitty over abstract paternal feeling.
“If Levin had been told before that Kitty was dead, and that he had died with her, and that their children were angels... he would have been surprised at nothing. But now, coming back to the world of reality, he had to make great mental efforts to take in that she was alive and well...”
The experience was so extreme Levin would have believed any supernatural explanation, but returning to normal reality and its happy facts requires a difficult adjustment.
Emphasizes the surreal, boundary-crossing nature of the birth experience and the shock of returning to joyous normality.
“But the baby? Whence, why, who was he? ... It seemed to him something extraneous, superfluous, to which he could not accustom himself.”
Levin cannot grasp the origin or purpose of his son; the baby feels like an external, unnecessary addition he cannot yet accept.
Highlights Levin's initial emotional disconnect from his newborn and the philosophical bewilderment of new parenthood.