Yes, it is true, I must confess that I waded all the way through Tolstoy's humongous dreary novel, "Anna Karenina," a literary masterpiece describing a false and hollow woman who breaks her marriage vows and runs away for a passionate love affair with a dapper silly soldier boy, so handsome in his uniform yet so devoid of character and any other redeeming quality, or so the author portrays those two silly lovers who then flit around Russia with no place to hide. Passion was to the author but a mere frosting on the cake, other factors being of more weighty consideration than the whims and artifices of silly Anna. And yet, nevertheless, here we have a ponderous literary masterpiece explaining, in a manner of speaking, what not to do. Imagine that. Actually, it is not unusual to find bookstores and libraries full of such dire warnings, mistakes, and telltale narrations if you only you could learn how to read. Literacy is important.
And how many times do I have to explain that I never got very far in "Vanity Fair"? Just because the household spy saw this volume sitting on my bookshelf for years, that does not mean that I actually read very much past the first chapter. I had good intentions but Thackeray's coldly sardonic tone and Becky Thatcher's empty brain, portrayed as entirely devoid of any sense of reality, grated on my nerves. Underwater basket weaving was never really on my class schedule.
Yes, this theme of a woman following her passion could have an empty, meaningless ring to it without some framework of reality to which her story can be properly and correctly attached. Otherwise, there is a great danger of taking everything out of its proper context. Even I can figure that out with half a brain. Enough said.
