Anna Karenina throws herself in front of a train at the end of the seventh part of the novel that bears her name. Yet
Anna Karenina
continues into an eighth part, as if Anna’s story could continue without Anna. Her death plays a strangely minimal role in the final chapters. Tolstoy focuses instead on Anna’s sister-in-law Dolly, Dolly’s sister Kitty, and especially Kitty’s husband, Konstantin Levin. Not all readers have been satisfied. Tolstoy’s initial plan to end with a short epilogue seems cleaner, and the final section has often been dismissed, in George Steiner’s words, as “the triumph of the reformer and pamphleteer over the artist.”