Anna Karenina and Postpartum Depression: An Alternative Medical Analysis

• In Event: Medical Humanities III: Narrating the Psyche: Representations of Hypnosis, Mental Illness, and Postpartum Depression in Russian Literature

Abstract

About halfway through his novel, Anna Karenina (1878), Lev Tolstoy portrays Anna in the direct aftermath of childbirth. As the reader encounters Anna through the eyes of her close friends and family, it becomes increasingly apparent that a drastic shift has occurred in her character. The inexplicably beautiful and shockingly gregarious woman we meet at the beginning of the novel is no more and has been replaced by this anxious, paranoid and fretful shell of a person. This paper aims to provide an alternative, medical analysis of Anna Karenina’s character in light of a diagnosis of postpartum depression that would eventually drive her to suicide at the conclusion of the novel. My argument does not suggest that Tolstoy was actually writing Anna’s experiences with postpartum depression in mind. In fact, he reveals in the text that Anna has been diagnosed by her doctors with puerperal fever, a fact which is interesting because Anna gave birth at home; puerperal fever was typically contracted by women who gave birth in hospitals and who were exposed to contaminated medical tools. Rather, I suggest that Anna is suffering from postpartum depression as a thought experiment that provides the reader with an alternative lens through which they might understand Anna’s mental decline and eventual suicide. By performing a close reading of Part IV, chapters 17-23 of Anna Karenina, I show how Anna’s words and actions, reactions and perceptions can be interpreted as the symptoms of a classic case of postpartum depression.

Author

• Catherine E Fantuzzo, New York U