"Vengeance is mine; I will repay," states the darkly foretelling epigraph of Leo Tolstoy's famous novel Anna Karenina. Throughout the work, the author seems torn between feminist and misogynist sympathies, leading one to wonder if the above quote is directed at the adulterous Anna--the only character in the novel who pays for her transgressions with her life. At first, Tolstoy seems to sympathize with Anna, contrasting her situation with that of her brother Stiva, who has also committed adultery but received no social chastisement. But by the end of the novel it's almost as though the author feels he has allowed Anna to get away with too much, and must teach the reader a lesson about such behavior from a woman. Anna's last mention in the novel that bears her name comes nearly 50 pages before its conclusion, when Countess Vronsky calls her "mean and low" (917).

When we first...