Itinerant Barbaras: Anna Karenina's Peripatetic Guardian Saints

Abstract: In Anna Karenina, Tolstoy directs our attention toward several sub-sets of characters by conferring shared given names on them. This article focuses on one such subset--three minor characters named Barbara. Tolstoy derives his three Barbaras from the third-century St. Barbara, a protectress against violent death. All of the main protagonists of Anna Karenina are beset by fears of losing their place in the world, and several of them actively contemplate suicide. Three of them--Anna, Vronsky, and Kitty--are given a guardian-Barbara, who helps (or, in defiance of the protagonists' expectations, fails to help) to ground them. Each of the Barbaras is an effective protectress in proportion to how well she hews to the structural paradigm provided by the Life of St. Barbara. ********** In this article I argue that Barbara, the third-century Christian martyr and saint, serves as a model for three secondary characters in Leo Tolstoys Anna Karenina, each of whom bears the given name Varvara (the Russian rendering of "Barbara"). These Varvaras function--or at least are expected by other characters to function--as guardians for three of the novel's primary characters. At one time or another, Kitty Shcherbatsky, Aleksei Vronsky, and Anna Karenina each suffers profound inner turmoil, and each of them looks to one or another of the Varvaras for succor. By examining the degree to which each Varvara manifests (or fails to manifest) the loving protection associated with the original St. Barbara, I add to our understanding of Tolstoy's view of our moral duty to our fellow human beings. By uncovering a character typology that recurs throughout various parts of the novel, I also uncover one of the devices Tolstoy relies on to unite the Anna/Vronsky and the Kitty/Levin plots, each of which contains at least one Varvara. Finally, by exploring the ways in which one character in particular mediates her typology, I attenuate Tolstoys judgment on his heroine, suggesting that a failed guardian is at least partially culpable for Annas downfall. As Anna Grodetskaia has shown, the lives of the saints were important sources for Anna Karenina. Indeed, Sophia Andreevna, Tolstoys wife, noted in spring of 1871 that Tolstoy was actively engaged in reading them (Grodetskaia, 2000, 19). Both Demetrius of Rostov's Reading Menaion and Metropolitan Macarius' Great Reading Menaion served as sources, but since Demetrius provides the more detailed account of St. Barbara's life, I will rely on his version for the main points of her legend. Barbara was a beautiful young girl, whose father shut her up inside an impenetrable, albeit luxuriously appointed, tower in order to safeguard her chastity. He did, however, lighten his strictures to the extent of allowing her to visit an adjacent bathhouse. Once, left unattended while her father was away on business, Barbara availed herself of the opportunity to bathe in order to speak with local Christians. She immediately recognized the wisdom and beauty of the new religion and converted. Her father, a ferocious pagan, was apprised of this turn of events upon his return and had Barbara seized and imprisoned--confined, in other words, to a second impenetrable space. While in prison, Barbara succored a fellow captive and helped her to bear her torments. Her father, having served as both judge and executioner, ultimately beheaded Barbara. His triumph, however, was hollow; no sooner had he murdered his pious daughter than he himself was struck and killed by lightning. (1) In a bow to poetic justice, Barbara came to be venerated as a protector against sudden death, and she has been recognized as a patron saint by, among others, artillerymen and miners. St. Barbara was not mentioned in the earliest Christian sources, nor was she widely venerated until the seventh century; as a result, the Roman Catholic Church removed her from its liturgical calendar in 1969. Eastern Orthodox believers, by contrast, have never ceased to revere Barbara, and the Russian Church holds her in particular regard. …