Anna Karenina has been made into a film. Again. I’m not certain how many times this new production makes, but in my opinion, it’s too many times. There is a finite
amount of women committing suicide as a legitimate solution to their problems, I can take. Romanticizing the taking of one’s existence is ingrained into society’s fabric. If the people doing it are beautiful and in many cases helpless women. Greta Garbo standing on the edge of the railroad platform ready to dive, may seem like a
dramatic and tragic ending, but in fact, if viewers were to see her remains after said train’s vicious steel wheels crushed her beautiful face to pulp, and her gorgeous costumes were clotted with skin, bone, and brain matter, how romantic would her death then seem? Sure, she had abandoned her child and husband for a lover who then tosses her aside. And the punishment for those sins in that period of history? Social disgrace, maybe even being thrown on the streets with nothing. But why must the cost of a woman’s independence in the books of that era, always seem to be death?