The Mind, the Body, and the Love Triangle in Anna Karenina Tatiana Kuzmic University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign olstoy’s conflicted views on sexuality and marriage, which have long fasci- nated critics—a special issue of this journal was devoted to the topic in 1993— have generated interpretations ranging from misogyny to radical feminism. Helena Goscilo, for example, claims that “in sexual matters, as elsewhere, he advocated a double standard” (85) by separating the public and private spheres according to traditionally established gender lines and not only confining women to their bodies but also punishing them for this. Barbara Heldt argues that Tolstoy’s develop- ment as a writer included, to quote from her title, a “path toward feminism,” and that by the time he wrote The Kreutzer Sonata he put the blame for what he saw as corrupted relations between the sexes solely on men and the insti- tutions they create. Amy Mandelker echoes this resistance to associating chastity with misogyny when she proposes that Tolstoy’s severe sexual mores be viewed “as a feminist attempt to reclaim the body by refusing to be the body men want” (31). Given the existence of various schools of feminism as well as Tolstoy’s own ambivalent notions of sex and women, the wide range of interpretations is neither surprising nor con- tradicting. Goscilo’s viewpoint can be situated in the liberal feminist tradition, which, because of its foundations in Enlightenment philosophy and its fruition in the suffrage movement, argues for equality of the sexes based on their equivalence. Indeed, Goscilo drives the point home most effectively when she invites us to consider a role-reversal between Levin and Kitty, such that the woman’s nuptials are pre- ceded by more than a decade of sexual deca- dence while the man remains a virgin until his wedding night. Even a union between an equally experienced wedding pair is hardly imaginable; the double standard remains a fact. Holding Tolstoy responsible for this, how- ever, is unfair on two accounts; first because, far from being his own invention, this standard was part and parcel of the society in which he lived; and, second, because he was one of his society’s harshest critics. Heldt’s and Mandelk- er’s interpretations arise out of the radical feminist tradition and the argument that sex- ual abstinence is the only authentic way of resisting patriarchy. As such, these interpreta- tions fit well with Tolstoy’s ethics. Pozdny- shev’s remark that, despite some men’s ac- knowledgment that women can “occupy all positions and take their part in govern- ment…their outlook on her remains the same” (PSS 27: 37) is, in fact, the exact same argu- ment that radical feminists make. What is even more radical about Tolstoy is his proposal that both women and men resist the system and remain chaste. Although he does not explicitly make that argument until the writing of The Kreutzer Sonata, its seeds are evident in Anna Karenina through Levin’s moral struggles with his sexual past, his asking for forgiveness from his wife-to-be by way of showing her his di- aries, and his memory of the first few months of his married life as utterly embarrassing.