5 ms·

When I first heard this quote it really resonated with me. I think what it means is that unhappy relationships usually take on specific forms, while happy rela

• JeremyNT 4y ago
  This is how I always understood it as well, with a bit of an added connotation that the supposed "happy family" doesn't even exist as such. We all can easily see our own particular versions of familial dysfunction, yet we can still look at "happy families" from the outside and assume that they have achieved some platonic ideal that our own family is incapable of. There isn't really a "happy family" in Ana Karenina, not as such anyway - there are many different characters struggling with their own stations in life in different ways, even being miserable once they seem to achieve their near term goals. Probably the closest you can get is Levin's self actualization at the end of the novel, but I personally take a pessimistic read on that too - we've seen him spend the entire book meandering and I have trouble reading it at face value that he's really done "settling" on his world view by the end.