Anna Karenina Ch. 140: You Will Be a Hindrance

Leo Tolstoy

You Will Be a Hindrance

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Summary

During tea with Agafea Mihalovna, Levin learns Nikolay is ill again, perhaps seriously. Domestic peace shatters with news from the provincial world Levin hoped to keep at margin. Agafea's plain speech carries reality into the nest.

Kitty insists she will go with him to Nikolay. Her moral clarity contrasts Levin's impulse to protect her and himself from the squalid scene. She treats marriage as shared duty toward suffering kin, not optional charity.

Levin resists, saying she will be a hindrance and voicing horror of the common wench and degrading surroundings he associates with Nikolay's life. Class disgust, fear of death, and masculine control collide with Kitty's insistence. The nest phase ends as mortality enters.

Nikolay's illness shatters the nest; Kitty insists on shared duty while Levin recoils from squalor and class disgust. Agafea's plain news brings mortality to the margin Levin hoped to keep outside marriage.

Kitty treats Nikolay's illness as marital duty; Levin's horror of the wench and the smell shows class disgust colliding with compassion he cannot yet match. The chapter closes on that beat with no easy moral, only the next consequence waiting in the following pages.

Nikolay's squalid illness forces Levin to confront flesh, class, and duty in one room; Kitty's steadiness previews the nursing courage she will show at the deathbed.

In this chapter:Terms Characters Key Quotes Modern Story

Why This Matters

Hearing Exclusion Behind Protection

Kitty insists on going to dying Nikolay while Levin says she will be a hindrance and feels horror at his brother's companion. Tolstoy shows protection language masking class shame and control.

When someone bars you from hard family duty, ask whether they are shielding you or hiding what they cannot face.

This chapter

Inside the Mind: Agafea

Agafea says at tea that Nikolay is ill again, perhaps seriously, and Kitty answers that she will go. Levin calls her a hindrance and shows his horror of the woman who lives with his brother. The servant has put the illness on an ordinary table, and his class disgust is the first reply.

Continue this thoughtLimits of This Reading

Coming Up in Chapter 141

They will reach a provincial hotel and face Nikolay's body and the terrible truth of a living brother. Levin and Kitty reach a provincial hotel where Nikolay lies dying in squalid conditions. The body, the room, and the smell bring Levin face to face with mortality in its least romantic form..

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Original text

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Chapter 140

You Will Be a Hindrance

When Levin went upstairs, his wife was sitting near the new silver samovar behind the new tea service, and, having settled old Agafea Mihalovna at a little table with a full cup of tea, was reading a letter from Dolly, with whom they were in continual and frequent correspondence. “You see, your good lady’s settled me here, told me to sit a bit with her,” said Agafea Mihalovna, smiling affectionately at Kitty. In these words of Agafea Mihalovna, Levin read the final act of the drama which had been enacted of late between her and Kitty. He saw that, in…

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Critical Thinking Exercise

10 minutes

Protection or Exclusion

List Levin's stated reasons Kitty should not come and his unstated fears (class, death, control). Decide which motives dominate.

Consider:

•Include Agafea's news
•Include Kitty's insistence
•Include common wench horror

Journaling Prompt

Write about a time you or someone else was kept away from a hard family scene.

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You Will Be a Hindrance

Summary

Why This Matters