Anna Karenina Ch. 40: Gossip Before Entry

Summary

Princess Betsy leaves the opera before the final act, powders her face, and receives guests in her Bolshaia Morskaia drawing-room almost the instant she enters. The party splits into two groups whose talk wavers until it finds gossip. Princess Myakaya mocks repeated praise of an actress; the ambassador's wife requests amusing but not spiteful small talk, then the room settles on scandal as its true entertainment and safest common language.

Guests ridicule Madame Maltishtcheva's costume; Myakaya's blunt remarks land like epigrams because plain speech shocks this polished world. Betsy's husband appears briefly before his club, and Myakaya deflects his opera question toward his engravings so the women can keep their sharper knives sheathed until he leaves.

When Betsy tries to merge the groups, the ambassador's wife's circle is criticizing the Karenins. Anna's friend says she is changed since Moscow; another says she returned with the shadow of Vronsky. Myakaya defends Anna and calls Karenin a fool, insisting one of the couple must be one. Vronsky arrives from the opera bouffe, confessing he prefers it to serious opera, and the room receives him as a daily fixture while Anna's name hangs in the air like weather everyone feels but no hostess names.

In this chapter: Terms Characters Key Quotes Modern Story

Why This Matters

Reading Gossip Before Entry

Groups often decide your story while you are still absent, using wit and metaphor instead of direct accusation. At Betsy's tea the ambassador's wife says Anna returned with Vronsky's shadow before Anna appears.

Notice who narrates you when you are not in the room, and who assigns the shadow.

This chapter

Inside the Mind: Princess Myakaya

She says one of the Karenins must be a fool, and defends Anna in the same breath that the room has given her Vronsky's shadow. Plain speech shocks this company, so the insult lands as an epigram. Anna is not in the drawing room yet. Her name is already weather, and nobody has to accuse her for the climate to be set.

Continue this thoughtThe Room Needs Her Gone

Coming Up in Chapter 41

Steps sound at the door; Betsy glances at Vronsky as Anna walks in with her swift, erect step. At Princess Betsy's evening, Anna enters with her swift erect step and Vronsky rises as if the room changed temperature. Society chat about Sir John and India flickers back to its favorite sport: whether prudent marriages beat love, whether wild oats must be sown before respectability..

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Chapter 40

Gossip Before Entry

Princess Betsy drove home from the theater, without waiting for the end of the last act. She had only just time to go into her dressing-room, sprinkle her long, pale face with powder, rub it, set her dress to rights, and order tea in the big drawing-room, when one after another carriages drove up to her huge house in Bolshaia Morskaia. Her guests stepped out at the wide entrance, and the stout porter, who used to read the newspapers in the mornings behind the glass door, to the edification of the passers-by, noiselessly opened the immense door, letting the visitors…

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Gossip Before Entry

Summary

Why This Matters