Anna Karenina

Sviazhsky "was the marshal of his district. He was five years older than Levin, and had long been married. His sister-in-law, a young girl Levin liked very much, lived in his house; and Levin knew that Sviazhsky and his wife would have greatly liked to marry the girl to him." Sviazhsky is trying to matchmake. "He knew this with certainty, as so-called eligible young men always know it, though he could never have brought himself to speak of it to anyone." Everyone understands these unspoken matrimonial schemes. "And he knew too that, although he wanted to get married, and although by every token this very attractive girl would make an excellent wife, he could no more have married her, even if he had not been in love with Kitty Shtcherbatskaya, than he could have flown up to the sky." Even if Kitty didn't exist, he couldn't marry Sviazhsky's sister-in-law - there's no real attraction despite her being objectively suitable. "And this knowledge poisoned the pleasure he had hoped to find in the visit to Sviazhsky." The awkward matchmaking ruins what should be a pleasant hunting trip. The chapter describes Levin meeting other guests, including "the gentleman with the gray whiskers" who "was obviously an inveterate adherent of serfdom and a devoted agriculturist, who had lived all his life in the country." This old landowner represents traditional, pre-reform agricultural thinking. "Levin saw proofs of this in his dress, in the old-fashioned threadbare coat, obviously not his everyday attire, in his shrewd, deep-set eyes, in his idiomatic, fluent Russian, in the imperious tone that had become habitual from long use, and in the resolute gestures of his large, red, sunburnt hands, with an old betrothal ring on the little finger." Tolstoy gives us a detailed physical portrait revealing character - the threadbare coat, imperious tone, and sunburnt hands of a lifetime landowner. This chapter places Levin among other landowners and agricultural thinkers, setting up conversations about estate management that will follow.