ANNA KARENINA
“He went down trying not to look long at her, as though she were the sun, but he saw her, as one sees the sun, without looking.”
-Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
This quote from the book compares the way Vronsky looks at Anna as being similar to the way a person looks at the sun; out of the corner of their eye. As Anna is the primary protagonist in the story, everything in the story revolves around her, in a similar way that everything in the solar system revolves around the sun.
I took this comparison and ran with it, looking at the way the sun moves across the sky. The arc of how the sun rises and sets in the sky has many similarities to Anna’s happiness throughout the story. For Anna’s three outfits, I chose a sunrise, high sun, and sunset, starting with her talk with Dolly at the beginning, then her picnic with Vronsky, and finishing with her suicide.
With Anna being the sun, it made sense to me that each of the other characters were assigned a planet. I looked at each planet’s astrological meanings and their proximity to one another, I started making connections with the characters. For example, Serozha is Mercury because of its proximity to the sun (Mercury is the planet closest to the sun) while someone like Oblonsky is Mars because Mars signifies male sexuality and instinct. From here, I represented the planet in each costume with color and texture where appropriate.
-Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
This quote from the book compares the way Vronsky looks at Anna as being similar to the way a person looks at the sun; out of the corner of their eye. As Anna is the primary protagonist in the story, everything in the story revolves around her, in a similar way that everything in the solar system revolves around the sun.
I took this comparison and ran with it, looking at the way the sun moves across the sky. The arc of how the sun rises and sets in the sky has many similarities to Anna’s happiness throughout the story. For Anna’s three outfits, I chose a sunrise, high sun, and sunset, starting with her talk with Dolly at the beginning, then her picnic with Vronsky, and finishing with her suicide.
With Anna being the sun, it made sense to me that each of the other characters were assigned a planet. I looked at each planet’s astrological meanings and their proximity to one another, I started making connections with the characters. For example, Serozha is Mercury because of its proximity to the sun (Mercury is the planet closest to the sun) while someone like Oblonsky is Mars because Mars signifies male sexuality and instinct. From here, I represented the planet in each costume with color and texture where appropriate.