Maybe he's still not the greatest guy in the world, but over the course of the novel, Karenin has developed from a shell of a guy to a character with some depth. There are two kinds of religion in competition with one another in Anna Karenina —"real faith" and piety for the sake of proving you're better than everyone else. Let's look at both kinds of religion with respect to Karenin's character.
Karenin isn't too religious at the beginning of the novel. Religious faith doesn't seem to fit into his rational approach to life. But Karenin has a transformative experience when he thinks Anna's going to die in childbirth.
He suddenly realizes that 1 he had been wanting her to die, and 2 he knows that that was bad, and that he needs to forgive her. And here's the interesting thing—he does forgive her. He forgives both Anna and Vronsky wholeheartedly, out of Christian faith in the importance of personal humility.
At Anna's side, he really shows up Vronsky, who feels ashamed at Karenin's generosity. For a time, it seems that Karenin changes for the better. He knows that the society he values disapproves of him, that all of his acquaintances think he should've challenged Vronsky to a duel, divorced Anna, or done something other than trying to keep up appearances.
But Karenin's brief moment of illumination gives him the strength not to care about that. He tells Vronsky: [Karenin:] "But I saw her and forgave her. And the happiness of forgiveness has revealed to me my duty. I forgive completely. I would offer the other cheek, I would give my cloak if my coat be taken.
I pray to God only not to take from me the bliss of forgiveness! You may trample me in the mud, make me the laughing-stock of society, I will not abandon her, I will never say a word of reproach to you. But it doesn't last forever. The thing that spoils Karenin's epiphany, which is otherwise just as important as Levin's, is that he gradually returns to the disapproving society that surrounds him.
Slowly, he remembers that his colleagues despise him and he has no friends. He feels lower than everyone around him again, because Anna has publicly humiliated him. And even though Karenin tries, he can't hang on to the calmness that this one brush with God gives him. In particular, see Part 5, Chapter 25 on this experience. Levin gets to have his epiphany in the countryside surrounded by his family for support. But Karenin's realization of the power of forgiveness is more fragile because he doesn't have the emotional support to ignore society the way Levin can.
So what does he turn to instead? His exploitative, hypocritical friend Countess Lydia, and her fake religious sentiments. What he feels for her is so strong that it makes him forget his ambitions in the army, his social duties, everything. He just wants to be with her, and he sees how much the secrecy of their relationship is ruining her life. So, for all of his big talk against the institution of marriage, it's Vronsky who's insistent that Anna divorce Karenin so that she can marry Vronsky.
And after they leave Karenin to head for Italy to recover Anna's health, he goes so far as to resign his commission from the army entirely: To decline a dangerous assignment to Tashkent would have been, to Vronsky's former way of thinking, disgraceful and impossible.
But now he declined it without a moment's reflection and, noticing the disapproval of his act in high places, he at once resigned his commission. Anna has transformed him, in much the way that Kitty transforms Levin—but Vronsky's transformation isn't necessarily a good one.
Where some transformations such as that of Kitty and Levin make those involved stronger, Anna and Vronsky keep feeding off one another to make things worse. At the beginning of Anna Karenina , Vronsky was completely invested in Petersburg high society and in his own career. And while he loses everything in Anna, it turns out that their mad love isn't sustainable. Without the support of friends and family, in isolation, Anna starts to spiral downwards and takes Vronsky with her.
The final bone of contention between the lovers is precisely this issue of Vronsky and his role in society. Even after resigning his commission and leaving Petersburg for a while with Anna, Vronsky can still move in the same social circles he used to visit, while Anna's life has completely changed.
It isn't hard for Vronsky to continue life—or some aspects of his life—as he knew it before Anna. After all, Vronsky's a landowner and a well-liked guy around town. He's having some money troubles, but nothing that would get him barred from hanging out with the people he used to know. Vronsky even attends the provincial elections alongside Levin, Sviyazhsky, and Oblonsky in Part 6.
What's more, Vronsky's able to restart his career: he knows the right people to suck up to in the new liberal party when he's attending the elections, and things are looking up for his ability to make something of himself again. But Anna can't join in with her old friends. Even Princess Betsy, who's been having an affair with a guy named Tushkevich on the side for ages, won't visit Anna on the grounds that it would be social suicide.
Things really come to a head in Part 5, Chapter 23, when Mrs. Kartasov at the French opera won't even sit in the box next to Anna's box. Anna can't even go to the opera without getting pointed at and humiliated by Petersburg's elite. After this disaster, all Anna can see is that Vronsky's out, carousing with his friends, while she's stuck at home with a baby she doesn't love and nothing else to do.
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