Anna Karenina: Stream of Consciousness 2 key examples

When Anna and Vronsky meet the artist Mikhailov in Italy, Mikhailov muses about who this couple could be. Thinking to himself in an extended monologue, Mikhailov demonstrates Tolstoy's pre-Modernism use of stream-of-consciousness:

As he went into the studio, the artist Mikhailov looked his visitors over once again and also noted in his imagination the expression of Vronsky’s face, especially his cheekbones. Though his artistic sense worked incessantly, collecting material, though he felt an ever increasing excitement because the moment for judgements of his work was approaching, he quickly and subtly formed an idea of these three people out of imperceptible tokens. Vronsky and Mme Karenina, in Mikhailov’s conjecture, must have been noble and wealthy Russians who, like all wealthy Russians, understood nothing about art, but pretended to be amateurs and connoisseurs. ‘They’ve probably already looked at all the old stuff, and now they’re going around to the studios of the new ones - some German charlatan, some fool of a Pre-Raphaelite Englishman — and have come to me only to complete the survey,’ he thought.

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After Anna and Vronsky quarrel, Anna's jealousies begin to consume her. In an attempt to calm herself down, Anna talks to herself and reveals her innermost thought processes, an example of Tolstoy's early use of stream-of-consciousness technique:

And seeing that, while wishing to calm herself, she had gone round the circle she had already completed so many times and come back to her former irritation, she was horrified at herself. ‘Is it really impossible? Can I really not take it upon myself?’ she said to herself, and began again from the beginning. ‘He’s truthful, he’s honest, he loves me. I love him, the divorce will come any day now. What more do we need? We need peace, trust, and I’ll take it upon myself. Yes, now, when he comes, I’ll tell him it was my fault, though it wasn’t, and we’ll leave.’

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