Part II, Chapters 4-9: Scandal Manics

Isn't it fascinating to watch the life of a beautiful, successful person completely implode?

Of course not. That's a horrible thing to enjoy. We can all agree with that, and then go right back to

• watching one of the many, many YouTube videos titled "Olympic fails"
• reading the latest novel by Jodi Picoult or Nicholas Sparks
• scrolling through multiple Facebook photo albums to watch the most gorgeous individual in your high school class morph into a troll with a botched nose job, and/or
• having a conversation with a friend that consists of nothing but post-breakdown Charlie Sheen quotes and hyena-like laughter until everyone else at Starbucks is shooting you dirty looks over their massive Tazo cups.

So we switched to reading the Taco Bell Twitter account out loud instead.

It's not that humans are mean; we're just easily bored. So as tempting as it is to blame the members of Anna's social circle for being a little too interested in her blossoming relationship with Vronsky, I have to remind myself that the average American is no better. Still...it's easy to see why Anna is frustrated with the way everyone is wink-wink-nudge-nudging each other over something that a) is technically still a friendship and b) she is trying to keep discreet.

Notice that I said discreet and not nonexistent. Because, man, does she want some of that Vronsky love. She's like Anne Hathaway's character in The Princess Diaries when she realizes she has a shot at the most popular boy at school. Anna ditches her old uncool friends - a bunch of "elderly, homely, virtuous, and pious women" - to party with the preps so that she can be near him. And like the guy in the movie, Vronsky doesn't care so long as his reputation stays intact.

He was very well aware that in the eyes of [fashionable] people...the role of a man pursuing a married woman, and regardless of everything, staking his life on drawing her into adultery - that role has something beautiful and majestic about it and can never be ridiculous...

Shrek 2 begs to differ.

Vronsky's no secret love child of Stephen Hawking and Marilyn vos Savant, but he's spot on about this. At his cousin Betsy's party, the only one not amused by the obvious chemistry between him and Anna is the other Alexei. That's not hard to understand, right? He's jealous that this dishy uniform-wearing bachelor is stuck on his hot wife like Gorilla Glue, right? Wrong. Alexei is worried about "the public opinion" and having to "use his time and mental powers" to warn her about it, not whether his wife actually loves him. Or so he tells himself.

To put himself in thought and feeling in another person's place was a spiritual action foreign to Alexei Androvich. He looked on this spiritual action as a harmful and dangerous abuse of the fancy.

I guess that's why his lecture to Anna on wifely duties has the emotional resonance of a C-SPAN marathon. As the party guests discuss, aristocratic marriages in this era were based more on prudence than passion. It's hard to tell whether Alexei really loves Anna. On one hand, he says he does. On the other...well, he doesn't actually care about her thoughts or interests until they seem to threaten his societal reputation. (Tolstoy's wife could probably sympathize.) Either way, the speech is about as effective as those warning labels on cookie dough rolls were for me in high school.

That's adorable. Now give me back my spatula.

These days, I'm more likely to pig out on the vegan version of Russian tea cakes, which many of us know as Mexican wedding cookies. Although the recipe was likely introduced in Europe by the Moors in their eighth century invasion of Spain, it was the Russians who popularized it as a dish served alongside tea. It's easy to imagine Betsy's party guests nibbling on these as they giggle at Vronsky's doglike devotion and utter ominous comments like this:

"Yes, but women followed by a shadow usually come to a bad end," said Anna's friend.