elements of the woman question: what rights does she have in her separation from Karenin? What rights should she have?

Love: Love is both a freeing, positive force in the book as well as a destructive, imprisoning force. Anna’s love for Vronsky destroys her marriage and standing in many social circles. It separates her from her beloved son and ultimately becomes a factor in her suicide and inability to fully invest in and love Vronsky; however, it is one of the only things that truly satisfies her in the book (at least for a time). Love is a positive in Levin and Kitty’s case, giving Levin a meaning in life and fulfilling his desire for family life.

Other themes could include: fidelity/adultery, marriage/family life, rural life/”the Land,” forgiveness, faith, etc.

Anna Karenina's basic karmic theme is that love nor happiness can ever occur if it involves sacrificing the feelings of others. In other words, only self-sacrifice (not sacrificing your family, current lover or husband, children, or others around you) is the causative factor of happiness.

Under this umbrella you find several other themes in Anna Karenina which are directly linked to that statement: Infidelity, abandonment, treason, jealousy, hypocrisy (societal), and the ardent furor of lust which is often confused with love.

Anna's curse was that she left those who loved her to follow a man she went crazy in love for. She found in him the ardent furor described before, as well as he did. He was a dandy and heart breaker who needed his next prey. She was the easiest of preys. In the end, both realize that what bound them together was temporary, yet, they had single handedly changed and ruined the lives of those whom had to endure their decisions. Hence, she ended her life.

One important theme of Anna Karenina is announced in its famous opening line:

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Families, and the ways in which family members contribute to each others' happiness or misery, are explored first in the the relationship of the Oblonskys, then among the Rostovs and the Karenins, and in Levin's marriage to Kitty.

Another theme closely related to that of family is forgiveness. Tolstoy shows forgiveness as vital to family life and human life in general and depicts his characters struggling to forgive each other for infidelity and inflicting pain. It is only when they do so that they are able to find peace.

This is a great question, but it could be answered many different ways by readers. This is perhaps a sign of greatness in literature: its openness to interpretation.

Tolstoy uses as his epigraph a quote from scripture: "Vengeance is mine; I will repay." So at the start, even if readers have not been familiarized with the basic story, they know it will be a very grim one.

If the epigraph is our starting point, we can see that a principal theme is that people are accountable for their conduct. On the simplest level of interpretation, Anna has cheated on her husband and is punished for it. She moves in with Vronsky, her son is taken away from her, she is ostracized by society, and she finally commits suicide, feeling that Vronsky no longer loves her (though he never tells her so). In a more distant sense, Tolstoy's theme may partially be the victimization of women. Though Vronsky is shown in a depressed, uncomfortable position at the end of the story, none of the male characters suffer the same fate for doing the same things Anna has done. Levin, who is the most sympathetic character in the story, has had a life as a womanizer before settling down with Kitty, and he even gives her his diaries to read. These detail his past affairs, which horrify her. But neither Levin nor Vronsky are "punished" for their past as Anna is for hers. Nor is Vronsky's friend Yashvin, who is "not only not a man of moral principles; he was a man of immoral principles." Anna's brother Oblonsky and Vronsky's brother Alexander are also adept philanderers, and neither one suffers the same consequences as Anna. Whether Tolstoy simply notes this gender double-standard as a neutral observation or if it is meant as an explicit theme, we cannot know for sure.

A further theme is that life is always imperfect and unfulfilling and that those who accept this are the only ones who can be "happy." The marriage of Levin and Kitty is an illustration: Levin never finds complete fulfillment and even contemplates suicide in the midst of a marriage that seems as good as any union is likely to be. Anna, we are to understand, seeks too much. Instead of accepting the imperfections of the bumbling Karenin, she leaves him for an expected life of excitement with Vronsky. She is fulfilled, to a point, but the unhappiness that ultimately results is worse than anything that would have occurred if she had stuck it out and stayed with Karenin.