Anna Karenina’s bag in Leo Tolstoy’s novel is red. The detail appears when Anna travels by train: she carries a small red traveling bag, opens it to take out a cushion, and later retrieves a paper knife and an English novel.
The bag returns near the novel’s climax. At the railway station, Anna attempts to throw herself beneath a train, but the red bag catches or delays her at the crucial moment. Tolstoy repeats the object so vividly that it becomes one of the novel’s most memorable physical details.
Readers sometimes confuse the bag with Anna’s clothing. At the famous Moscow ball, Anna wears a striking black dress, not red; the red object is specifically her traveling bag. The color has also attracted symbolic interpretations, with critics connecting it to passion, danger, sexuality, blood, and Anna’s increasingly troubled emotional life. Those interpretations vary, but the literal detail is unambiguous in the text.
Anna Karenina was serialized in the 1870s and published in book form in 1878. Its parallel storyline follows Konstantin Levin and Kitty, whose domestic and spiritual concerns contrast with Anna’s destructive relationship with Count Vronsky.