It is a flaw in the book which has often been noticed, and it is a flaw which Tolstoy could hardly have avoided, if he was determined to hold to his scenic plan. Given his reluctance to leave the actually present occasion, from the first page onwards, from the moment Anna's erring brother wakes to his own domestic troubles at the opening of the book, there is not room for the due creation of Anna's life. Her turning-point must be reached without delay, it cannot be deferred, for it is there that the development of the book begins. All that precedes her union with Vronsky is nothing but the opening stage, the matter that must be displayed before the story can begin to expand. The story, as we have seen, is in the picture of Anna's life _after_ her critical choice, so that the first part of the book, the account of the given situation, cannot extend its limits. If, therefore, the situation is to be really made and constituted, the space it may cover must be tightly packed; the method should be that which most condenses and concentrates the representation. A great deal is to be expressed at once, all Anna's past and present, the kind of experience that has made her and that has brought her to the point she now touches. Without this her action is arbitrary and meaningless; it is vain to say that she acted thus and thus unless we perfectly understand what she was, what she had, what was around her, in the face of her predicament. Obviously there is no space to lose; and it is enough to look at Tolstoy's use of it, and then to see how Balzac makes the situation that _he_ requires--the contrast shows exactly where Tolstoy's method could not help him. His refusal to shape his story, or any considerable part of it, as a pictorial impression, his desire to keep it all in immediate action, prevents him from making the most of the space at his command; the situation is bound to suffer in consequence.