Elena Patrick

Gender and Narrative Voice in Mariia Zhukova’s Evenings by the Karpovka River

In the few critical studies that Mariia Zhukova’s collection of novellas Evenings by the Karpovka River (1837-38) garnered, the question of this author’s use of narrative voices is either not raised or, as it happens in the works by Hugh A. Aplin and Joe Andrew, solved by an assumption of a complete identification between the text’s implied author and her male narrators.  Curiously, neither of these critics chooses the opinions enunciated by Zhukova’s female narrators to serve as examples of the author’s beliefs.  The fallacy of Aplin’s and Andrew’s assumption is glaring, because the five storytellers of Evenings are divided into two camps that are trying to convince a marriageable heiress Liuba in diametrically opposite things.  One coalition, consisting of Liuba’s guardian Natal’ia Dmitrievna Shemilova and two guests in Shemilova’s salon, Pronovskii and Gorskii, elucidate the dangers romantic love holds for women.  Meanwhile, the other camp—Vel’skii, to whom Liuba is impartial, and Shemilova’s doctor Ivan Karlovich—shows the perils an arranged marriage brings.[1]  Furthermore, most of the male narrators in Evenings are unreliable at one point or another.  They contradict themselves, blurt things inadvertently, make factual mistakes in a historical tale, and even lie and get caught by other characters.  By presenting her male narrators this way, I believe, Zhukova intends to undermine them rather than to identify with them.[2] She exposes their misogynistic opinions and mercantile motives in telling the stories they choose to relate.  For instance, while the affection Vel’skii has for Liuba might not be a lowly incentive to advocate perseverance in love and resistance to an arranged marriage, we should not overlook that as a penniless officer he stands much to lose if the young woman agrees to bestow her wealth onto another suitor.  

In this article I will explore one of the strategies Zhukova employs to subvert her male narrators.  After letting a male narrator named Alexander Pronovskii tell a story, she has his ex-fiancée Elena narrate a tale about him.  The story Pronovskii relates, “Baron Reikhman,” is not about himself, but about a family he knew, and he figures as an omniscient third-person narrator in this tale.  Nonetheless, Pronovskii’s presence is felt strongly in it through his opinions that are given as universal truths and that create an extended portrait of their narrator.  Elena, who describes her relationship with Pronovskii in her tale, exposes the falsity of this portrait and universality of his truths.  The narratorial authority of omniscient narrators is notoriously hard to undermine.  However, through having another character tell a story about Pronovskii, Zhukova succeeds in subverting not only Pronovskii, but also the notion of a disinterested and impartial, always-assumed-male, third-person narrator.

Elena’s story is recounted by Shemilova’s doctor on the last evening of the story-telling series.  The German doctor, Ivan Karlovich, occupies a unique position in Shemilova’s salon.  He is the only working non-aristocratic non-Russian.  At Natal’ia Dmitrievna’s gatherings he is present in a dual quality of an old friend and a doctor.  The evening he plays a narrator he is late, which again underscores his professional side and his responsibility before his patients that have priority over his familial relationship.  Finally, his origins connect him with the German tradition of romanticism that exalted passionate love in the vein of Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther.

The doctor surrounds the story told to him by a pregnant and dying Elena, whose baby he delivers, with a tri-partite frame.  In the first part he describes the landscape that “frames” the city of Saratov, where the doctor meets his patient.   In this environment, visible are only men: male workers who pull boats, tax collectors, Kirgiz and Ukrainian peasants, and Russian noblemen.  In addition, Ivan Karlovich reminisces about the revolts led by Pugachev and Razin.  Thus, in the center of the landscape full of healthy and at times aggressive men there is a dying woman.

The second part of Ivan Karlovich’s frame is constituted by an extended portrait of his old friend Alexander, whose surname of Pronovskii the doctor discloses only at the end of his tale, which, just like in the case of Elena’s story prompting the re-assessment of “Baron Reikhman,” urges readers to analyze retrospectively what they have just heard.  According to the doctor, Pronovskii is an amazingly honest man and a pleasant company when with close friends.  In a more general society, however, Pronovskii is cold, reticent, and gloomy.  He does not hide his disappointment with life.  His main trait, which Ivan Karlovich reports without a shade of disapproval, is contempt for women.  “It was as if women did not exist for [Pronovskii] [как будто бы женщины не существовали для него]” (255).[3]  The doctor hints transparently that this attitude stems from Alexander’s disillusion in love.  Ivan Karlovich also describes his friend as very charitable, but not wanting to receive gratitude from the people he helped.  On the one hand, this could be read as a sign of true charity, which does not ask anything in return.  On the other hand, given Pronovskii’s refusal to stop being charitable towards his ex-fiancée even after she lets him understand that his help is a burden to her, this puts into question a charity that expresses only his own will.

The third part of the doctor’s frame is the description of the circumstances under which Elena tells him her story.  Since Evenings revolves around repeated incidents of storytelling, we can compare the particulars of Shemilova’s guests narrating their stories with those of Elena telling hers.  In Natal’ia Dmitrievna’s salon the guests’ performances are awaited and encouraged.  More than once the frame narrator describes how the listeners hurry the storytellers to start their stories or to go on with them.  For a powerless, poor, and sick woman, however, it is very difficult to secure the attention of an audience.  Elena has to nearly beg the doctor to listen to her.  At first Ivan Karlovich forbids her to talk, because supposedly it would harm her health.  To his audience at Shemilova’s gathering he admits that he knew from the young woman’s condition that she had only a few days to live and that her talking would not shorten this term.  Only after Elena asks him, with “a half-rebuke” (259) full of grief, if he is too bored to listen to her, does he allow her to speak. 

The story Elena tells to the doctor is for Pronovskii, who refuses to see her and consequently to listen to her.  She says to the doctor: “You see, Ivan Karlovich, I would not want to die without him at least learning what my…ingratitude cost me [Видите, Иван Карлович, мне не хотелось бы умереть без того, чтоб он узнал, по крайней мере, чего стоила мне…неблагодарность]” (258-259).  Moreover, from her tale we learn that not only has Pronovskii been refusing to listen to her, he also forbade the old woman he hired to help Elena to answer a single question, which precludes any bonding between the women.  Still, Elena finds a way around his attempt to suppress her story: she tells it to the doctor and asks him to retell it to Pronovskii.  Later Ivan Karlovich retells it to her grown-up son, Vel’skii.  The frame narrator of Evenings does not specify if Vel’skii knew this story from his “uncle” Pronovskii before the doctor told it to him, but it is hinted that the young man was ignorant about his true parentage.  Thus, it is possible that when the doctor informs Vel’skii about his mother’s fate, Elena’s story finally reaches its intended addressee.

From this tale we learn how a six-year-old orphaned Elena is raised by her father’s friend, Alexander.  When she is fifteen, he decides to marry her.  Right before the wedding his mother dies, and Elena moves temporarily to his aunt.  There she falls in love with another man and elopes with him.  Her husband turns out to be a gambler, and the young woman suffers with him through poverty and his imprisonment for debts.  Alexander keeps sending them alms, which insults Elena, who wishes for his forgiveness, not money.  After her husband dies, she is left pregnant and poor.  Secretly, she leaves for Saratov to stop Alexander from torturing her.  She becomes ill there, but with the help of a rich woman she recovers.  When her former guardian finds her, she relapses into her illness and dies shortly after giving birth to a boy.  Before her death Alexander comes to visit her, and Elena dies looking at him.
 
By way of explaining why she abandoned Pronovskii Elena says:

There was something deep and mysterious in his love; he looked at me as if I were a deity; he surrounded me with attention, with some kind of holiness.  Such love was a burden to me: it placed an obligation upon me to appear perfect.  Sometimes it even seemed to me that he did not love me enough: I wanted more passion, more simplicity; I did not dare to indulge my lively feelings in his presence.
[В любви его было что-то глубокое, таинственное; он смотрел на меня как на божество, окружал меня вниманием, какою-то святостию.  Мне тяжела была подобная любовь: она налагала на меня обязанность казаться совершенною.  Иногда даже мне казалось, что он мало любит меня: мне хотелось более страсти, более простоты; я не смела предаваться при нем всей живости чувств моих.] (259)

Thus, we can see that just as the female characters discussed by Barbara Heldt in Terrible Perfection: Women and Russian Literature suffer from being forced to conform to the male ideal of the perfect woman, so does Elena.  She astutely notices that Pronovskii did not love her enough.  He loved his own perception of her as a deity, and when she falls off that pedestal, he treats her cruelly.  The young woman mentions that she loved Pronovskii while they were engaged, but this contradicts what she told the doctor earlier, before beginning her tale, about the cost of her ingratitude, which appears to signal that she agreed to marry her guardian out of gratitude.  The question whether or not Pronovskii as Elena’s guardian abused his responsibility by pushing her to marry him is never raised, but Zhukova demonstrates that he failed in this quality at least on the account of his ignorance of Elena’s true feelings.  For example, when the doctor accuses Shemilova of being unaware of her niece’s love for Vel’skii, she proudly answers that she knew all about it.

Even though later Elena regrets not understanding how much Pronovskii really loved her and calls his help “magnanimity” (though, significantly this word appears in a question),[4] the main thrust of her story is the depiction of how he humiliates and persecutes her.  To show that his help did more harm than good, the doctor specifies in his diagnosis that moral sufferings sped up Elena’s illness.  In other words, if Pronovskii had forgiven her and left her alone, she might have recovered, as she recovered after she ran away and hid in Saratov and before he found her.  Thus, her side of the story undoes the role of noble protector that Pronovskii wants for himself, while exposing his cruelty and vindictiveness.

Moreover, as we can see, Pronovskii’s hatred of women is brought on not by Elena’s faults, but by his own unreasonable demands from her.  By telling the doctor that people are so weak and imperfect that if they are born evil, then no amount of good intentions will change their disposition, Pronovskii implies that because Elena abandoned him, she is evil, and nothing will change this.  Since he despises women, we can conclude that by extension he believes all women to be wicked.  Thus, his negative assessment of the female half of humanity is brought on by one woman’s defiance, not by his deep knowledge of human nature.

Despite feeling pity for Elena and being very kind (according to the frame narrator), Ivan Karlovich views Pronovskii’s behavior as laudable and noble.  Pronovskii invites the doctor to see Elena only when he believes she is dying and when the storm outside is at its worst.  This delay endangers the young woman’s life and deprives her of whatever chance she had for recovery, if her illness had been treated earlier.  Ivan Karlovich, however, does not rebuke his friend.  Nor does he suggest to Pronovskii to be merciful and to forgive his former fiancée, which might have saved her life.

The connection between Pronovskii and the doctor goes deeper.  Ivan Karlovich indirectly blames the young woman for her own disease.  He describes to his audience how he found Elena looking skeletal because of her unspecified sickness.  Her symptoms appear to signal that she suffers from the romantic illness par excellence—consumption—but the doctor never names her disease.  Instead, he retells her story, in which her passions mislead her into falling in love with someone she barely knows, and this brings her to a sad end.  Thus, his listeners are nudged to make a connection between Elena’s disease and her real sin, daring to have a sexual appetite.  Since Pronovskii brings his audience to the same conclusion in “Baron Reikhman,” which I will discuss later, we can see that the doctor is a more outspoken stand-in for the reserved Pronovskii.

Throughout Zhukova’s collection of novellas Ivan Karlovich points out repeatedly how transgressive it is for women to have desires and appetites, sexual or otherwise.  Since the least offensive for a discussion in society appears to be a gastronomical appetite, the doctor concentrates on it.  He chides Shemilova for her love of salmon and gives a withering description of an old maid who gorged on salmon and became sick.  This unfortunate woman had neither a husband nor an always-present doctor to police her intake of food.  Thus, when the doctor tells Liuba what wonderful melons there are in Saratov, she knowingly replies that he would not let her eat them.  Ivan Karlovich playfully says that eating a little would not hurt her.  Ironically, the doctor, as the frame narrator puts it, is “almost square [почти квадратный]” (7), which proves that he himself is far from being moderate in food.

Moreover, not only does the doctor find Pronovskii’s conduct beyond reproach, but he also betrays Elena to his friend.  After he notices that the young woman does not spend much money on food for herself, he informs Pronovskii about it.  Pronovskii sends expensive meats and fruits.  Elena gently rebukes the doctor for breaching the trust between a doctor and a patient that should be kept inviolate.  Thus, the doctor’s devotion to his patients, which is hinted at earlier, comes second to his bond with another man.

Retelling Elena’s story, Ivan Karlovich seems to be moved by contradictory intentions.  On one hand, he cautions Liuba against indulging into desires of any kind, because for a woman it spells doom.  On the other hand, he warns Shemilova against forcing Liuba into an arranged marriage, because like Elena, her niece might elope with a man she loves.  However, “The Last Evening” offers yet another message, which Ivan Karlovich does not intend.  Repeatedly, this story suggests that Pronovskii wants Elena dead.  She is afraid to indulge her lively feelings, that is to seem alive, in his presence.  The death of Pronovskii’s mother two days before the wedding foreshadows Elena’s fate.  After Elena runs away, Pronovskii cannot accept that she is alive and persecutes her relentlessly, while pretending to act in her best interests.  Moreover, he asks her permission to never see her again, as if she were already dead.  He calls the doctor to her only when she is dying and there is no hope.  Thus, Elena’s survival appears to be nearly impossible.  If she had stayed with Pronovskii, she would have to deaden her desires.  Her pursuit of romantic love brought on an illness, which was exacerbated by Pronovskii.  In other words, no matter which way she chooses, she is unlikely to live in the full sense of this word.  Her sad story presages a similar fate of Liuba, regardless of whether Shemilova allows or prohibits her to marry Vel’skii.  Thus, the doctor’s contradictory intentions for telling the story are not really at odds, because Liuba appears to be destined to live unhappily or die young.  This conclusion is strengthened by the title of the last chapter in Russian—“Последний вечер” [“The Last Evening”]—that phonetically sounds very similar to последняя вечеря, the Last Supper.  Christ dies soon after this event. 

The story Pronovsky narrates is titled “Baron Reikhman.”  An old general, Baron Sergei Reikhman, gambles away his fortune and decides to marry a young wealthy woman.  Even though Natal’ia Vasil’evna gains higher social status through her husband, she is dissatisfied with her loveless marriage and has a platonic affair with his young lieutenant, Alexander Levin.  When the baron learns about the affair, he believes it was consummated.  Still, he forgives Levin and even saves him from death by suppressing the information that the lieutenant had challenged another officer to a duel, which was an offense punishable by hanging.  Levin feels that in exchange for Reikhman’s magnanimity he has to abandon the baroness.  After he does this, the baron banishes his wife and keeps their four-year-old son Coco.  The tale closes with a vision of Coco wearing an army overcoat and marching with his father at home.

On its first reading “Baron Reikhman” appears unbiased.  The voice of the omniscient narrator is familiar and seemingly impartial.  The irony the narrator employs extends to all characters, regardless of their gender.  The baroness does betray her husband, if not physically, then emotionally, and he appears to be right to punish her.  Forming a circular logic, Natal’ia Vasil’evna’s transgression warrants the derisive and suspicious treatment of other female characters in the tale, and since the female characters are viewed with nothing but derision and suspicions, the baroness’s heavy punishment is doubly justified.  The omniscient narrator’s god-like dispassionate authority vouches for the justice of this sentence.  Only after the reader learns in “The Last Evening” that Pronovskii is by far not a disinterested and unprejudiced man, does the misogyny of the story and its narrator come into full view. 

As a prelude to his tale Pronovskii tells his listeners that he will read to them what he calls a trifle.  He also asks for indulgence from his audience, because “this episode is from the life of a young woman, whom [he] knew.  In it [his listeners] will not find poetry: these are scenes from a private life [это эпизод из жизни молодой женщины, которую [он] сам знал.  В нем [его слушатели] не найд[ут] поэзии: это сцены из жизни частной]”  (40).  In other words, even before Pronovskii starts his story, he already belittles his heroine and her experience, which is especially poignant because this story is about the destruction of Natal’ia Vasil’evna’s life.  However, the reader will realize it only looking backwards upon finishing the tale. 

The tone of the first half of the story is uniformly ironic.  As I pointed out, Pronovskii shows all his characters—the baron, the baroness, Levin, Lidiia Ezerskaia (who wants Levin to marry her), her mother, and Gotovitskii—in a mocking light.  However, for no explicit reason the most sarcastic treatment is given to Natal’ia Vasil’evna.  In the first chapter alone, which is only five pages long, Pronovskii derides her as a shallow and silly coquette, a worldly woman who values titles too highly, a person who cannot control her feelings, a liar, and a bad mother.  Since more often than not he chooses to recount the baroness’s thoughts in his words, rather than let her speak for herself, it is hard to form an opinion about Natal’ia Vasil’evna unfiltered through the narrator’s vision.  Only alerted to Pronovskii’s misogyny by “The Last Evening,” the reader can discern his unfair denigration of the baroness.  As an example of close reading I will explore an episode that transpires after the baroness, upset about Levin flirting with Lidiia Ezerskaia, returns from a ball:

 [Natal’ia Vasil’evna] left her dressing-table.  Sergei is so kind, and really nice!  Only how intolerable that he snores!  One has to admit that women are very unhappy, and Natal’ia Vasil’evna is the unhappiest of all.  Oh, she would become very angry if anyone said that this was not so—this is human nature!  People, who know grief only by the name, find a fake one in their imagination for want of a real one; and woe to anyone who would doubt their adopted child!  True grief is modest and hides from light; a fake one also hides beneath veils, but it behaves just as an Eastern beauty, who does not become angry when an immodest wind opens her face for a curious European to see.  
[[Наталья Васильевна] отошла от туалета.  Серж так добр и, право, мил!  Как несносно только, что он начинает храпеть!  Надо признаться, что женщины очень несчастливы, а Наталья Васильевна несчастливее всех.  О, она очень осердилась бы, если б кто сказал ей противное: такова природа человеческая!  Люди, знакомые с несчастием только по слуху, за неимением настоящего отыскивают ложное в своем воображении; и беда, кто будет сомневаться в законности усыновленного дитяти!  Истинное несчастие скромно и прячется от взоров света; ложное тоже закутывается покровами, но так, как красавица Востока, которая нимало не гневается, когда нескромный ветер открывает лицо ее взору любопытного европейца.] (49)

Notably, from “The Last Evening” we know that Pronovskii built his relationship with Elena along the romantic paradigm.  Since he derides Natal’ia Vasil’evna’s pursuit of romantic love as unrealistic, banal, and ludicrous, the reader can see Pronovskii’s double standard for men and women.  In addition, the comparison Pronovskii makes between a false grief with an Eastern beauty whose modesty is fraudulent not only shows his misogyny but also his readiness to distort the baroness’s actions.  Revealing one’s misery in a room with only a sleeping husband present hardly qualifies as an attempt to put one’s suffering on display.

Pronovskii misrepresents other aspects of his heroine as well.  For example, he undermines her innocence by making her appear older and, therefore, more experienced.  He does this through addressing her by her first name and her patronymic, Natal’ia Vasil’evna.  In Evenings, all young women (regardless of whether they are married or not) are called by their first names, often in their diminutive form (e.g., Katia, Dushen’ka, Liubin’ka, etc.), while old women like Natal’ia Dmitrievna Shemilova are called by their names and patronymics.  The real age of the baroness is not stated, though she is repeatedly called young.  Since the age at which girls are given in marriage in Zhukova’s text is fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen, and Pronovskii mentions that the Reikhmans’ marriage lasted six years, at the beginning of his tale, Natal’ia Vasil’evna can be as young as twenty-one.  By making the baroness seem older and more mature than she really is, the narrator manipulates the reader into judging her more harshly.  Indeed, in A History of Russian Women’s Writing, Catriona Kelly calls Natal’ia Vasil’evna “an ‘experienced’ woman” (86), who is juxtaposed to “an ‘innocent’ woman” Lidiia Ezerskaia,[5] even though they might be really close in age.  However, Kelly does sense that there is something wrong with calling the baroness experienced:

The ‘experienced’ Baroness is undone by a piece of innocent, but socially unacceptable behaviour, a failure of manners, not a failure of morals.  Her relationship with Levin is not a love-affair in the full physical sense—the two spend most of their time singing arias from Italian opera together.  The offensive nature of the relationship lies, rather, in the fact that it is more public than any love-affair would be, and hence a greater threat to the accepted forms of social organization. (86)

By making Natal’ia Vasil’evna seem experienced and mature, Pronovskii creates an illusory parity between the baroness and her husband, who might be thrice the age of his wife.  There are only two conversations between the baron and Natal’ia Vasil’evna in the story, and the first one is explicitly described as a battle, where the opponents try to out-strategize each other.  When in the first conversation the baron outsmarts and manipulates his wife into rebuffing Levin at the ball, it is felt to be a victory of one person over his equal rather than an abuse of a young innocent woman by an old experienced man.  Moreover, when at the end of the story the baroness is edged out of her house by the baron and the particulars of this eviction are not given, the reader is conditioned to pity Natal’ia Vasil’evna less.

Presenting the baroness as an experienced woman and at the same time as naive and silly creates contradictions in the story.  However, this is not the only occurrence when the narrator’s descriptions belie the events he is telling about.  For instance, he depicts Natal’ia Vasil’evna as weak and spineless, while she has enough courage to propose to Levin to defy society and go abroad together.  He asserts that the fact that her relationship with Levin stayed purely platonic is due only to the baron’s watching his wife constantly, while Natal’ia Vasil’evna says that she would despise a physically adulterous woman and never become one herself.  He compares her with a huntress and Levin with a bird, whom Natal’ia Vasil’evna is trying to catch with her net at a ball, even though the baroness, behaving as befits an aristocratic woman, can be only passive and is no match for her “prey,” Levin, who can actively choose dance partners as well as choose what woman he will escort to her carriage.  Moreover, in the story overall, it is the baroness who is Levin’s prey, not vice versa.  She sees Levin only when he pretends to be a shy music-lover, while in the town where the action takes place he is called “mauvais sujet” (48) for his treatment of women, and Natal’ia Vasil’evna appears to be unaware of his notoriety.

How well Pronovskii’s systematic denigration of the baroness works can be seen in Joe Andrew’s analysis of “Baron Reikhman.”  In Narrative and Desire, Andrew argues that Zhukova, despite her sympathetic attitude toward Natal’ia Vasil’evna, believes her to be a guilty adulteress, who deserves what happens to her at the end of the story.  Moreover, Andrew himself accuses the baroness of being a bad mother, because she locks her son in the nursery, and “a woman without shame” (150), because she proposes an elopement with Levin during a conversation at a ball.  The fact that the lieutenant avoids the baroness, which forces her to have the conversation with him at the ball, escapes Andrew’s attention.  As for the information about Coco being locked away, not only does it come from Gotovitsky, who hates Levin and consequently is ready to hurt him in any possible manner (slander and theft included), but also Pronovskii gives an alternative description of what was happening in the house of Reikhman during the meetings between Natal’ia Vasil’evna and Levin:

But one has to tell the truth: such occasions [the baron’s absence] would repeat themselves very seldom.  I do not know whether the baron’s instinctive precaution or chance was the reason for this, but Levin often would tell Natal’ia Vasil’evna in despair: “It is impossible to see you alone.”  At first Natal’ia Vasil’evna would say, “What’s that to us?  I only want us to be together, to know that our hearts understand each other.”  But later she had to admit that it would have been more pleasant if the hearts could discuss this more freely, but that was impossible: Levin and the baron were inseparable.  The former could not visit the baroness without the latter being present as well.  Strange coincidence! (emphasis added).
[Но должно, однако же, сказать правду: подобные случаи [отсутствие барона] возобновлялись очень редко.  Не знаю, инстинктивная ли предосторожность барона или просто случайность была тому причиною; но Левин часто в отчаянии говаривал Наталье Васильевне: «Никогда невозможно видеть вас одну!»  Наталья Васильевна сперва говаривала: «Что нам до того?  Лишь бы быть вместе, лишь бы знать, что сердца наши понимают друг друга».  Но потом она стала находить, что приятнее было бы, если б сердца могли чаще беседовать о том свободнее; но это было невозможно: Левин и барон были неразлучны.  Первый не мог быть у баронессы, чтоб и другой не был тут же.  Странная случайность!] (52)

The negative treatment, as I pointed out, is not reserved for the baroness exclusively.  All the other women in Pronovskii’s tale are described with biting irony, while the narrator claims to be an expert in women.  For example, Lidiia Ezerskaia is pathetic in her attempts to make Levin marry her.  Her mother is described as hypocritical, obnoxious, and unintelligent.  Pronovskii describes her age with withering sarcasm: “[O]n a sofa sat Ezerskaia, a rather weighty lady, and next to her another one, both of such an age, when each morning takes away another attraction of theirs and gives in exchange new, but—alas!—artificial roses [[Н]а диване, сидела Езерская, довольно полновесная дама, и возле нее другая, обе уже тех лет, когда каждое утро уносит новую красоту и дарит взамену новые, увы! искусственные розы]” (53).  Thus, “Baron Reikhman,” unlike the rest of the novellas in Evenings, contains no positive female characters at all, and shows Pronovskii to be the most misogynistic narrator in this text.

Pronovskii’s attitude to male characters is markedly different.  Even though the narrator treats Levin, for instance, with irony and does not hide that people, especially religious ones, called him a “mauvais sujet” (48), he puts it in such a way that he exonerates Levin rather than rebukes him: “But I beg your pardon!  In Athens, would they call Aristippe mauvais sujet?  Oh, times! [Ну прошу покорно!  В Афинах сказали бы об Аристиппе: mauvais sujet?  О времена!]” (48).  In other words, in Athens people who would not find Aristippe’s hedonism reprehensible would feel the same way about Levin’s hedonism.  Under “hedonism,” as the narrator explains, the reader should understand Levin’s feeling of attraction to the baroness, which, however, does not preclude other joys in life.  Speaking of these other joys of men, Pronovskii says, “The Greeks were lenient…  Academy and [courtesans] did not interfere with each other.  Levin was not an enemy of the first one, and did not avoid the second ones [Греки были снисходительны…  Академия и [куртизанки] не мешали друг другу.  Левин не был врагом первой, но не совсем чуждался и вторых]” (48).  From the text we can see that Levin enjoys an active social life, a professional life, the pleasure of exclusively male company (in particular, in gambling), and flirting with women without any intention to commit to a lasting relationship.  In other words, through describing Levin as hedonistic in the Greek style, Pronovskii excuses Levin’s casual treatment of women, while blaming the baroness for her own seduction: “Ah, Natal’ia Vasil’evna!  Why weren’t you satisfied with the anti-poetic love of your baron?  [Ах, Наталья Васильевна!  Что было бы вам не удовольствоваться антипоэтическою любовию вашего барона!..]” (56).

Moreover, through jokes and metaphors the narrator annuls the “mauvais sujet” epithet applied to Levin.  For example, after the baroness rejects Levin’s advances at a ball, Pronovskii says, “Mauvais sujet Levin, seeing himself turned into dust by the proud beauty, decided to leave her magic circle  [Mauvais sujet Левин, видя, что он уничтожен в прах гордою красавицею, решился выйти из очарованного круга ее]” (48)).  Thus, the narrator implies that Levin is not a womanizer, because he is so easily thwarted by Natal’ia Vasil’evna.  This joke obscures Levin’s further actions, which are flirting with Lidiia Ezerskaia and thus repaying the baroness.

However, as soon as the subject of the male honor code enters the text, Pronovskii no longer uses irony when speaking of Levin and Reikhman.  This happens when the baron learns about the “affair.”  Gotovitskii steals the bracelet the baroness gave to Levin (originally this bracelet was given to her by the baron) and then throws it on a gambling table, saying to Levin: “You should better safeguard gifts and the reputation of certain ladies  [Берегите лучше подарки и репутацию некоторых дам]” (58).  All the officers present there are ready to begin laughing at Levin and speculate as to who gave him this bracelet, but Reikhman approaches the table and covers the bracelet with his hand.  “[The general] looked significantly at the officers, which stopped their jokes  [[Генерал] посмотрел значительно на офицеров, что остановило шутки их]” (59, emphasis added). 

After this Pronovskii does not joke about the baron or about Levin any more.  On the contrary, he admires Reikhman’s self-control and magnanimity with which the baron handles the situation with Levin.  Male honor is portrayed as a beautiful thing and as something that is higher than the law (Reikhman lets Levin go unpunished for the challenge to a duel).  A man who does not follow this code is a pariah, and in Pronovskii’s tale such a man is Gotovitskii.  He cheats at cards (which is not acceptable, since he cheats on his own comrades-in-arms, while Levin, who cheats on women, is valorized) and informs the baron about Levin’s challenge to a duel.  To this piece of information the baron replies: “You have done your duty, Mr. Gotovitskii, by informing your superior about an illegal action…but you understand that after this not a single officer would want to deal with you [Вы исполнили вашу обязанность, г-н Готовицкий, открывши начальнику противузаконный поступок…но вы понимаете, что после этого ни один офицер не захочет встретиться с вами]” (64).  To emphasize his point he turns away and leaves the room.  However, even before the baron’s withering response, Gotovitskii did understand that he had become an outcast, because along with Levin’s note about the challenge to a duel he submitted his request to be dismissed from the army.  With the very last words of the tale Pronovskii again underlines Gotovitskii’s status as an outcast.  He recounts what happened to all his characters, and about Gotovitskii he says: “Gotovitskii…but it is not worth concerning oneself with the fates of Gotovitskiis [Готовицкий—но Готовицкие не стоят, чтоб занимались судьбою их]” (73).

If the male honor code unites and supports men, it pointedly excludes women.  The narrator shows this clearly in the episode of the baron generously forgiving Levin: Reikhman gives back to the lieutenant his note that contains the challenge of Gotovitskii to a duel and Natal’ia Vasil’evna’s bracelet.  When Levin attempts an explanation, the general interrupts him: “I do not need to know anything, Mr. Levin.  Take this bracelet; I let your heart impress on you what you should do [Я не имею нужды ничего знать, г-н Левин.  Возьмите этот браслет; я предоставляю сердцу вашему внушить вам, что вы должны делать]” (65).  “For several minutes Levin was standing as if thunderstruck.  The general did not leave him any means to exonerate the baroness.  He treated him magnanimously; but what should she expect? [Несколько минут стоял Левин, как пораженный громом.  Генерал не оставлял ему средства оправдать баронессу.  Он поступил с ним великодушно; но чего должна ожидать она?]”  Indeed, the baron shows his wife no pity, treating her not only cruelly, but also expressing his treatment in a casual ironic tone.  Pronovskii has no objection to the baron’s attitude—he recounts Natal’ia Vasil’evna’s eviction in an equally light-hearted tone.  In addition, through ellipsis he omits the particulars of the baron forcing her out of her house and taking away her son, which might create pity for the baroness and tarnish the code of male honor.

However, it is not only at the end that Pronovskii unites his voice and his attitude with the baron’s.  Even though the narrator does mock some of the baron’s actions in the first part of the narrative (e.g., the baron’s habit of pulling out gray hair to appear younger), throughout the whole story he agrees with Reikhman on the most significant points.  For instance, they both deride the baroness’s hopes for a romantic love relationship, which they both perceive as something absurd and not of this world.  Pronovskii criticizes the baroness: just like her little son, she does not control her feelings, while the baron tells Natal’ia Vasil’evna that a wife has to obey what society defines as good morals.  In other words, both Pronovskii and Reikhman agree that the baroness must train her feelings to follow her (or, in the baron’s opinion, society’s, which is to say men’s) will.  Moreover, narratively, Pronovskii supports Baron Reikhman not only by giving his story the baron’s name, but also by building the suspense of the tale around the baron’s decision of what to do with Levin and Natal’ia Vasil’evna.  In contrast, the baroness’s decision to propose to Levin to elope together is described anti-climactically.  First, Levin avoids Natal’ia Vasil’evna, so she has to go to a ball given by her rival Ezerskaia to speak to him.  Second, their conversation has to be held during a mazurka.  Since this dance involves numerous changes of partners, the conversation between the baroness and Levin is interrupted many times, which prompts Pronovskii to comment sarcastically: “One has to admit that the mazurka is not entirely convenient for explanations [Надобно признаться, что мазурка не совсем удобна для объяснений]” (71).  Lastly, the lieutenant casually rejects Natal’ia Vasil’evna’s proposal in favor of loyalty to the baron. 

There is only one point on which Pronovskii and the baron seem to disagree.  Reikhman poses as a progressive husband: he claims that he would not restrain his wife’s freedom to do what she wants and to go where she wants.  Pronovskii, meanwhile, mockingly rebukes the baron for not following the patriarchal traditions: “And really, it would not be bad for you to learn from our grandfathers….  They were not stupid people and were actually smart in family matters [И, право, не худо бы было вам позаняться от наших дедов….  Они были люди не глупые и в семейных делах смышленые]” (51).  He does not specify what exactly he advises the baron to do with his erring wife, but Zhukova places Pronovskii’s tale after Shemilova’s novella “The Monk,” in which a patriarchal husband kills his wife, when he mistakenly believes her to be unfaithful.  When Levin thinks about how the baron will punish Natal’ia Vasil’evna, he imagines Reikhman will use a “modern” method of punishment, contempt:

Of course, in our times husbands don’t kill wives for infidelity; neither do they lock them up in dungeons, nor send them to convents or even to their villages, nor do they resort to the somewhat cruel means of our ancestors; but will that improve the lot of Natal’ia Vasil’evna, who lost all rights to her husband’s love and is condemned, perhaps, to spend her whole life burdened with his contempt, his just distrust, and to seeing in his every word, even if not spoken about her, a secret rebuke or a hint at the past?  Terrible thought!  Torture of a lifetime!
[Конечно, в наши времена мужья не убивают за неверность жен, не заключают их в подземелья, не посылают в монастыри, ни даже в деревни, не прибегают к несколько жестоким средствам наших праотцов; но лучше ли оттого будет участь Натальи Васильевны, которая потеряла все права на любовь мужа и осуждена, может быть, провести, всю жизнь обремененною презрением его, справедливою недоверчивостью, и в каждом слове его, даже не к ней относящемся, видеть тайный упрек или намек на прошедшее?  Ужасная мысль!  Долгая, мучительная пытка целой жизни!] (60-61)

Beside sharing the baron’s opinions, Pronovskii also mixes his voice with Levin’s at times, confusing the reader as to whose opinions he or she is reading.  For instance, in the sixth chapter Levin ponders on how men’s lives are twofold, domestic and social, while women’s lives are only domestic.  In social life, women can participate only as charitable angels.  In domestic life, their survival depends on the love of their husbands, who have all the power.  This social arrangement is immutable, and women have to resign themselves to it.  Pronovskii repeats these pontifications of Levin without a shade of irony, even though Levin as a bachelor, a young dandy, and a mauvais sujet appears to be an ironic choice of a character that could speak with authority on this topic.  Moreover, so authoritative and impressive is the effect of this speech, that some critics see it as Zhukova’s own opinions.  For example, Joe Andrew, Catriona Kelly, and Hugh Aplin consider Zhukova to be a conservative who advocated submission to the patriarchal order.[6]

Moreover, not only does Pronovskii support his male characters at the expense of the female ones, he also decenters his heroine.  Right after describing his story as an episode from a woman’s life, he names it “Baron Reikhman.”  In addition, as Andrew points out, “[O]nce her [Natal’ia Vasil’evna’s] plot situation and its etiology are established, she virtually disappears until the closing few pages” (Narrative and Desire 143).  The only active participants in the story are men, who compete for absent women (Levin-Gotovitskii-Ezerskaia and the baron-Levin-Natal’ia Vasil’evna triangles).  In this plot the baroness is reduced to a token (the bracelet), which is passed from one man to another.  However, in my opinion, in “Baron Reikhman” men compete not for women, but for men.  When Pronovskii describes how at Ezerskaia’s house Gotovitskii spreads rumors about Natal’ia Vasil’evna and Levin being lovers, he specifies that these rumors create dark thunderclouds on the baroness’s horizon, but do not reach “their goal…the baron [своей цели…генерала]” (61).  This scene appears illogical, if Gotovitskii is really interested in Lidiia Ezerskaia because if he brings about a rupture between Levin and Natal’ia Vasil’evna through the baron’s jealousy, then Levin would be free to pursue Lidiia.  Moreover, this scene appears to be unnecessary for the development of the plot, since the rumors do not reach their goal, the baron.  It is only when Gotovitskii steals Natal’ia Vasil’evna’s bracelet from Levin’s bedroom, while Levin is still in bed (the most sexually charged scene in the whole tale),[7] and throws it on the gambling table with Reikhman in the vicinity, that the breach between the baron and the lieutenant occurs.  Later Reikhman forgives Levin, while both literally and figuratively turning his back on Gotovitskii.  Significantly, there is not a word more in the story about Gotovitskii trying to obtain Lidiia’s hand in marriage.  At the end she marries Levin, who significantly quits the army service to become united with her.

In contrast to “The Last Evening,” which is addressed to women through its epigraph “Ladies, listen to the sad story [Dames! oyez l’histoire lamentable]” (251), Pronovskii strengthens the homosocial atmosphere of his tale by making his addressee a man.  Only a man could agree with the narrator that Levin’s cynical and exploitative attitude towards women is not reprehensible or that an erring wife, who was only emotionally unfaithful to her old and insensitive husband, does not deserve at least the right to live with her child.  Since “Baron Reikhman” is told to an audience of exactly three men and three women (Pronovskii being the fourth man present at Shemilova’s salon), Zhukova shows that Pronovskii consciously chooses to bond with the male listeners at the expense of the female part of the audience.  This, in fact, he signaled at the opening of his tale by calling a woman’s life a trifle and giving the story her husband’s name.  

Thus, in “Baron Reikhman” Pronovskii valorizes men and male honor and denigrates women.  The conclusion he brings his reader to is that if Natal’ia Vasil’evna were not a silly woman, desiring romantic love, she would have trained herself to love her old husband and lived happily ever after.  However, since she did follow her desires, she deserved her punishment, which is essentially death, since Pronovskii describes her figuratively dead at the end of his story.  As I pointed out, this is the same conclusion the doctor offers in “The Last Evening,” and again it is worth noting that the choice placed before the baroness between deadening her desires and following them is a superficial one.  In reality no matter what option she prefers, a full life is not attainable for her.  Any man she would fall in love with might turn out to be a mauvais sujet like Levin, whose honor extends only to other men, but not women.  Moreover, even if Levin, for example, proved to be faithful in his relationship with Natal’ia Vasil’evna, she would still be dead to society as a fallen woman.  Staying single or marrying a man of her own choice are not options for Natal’ia Vasil’evna, whose father decides her destiny.  Although, Peter the Great forbade forced marriages in 1714, many young people were ignorant of this legal provision, while numerous parents disregarded it,[8] which can be seen even from the examples within Zhukova’s Evenings.

As we can see, “Baron Reikhman” and the story of Elena’s and Pronovskii’s relationship are similar.  They both involve an old father figure, a young woman, and a young suitor.  Both women seek passionate love, unable to train themselves to love their old fiancé and husband.  Both stories end disastrously for the women: both the baroness and Elena are destroyed, while their children are taken away to receive military training.  However, if Pronovskii is powerless to stop Elena from eloping, then Natal’ia Vasil’evna cannot escape, because Reikhman has the power to make Levin join his side.  In addition, at the end Elena is dead and thus beyond Pronovskii’s power, while Natal’ia Vasil’evna is alive and suffering.  Thus, rather than being a dispassionate objective narrator in his “Baron Reikhman” Pronovskii takes fictional revenge on Elena and her son Vel’skii, because if Liuba listened to him and denounced her romantic dream of passionate love, she would have given Vel’skii up.

On several important issues Elena’s story subverts “Baron Reikhman.”  For instance, Pronovskii jokingly describes how husbands suffer from their wives, who are forever unsatisfied with their husbands’ financial situation or social status and feign nervous fits to receive attention.  Elena shows that it is not husbands who suffer in marriages, but wives, and not from nervous fits.  Pronovskii describes the abuse of women lightheartedly, often ironically, and omits gruesome details, while Elena portrays such mistreatment without irony and much more realistically.  Pronovskii stays firmly within the parameters of a social tale, circumventing traumatic events.  He dissipates Levin’s brutality in abandoning the baroness through sarcasm and places ellipsis instead of a description how exactly Reikhman evicted his wife.  In contrast, Elena unflinchingly deals with topics rarely found in literature of that time.  Poverty, unwanted pregnancy, imprisonment, and the like take place in her story.  This gives “The Last Evening” more social resonance and immediacy.  In the end it is Elena’s voice that emerges as more believable and powerful.

Thus, if read alone, “Baron Reikhman” presents its narrator as fair and dispassionate and misogyny as natural and justified.  However, combined with Elena’s story, it exposes Pronovskii’s misogynistic attitudes and his insidious abuse of narratorial authority.  Zhukova’s subversive maneuver goes beyond one local example and implies that behind omniscient, disembodied, but nonetheless male-by-default narrators stand people who are inevitably biased by virtue of being human.  Moreover, by juxtaposing a woman’s voice next to a man’s and allowing the former to be in the right, Zhukova defies the patriarchal order that is predicated on denying authority to and possession of truth by women.  By making Elena’s tale more engaging and likable, she is actively trying to sway readers into seeing male authority, narratorial and otherwise, as possibly inimical to women rather than always just and benevolent.   And finally, she extends some hope for the future by showing that a woman’s story can outlive its teller and have unwitting helpers like Ivan Karlovich to reach an audience. 

Notes

1. This confrontation is veiled in the text.  I explored it in my Ph.D. dissertation Framing Marriage: Male Narrators in Romantic Fiction by Mary Shelley, George Sand, and Mariia Zhukova (Rutgers, 2006).

2. Referring to Zhukova here and later in the article, I mean an implied narrator, because the opinions of the historical Zhukova are of course unknowable.

4. Elena asks Ivan Karlovich rhetorically, “How could I repay [Pronovskii] for such magnanimity? [Чем могла я заплатить [Проновскому] за подобное великодушие?]” (264).

5. Kelly calls Ezerskaia Eleonskaia by mistake.

6. Beside the fact that at no point in her text did Zhukova bolster Pronovskii or Levin as her mouthpiece, it was also unlikely for Zhukova to view the marital arrangement as immutable.  After a few years of marriage she left her husband, who was a gambler and a womanizer, and began writing professionally to support herself and her son.

7. This bracelet is made of hair, presumably Natal’ia Vasil’evna’s.  However, the bracelet is made on the baron’s orders, and thus, Gotovitskii steals something that belonged to the baron as much as it belonged to the baroness.

8. Gregory Freeze, “Bringing Order to the Russian Family: Marriage and Divorce in Imperial Russia, 1760-1860,” Journal of Modern History 62 (1990): 711-49. William G.Wagner, “The Trojan Mare: Women Rights and Civil Rights in Late Imperial Russia,” Civil Rights in Imperial Russia, ed. Olga Crisp and Linda Edmondson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989) 65-84.

Works Cited

Andrew, Joe. Narrative and Desire in Russian Literature, 1822-49: The Feminine and the Masculine. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993.
---. “The Benevolent Matriarch in Elena Gan and Mar’ia Zhukova.” Women and Russian Culture: Projections and Self-Perceptions. Ed. Rosalind Marsh. New York: Berghahn Books, 1998. 60-77.

Aplin, Hugh Anthony. “M. S. Zhukova and E. A. Gan: Women Writers and Female Protagonists, 1837 – 1843.” Diss. U of East Anglia, 1988.

Freeze, Gregory. “Bringing Order to the Russian Family: Marriage and Divorce in
Imperial Russia, 1760-1860.” Journal of Modern History 62 (1990): 711-49.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. The Sorrows of Young Werther. New York: Modern Library,
2004.

Heldt, Barbara. Terrible Perfection: Women and Russian Literature. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1987.

Kelly, Catriona. A History of Russian Women’s Writing 1820-1992. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994.

Patrick, Elena. Framing Marriage: Male Narrators in Romantic Fiction by Mary Shelley, George Sand, and Mariia Zhukova. Diss. Rutgers, 2006.

Wagner, William G. “The Trojan Mare: Women’s Rights and Civil Rights in Late Imperial Russia.” Civil Rights in Imperial Russia. Ed. Olga Crisp and Linda Edmondson. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989. 65-84.

Zhukova, Mariia Semёnovna. Vechera na Karpovke. Ed. R. V. Iezuitova. Moskva: Sovetskaia
Rossiia, 1986.

© E. Patrick

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