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Nekrasov's poem "Who Lives Well in Rus'" contains, in its key moment, the search by seven male peasants for people whose life would be happy. One day they meet a certain peasant woman - Matryona Timofeevna Korchagina, who tells them her sad life story.
Age and appearance
At the time of the story, Matryona is 38 years old, but the woman herself considers herself an old woman. Matryona is a rather beautiful woman: she is portly and stocky, her face has already noticeably faded, but still retains traces of attractiveness and beauty. She had large, clear and stern eyes. They were framed by beautiful thick eyelashes.
Her hair was already noticeably touched by gray hair, but you could still recognize her hair color. Her skin was dark and rough. Matryona's clothes are similar to the clothes of all peasants - they are simple and neat. Traditionally, her wardrobe consists of a white shirt and a short sundress.
Personality characteristic
Matryona has considerable strength, "Khokhloma cow" - this is the author's description of her. She is a hardworking woman. Their family has a large household, which is mainly taken care of by Matryona. She is not deprived of both intelligence and ingenuity. A woman can clearly and clearly express her opinion on a particular issue, sensibly assess the situation and make the right decision. She is an honest woman - and she teaches her children the same.
All her life after marriage, Matrena had to endure humiliation and various difficulties in her work, but she did not lose the main qualities of character, retaining her desire for freedom, but at the same time she brought up impudence and harshness.
The life of a woman was very difficult. Matrena spent a lot of energy and health working for her husband's family. She steadfastly endured all the sorrows and unfair treatment of herself and her children and did not grumble, over time her situation improved, but it was no longer possible to restore her lost health.
Not only physical health suffered from life's litigation - during this time, Korchagina cried a lot of tears, as she herself says, "you can score three lakes." Ironically, she calls them the unthinkable wealth of all life.
On our website you can read in the poem by Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov “Who should live well in Rus'”
Religion and true faith in God allowed Matryona not to go crazy - according to the woman herself, she finds solace in prayer, the more she indulges in this occupation, the easier it becomes for her.
One day, the governor's wife helped Matryona solve her difficulties in life, so people, remembering this case, Matryona in the common people began to call her "governor's wife" too.
Matrona's life before marriage
Matryona was lucky with her parents - they were good and decent people. Her father did not drink and was an exemplary family man, her mother always took care of the comfort and well-being of all family members. Her parents protected her from the hardships of fate and tried to make her daughter's life as simple and better as possible. Matryona herself says that she "lived like Christ in her bosom."
Marriage and first sorrows
However, the time has come and, like all adult girls, she had to leave her father's house. One day, a visiting man, a stove-maker by profession, approached her. He seemed to Matryona a sweet and good person, and she agreed to become his wife. According to tradition, after marriage, the girl moved to live in the house of her husband's parents. This happened in the situation of Matryona, but here the first disappointments and sorrows awaited the young girl - her relatives accepted her very negatively and hostilely. Matryona was very homesick for her parents and for her former life, but she had no way back.
The husband's family turned out to be large, but not friendly - since they did not know how to treat each other kindly, Matryona was no exception for them: she was never praised for a job well done, but always found fault and scolded. The girl had no choice but to endure humiliation and rude attitude towards herself.
Matrena was the first worker in the family - she had to get up earlier than everyone else and go to bed later than everyone else. However, no one felt gratitude towards her and did not appreciate her work.
Relationship with husband
It is not known how husband Philip perceived the current unfavorable situation within his new Matrenin family - it is likely that due to the fact that he grew up in such conditions, this state of affairs was normal for him.
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In general, Matrena considers him a good husband, but at the same time she harbors a grudge against him - once he hit her. It is likely that such a characterization of their relationship by Matryona was very subjective and she considers the significance of her husband from the position - it can be even worse, so my husband is very good against the background of such absolutely bad husbands.
Children of Matryona
The appearance of children with a new family was not long in coming - on the Kazan Matryona she gives birth to her first child - her son Demushka. One day, the boy remains under the supervision of his grandfather, who treated the task entrusted to him in bad faith - as a result, the boy was bitten by pigs. This brought a lot of grief to Matrena's life, because the boy for her became a ray of light in her unsightly life. However, the woman did not remain childless - she still had 5 sons. The names of the elders are mentioned in the poem - Fedot and Liodor. The husband's family was also not happy and not friendly towards Matryona's children - they often beat the kids and scolded them.
New changes
The hardships of Matrena's life did not end there - three years after marriage, her parents died - the woman was very painfully experiencing this loss. Soon her life began to improve. The mother-in-law died and she became a full-fledged mistress of the house. Unfortunately, Matryona failed to find happiness - by that time her children had become old enough to be taken into the army, so new sorrows appeared in her life.
Composition on the topic: Matrena Timofeevna. Composition: Who lives well in Rus'
Matrena Timofeevna Korchagina is a peasant woman. The third part of the poem is dedicated to this heroine.
M.T. - “A portly woman, Broad and dense, 38 years old. Beautiful; hair with gray hair, Big strict eyes, Eyelashes of the richest, Harsh and swarthy.
Among the people about M.T. the glory of the lucky woman is coming. She tells the strangers who come to her about her life. Her story is told in the form of folk laments and songs. This emphasizes the typical fate of M.T. for all Russian peasant women: "It's not a matter of looking for a happy woman among women."
In the parental home of M.T. life was good: she had a friendly non-drinking family. But, having married Philip Korchagin, she ended up "from a girl's will to hell." The youngest in her husband's family, she worked for everyone like a slave. The husband loved M.T., but often went to work and could not protect his wife. The heroine had one intercessor - grandfather Savely, her husband's grandfather. M.T. she has seen a lot of grief in her lifetime: she endured the harassment of the manager, survived the death of the first-born Demushka, who, due to Savely's oversight, was bitten by pigs. M.T. failed to retrieve the son's body and he was sent for an autopsy. Later, another son of the heroine, 8-year-old Fedot, was threatened with a terrible punishment for feeding someone else's sheep to a hungry she-wolf. Mother, without hesitation, lay down under the rod instead of her son. But in a lean year, M.T., pregnant and with children, is likened to a hungry she-wolf herself. In addition, the last breadwinner is taken away from her family - her husband is shaved into soldiers out of turn. In desperation, M.T. runs into the city and throws himself at the feet of the governor's wife. She helps the heroine and even becomes the godmother of the born son M.T. - Liodora. But the evil fate continued to haunt the heroine: one of the sons was taken to the soldiers, "they burned twice ... God anthrax ... visited three times." In the "Woman's Parable" M.T. sums up his sad story: “The keys to female happiness, From our free will, Abandoned, lost From God himself!”
The image of Matryona Timofeevna (based on the poem by N. A. Nekrasov “Who should live well in Rus'”)
The image of a simple Russian peasant woman Matrena Timofeevna is surprisingly bright and realistic. In this image, Nekrasov combined all the features and qualities characteristic of Russian peasant women. And the fate of Matrena Timofeevna is in many ways similar to the fate of other women.
Matrena Timofeevna was born into a large peasant family. The very first years of life were truly happy. All her life, Matrena Timofeevna remembers this carefree time, when she was surrounded by the love and care of her parents. But peasant children grow up very quickly. Therefore, as soon as the girl grew up, she began to help her parents in everything. Gradually, the games were forgotten, there was less and less time left for them, hard peasant work took the first place. But youth still takes its toll, and even after a hard day's work, the girl found time to relax.
Matrena Timofeevna recalls her youth. She was pretty, hardworking, active. It's no wonder the boys were looking at her. And then the betrothed appeared, for whom the parents give Matrena Timofeevna in marriage. Marriage means that now the free and free life of the girl is over. Now she will live in a strange family, where she will not be treated in the best way. When a mother gives her daughter in marriage, she grieves for her, worries about her fate:
The mother was crying
“... Like a fish in a blue sea
You yell! like a nightingale
Flutter from the nest!
Someone else's side
Not sprinkled with sugar
Not watered with honey!
It's cold there, it's hungry there
There is a well-groomed daughter
Violent winds will blow,
Shaggy dogs bark,
And people will laugh!”
In these lines, the sadness of a mother is clearly read, who perfectly understands all the hardships of life that will fall to the lot of her married daughter. In a strange family, no one will show interest in her, and the husband himself will never stand up for his wife.
Matrena Timofeevna shares her sad thoughts. She did not want to change her free life in her parents' house for life in a strange, unfamiliar family.
From the very first days in her husband's house, Matryona Timofeevna realized how hard it would be for her now:
The family was big
Grumpy... I got it
From girlish holi to hell!
Relations with the father-in-law, mother-in-law and sister-in-law were very difficult, in the new family Matryona had to work hard, and at the same time no one said a kind word to her. However, even in such a difficult life that the peasant woman had, there were simple and simple joys:
Filippushka came in winter,
Bring a silk handkerchief
Yes, I took a ride on a sled
On Catherine's day
And there was no grief!
Sang like I sang
In the parental home.
We were one-year-olds
Don't touch us - we have fun
We are always fine.
The relationship between Matryona Timofeevna and her husband did not always develop smoothly. A husband has the right to beat his wife if something does not suit him in her behavior. And no one will stand up for the poor thing, on the contrary, all relatives in the husband's family will only be happy to look at her suffering.
Such was the life of Matrena Timofeevna after marriage. The days dragged on monotonous, gray, surprisingly similar to each other: hard work, quarrels and reproaches from relatives. But a peasant woman has truly angelic patience, therefore, without complaining, she endures all the hardships that have fallen to her lot. The birth of a child is the event that turns her whole life upside down. Now the woman is not so embittered at the whole wide world, love for the baby warms and pleases her.
Philip on the Annunciation
He left, but on Kazanskaya
I gave birth to a son.
How written was Demushka
Beauty taken from the sun
The snow is white
Poppies have scarlet lips
The eyebrow is black in sable,
The Siberian sable
The falcon has eyes!
All the anger from my soul is my handsome
Driven away with an angelic smile,
Like the spring sun
Drives snow from fields...
I didn't worry
Whatever they say, I work
No matter how they scold - I am silent.
The joy of a peasant woman from the birth of her son did not last long. Work in the field requires a lot of effort and time, and then there is a baby in her arms. At first, Matrena Timofeevna took the child with her into the field. But then the mother-in-law began to reproach her, because it is impossible to work with a child with full dedication. And poor Matryona had to leave the baby with grandfather Savely. Once the old man overlooked - and the child died.
The death of a child is a terrible tragedy. But peasants have to put up with the fact that very often their children die. However, this is Matryona's first child, so his death turned out to be too difficult a test for her. And then there is an additional misfortune - the police come to the village, the doctor and the camp officer accuse Matryona of having killed the child in collusion with the former convict grandfather Saveliy. Matryona Timofeevna begs not to do an autopsy in order to bury the child without desecration of the body But no one listens to the peasant woman. She almost goes crazy from everything that happened.
All the hardships of a difficult peasant life, the death of a child still cannot break Matryona Timofeevna. Time passes, she has children every year. And she continues to live, raise her children, do hard work. Love for children is the most important thing that a peasant woman has, so Matrena Timofeevna is ready for anything to protect her beloved children. This is evidenced by an episode when they wanted to punish her son Fedot for an offense.
Matryona throws herself at the feet of a passing landowner to help save the boy from punishment. And the landowner said:
“Guardian of a minor
By youth, by stupidity
Forgive ... but a daring woman
Approximately punish!”
Why did Matrena Timofeevna suffer punishment? For his boundless love for his children, for his willingness to sacrifice himself for the sake of others. Readiness for self-sacrifice is also manifested in the way Matryona rushes to seek salvation for her husband from recruitment. She manages to get to the place and ask for help from the governor, who really helps Philip free himself from recruitment.
Matrena Timofeevna is still young, but she has already had to endure a lot, a lot. She had to endure the death of a child, a time of hunger, reproaches and beatings. She herself says what the holy wanderer told her:
“The keys to female happiness,
From our free will
abandoned, lost
God himself!”
Indeed, a peasant woman can by no means be called happy. All the difficulties and difficult trials that fall on her lot can break and lead a person to death, not only spiritual, but also physical. Very often this is exactly what happens. The life of a simple peasant woman is rarely long, very often women die in the prime of life. It is not easy to read the lines that tell about the life of Matryona Timofeevna. Nevertheless, one cannot help but admire the spiritual strength of this woman, who endured so many trials and was not broken.
The image of Matrena Timofeevna is surprisingly harmonious. The woman appears at the same time strong, hardy, patient and gentle, loving, caring. She has to cope on her own with the difficulties and troubles that fall to the lot of her family, Matryona Timofeevna does not see help from anyone.
But, despite all the tragic that a woman has to endure, Matrena Timofeevna causes genuine admiration. After all, she finds the strength in herself to live, work, continues to enjoy those modest joys that from time to time fall to her lot. And let her honestly admit that she cannot be called happy in any way, she does not fall into the sin of despondency for a minute, she continues to live.
The life of Matrena Timofeevna is a constant struggle for survival, and she manages to emerge victorious from this struggle.
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The chapter "Last Child" switched the main attention of the truth-seekers to the people's environment. The search for peasant happiness (Izbytkovo village!) Naturally led the peasants to the "lucky" - "governor", the peasant woman Matryona Korchagina. What is the ideological and artistic meaning of the chapter "Peasant Woman"?
In the post-reform era, the peasant woman remained just as oppressed and deprived of rights as before 1861, and it was obviously an absurd undertaking to look for a happy woman among the peasant women. This is clear to Nekrasov. In the outline of the chapter, the “lucky” heroine says to the wanderers:
I think so,
What if between women
Are you looking for a happy
So you are just stupid.
But the author of “To whom it is good to live in Rus'”, artistically reproducing Russian reality, is forced to reckon with folk concepts and ideas, no matter how miserable and false they may be. He only reserves the copyright to dispel illusions, to form more correct views on the world, to bring up higher demands on life than those that gave rise to the legend of the happiness of the “governor”. However, the rumor flies from mouth to mouth, and the wanderers go to the village of Klin. The author gets the opportunity to oppose life to the legend.
The Peasant Woman begins with a prologue, which plays the role of an ideological overture to the chapter, prepares the reader for the perception of the image of the peasant woman of the village of Klin, the lucky Matrena Timofeevna Korchagina. The author draws a “thoughtfully and affectionately” noisy grain field, which was moistened “Not so much by warm dew, / Like sweat from a peasant’s face.” As the wanderers move, rye is replaced by flax, fields of peas and vegetables. The kids frolic (“children rush / Some with turnips, some with carrots”), and “women pull beets”. The colorful summer landscape is closely linked by Nekrasov with the theme of inspired peasant labor.
But then the wanderers approached the "unenviable" village of Klin. The joyful, colorful landscape is replaced by another, gloomy and dull:
Whatever the hut - with a backup,
Like a beggar with a crutch.
Comparison of "wretched houses" with skeletons and orphaned jackdaw nests on bare autumn trees further enhances the tragedy of the impression. The charms of rural nature and the beauty of creative peasant labor in the prologue of the chapter are contrasted with the picture of peasant poverty. By landscape contrast, the author makes the reader internally alert and distrustful of the message that one of the workers of this impoverished village is the true lucky woman.
From the village of Klin, the author leads the reader to an abandoned landowner's estate. The picture of its desolation is complemented by the images of numerous courtyards: hungry, weak, relaxed, like frightened Prussians (cockroaches) in the upper room, they crawled around the estate. This “whining household” is opposed by the people who, after a hard day (“the people in the fields are working”), return to the village with a song. Surrounded by this healthy work collective, outwardly almost not standing out from it (“Good way! And which Matryona Timofeevna?”), Making up part of it, appears in Matryona Korchagin's poem.
The portrait characterization of the heroine is very meaningful and poetically rich. The first idea of the appearance of Matryona is given by the replica of the peasants of the village of Nagotina:
Holmogory cow,
Not a woman! kinder
And there is no smoother woman.
The comparison - “a Kholmogory cow is not a woman” - speaks of the health, strength, stateliness of the heroine. It is the key to further characterization, it fully corresponds to the impression that Matryona Timofeevna makes on the truth-seeking peasants.
Her portrait is extremely concise, but it gives an idea of the strength of character, self-esteem (“a portly woman”), and moral purity and exactingness (“big, stern eyes”), and the hard life of the heroine (“hair with gray hair” in 38 years old), and that the storms of life did not break, but only hardened her (“severe and swarthy”). The harsh, natural beauty of a peasant woman is further emphasized by the poverty of clothing: a “short sundress”, and a white shirt that sets off the heroine’s skin color, swarthy from a tan. In Matryona's story, her whole life passes before the reader, and the author reveals the movement of this life, the dynamics of the depicted character through a change in the portrait characteristics of the heroine.
“Thoughtful”, “twisted”, Matryona recalls the years of her girlhood, youth; she, as it were, sees herself in the past from the outside and cannot but admire her former girlish beauty. Gradually, in her story (“Before Marriage”), a generalized portrait of a rural beauty, so well known in folk poetry, appears before the audience. Matrena's maiden name is "clear eyes", "white face", which is not afraid of the dirt of field work. “You’ll work in the field for a day,” says Matryona, and then, after washing in a “hot baenka,”
Again white, fresh,
For spinning with girlfriends
Eat until midnight!
In her native family, the girl blooms, “like a poppy flower”, she is a “good worker” and “sing-dance hunter”. But now comes the fatal hour of farewell to the girl's will... From the mere thought of the future, of the bitter life in "another God-given family" the bride's "white face fades". However, her blooming beauty, "handsomeness" is enough for several years of family life. No wonder the manager Abram Gordeich Sitnikov "boosts" Matryona:
You are a written kralechka
You are a hot berry!
But the years go by, bringing more and more troubles. For a long time, a severe swarthyness replaced a scarlet blush on Matrena's face, petrified with grief; "clear eyes" look at people strictly and severely; hunger and overwork carried away the "pregnancy and prettiness" accumulated in the years of girlhood. Emaciated, fierce by the struggle for life, she no longer resembles a "poppy color", but a hungry she-wolf:
She-wolf that Fedotova
I remembered - hungry,
Similar to kids
I was on it!
So socially, by the conditions of life and work (“Horse's attempts / We carried ...”), as well as psychologically (the death of the first-born, loneliness, the hostile attitude of the family) Nekrasov motivates changes in the appearance of the heroine, at the same time asserting a deep internal connection between images of a red-cheeked laughter woman from the chapter “Before marriage” and a graying, portly woman met by wanderers. Cheerfulness, spiritual clarity, inexhaustible energy, inherent in Matryona from her youth, help her survive in life, maintain the majesty of her posture and beauty.
In the process of working on the image of Matrena, Nekrasov did not immediately determine the age of the heroine. From variant to variant there was a process of “rejuvenation” by its author. To "rejuvenate" Matrena Timofeevna makes the author strive for life and artistic truthfulness. A woman in the village grew old early. An indication of the age of 60 and even 50 conflicted with the portrait of the heroine, the general definition of “beautiful” and such details as “big, strict eyes”, “richest eyelashes”. The latter option eliminated the discrepancy between the heroine's living conditions and her appearance. Matryona is 38 years old, her hair has already been touched by gray hair - evidence of a difficult life, but her beauty has not faded yet. The "rejuvenation" of the heroine was also dictated by the requirement of psychological certainty. 20 years have passed since the marriage and death of Matryona's first-born (if she is 38, not 60!) and the events of the chapters "She-Wolf", "Governor" and "Hard Year" are still quite fresh in her memory. That is why Matryona's speech sounds so emotional, so excited.
Matrena Timofeevna is not only beautiful, dignified, healthy. A smart, courageous woman with a rich, generous, poetic soul, she was created for happiness. And she was very lucky in some ways: a “good, non-drinking” native family (not everyone is like that!), marriage for love (how often did this happen?), prosperity (how not to envy?), patronage of the governor (what happiness! ). Is it any wonder that the legend of the "governor" went for a walk in the villages, that fellow villagers "denigrated" her, as Matryona herself says with bitter irony, a lucky woman.
And on the example of the fate of the "lucky" Nekrasov reveals the whole terrible drama of peasant life. The whole story of Matryona is a refutation of the legend about her happiness. From chapter to chapter the drama grows, leaving less room for naive illusions.
In the plot of the main stories of the chapter "Peasant Woman" ("Before Marriage", "Songs", "Demushka", "She-Wolf", "Hard Year", "Woman's Parable"), Nekrasov selected and concentrated the most ordinary, everyday and at the same time the most events characteristic of the life of a Russian peasant woman: work from an early age, simple girlish entertainment, matchmaking, marriage, humiliated position and difficult life in a strange family, family quarrels, beatings, the birth and death of children, caring for them, overwork, hunger in lean years , the bitter lot of a mother-soldier with many children. These events determine the circle of interests, the structure of thoughts and feelings of the peasant woman. They are remembered and presented by the narrator in their temporal sequence, which creates a feeling of simplicity and ingenuity, so inherent in the heroine herself. But for all the outward everydayness of events, the plot of the “Peasant Woman” is full of deep inner drama and social sharpness, which are due to the originality of the heroine herself, her ability to deeply feel, emotionally experience events, her moral purity and exactingness, her disobedience and courage.
Matryona not only acquaints the wanderers (and the reader!) with the history of her life, she “opens her whole soul” to them. The tale form, the narration in the first person, gives it a special liveliness, spontaneity, life-like persuasiveness, opens up great opportunities for revealing the innermost depths of the inner life of a peasant woman, hidden from the eyes of an outside observer.
Matrena Timofeevna tells about her hardships simply, with restraint, without exaggerating her colors. Out of inner delicacy, she even keeps silent about her husband’s beatings, and only after the question of the wanderers: “It’s like you didn’t beat it?”, Embarrassed, she admits that there was such a thing. She is silent about her experiences after the death of her parents:
Heard dark nights
Heard violent winds
orphan sadness,
And you don't need to say...
Matrena says almost nothing about those moments when she was subjected to the shameful punishment of whips... But this restraint, in which the inner strength of the Russian peasant Korchagina is felt, only enhances the drama of her story. Excitedly, as if re-experiencing everything, Matryona Timofeevna tells about Philip's matchmaking, her thoughts and anxieties, the birth and death of her first child. Child mortality in the village was colossal, and with the oppressive poverty of the family, the death of a child was sometimes perceived with tears of relief: “God cleaned up”, “one mouth less!” Not so with Matryona. For 20 years, the pain of her mother's heart has not subsided. Even now she has not forgotten the charms of her firstborn:
How written was Demushka!
Beauty is taken from the sun...etc.
In the soul of Matrena Timofeevna, even after 20 years, anger boils against the “unrighteous judges” who sensed prey. That is why there is so much expression and tragic pathos in her curse to the "villainous executioners" ...
Matryona is first of all a woman, a mother who devoted herself entirely to caring for children. But, subjectively caused by maternal feelings, aimed at protecting children, her protest acquires a social coloring, family adversity pushes her onto the path of social protest. For her child and with God, Matryona will enter into an argument. She, a deeply religious woman, alone in the whole village did not obey the hypocrite wanderer, who forbade breastfeeding children on fast days:
If you endure, then mothers
I am a sinner before God
Not my child
Moods of anger, protest, sounded in the curse of Matryona to the “villain-executioners”, do not stall in the future, but manifest themselves in forms other than tears and angry cries: she pushed the headman away, tore Fedotushka, trembling like a leaf, out of his hands, silently lay down under the rod ("She-wolf"). But year after year more and more accumulates in the soul of a peasant woman, barely restrained pain and anger.
For me insults are mortal
Gone unpaid... —
Matrena admits, in whose mind, apparently, not without the influence of grandfather Saveliy (she runs into his gorenkoka in difficult moments of her life!), The thought of retribution, retribution is born. She cannot follow the advice of the proverb: "Keep your head down, humble heart."
I bow my head
I carry an angry heart! —
she paraphrases the proverb in relation to herself, and in these words is the result of the ideological development of the heroine. In the image of Matrena, Nekrasov generalized, typified the awakening of the people's consciousness, the mood of emerging social anger and protest, observed by him in the 60-70s.
The author constructs the plot of the chapter “Peasant Woman” in such a way that more and more difficulties arise on the life path of the heroine: family oppression, the death of a son, the death of parents, the “terrible year” of lack of bread, the threat of Philip’s recruitment, twice a fire, three times anthrax ... On the example of one fate, Nekrasov gives a vivid idea of the deeply tragic circumstances of the life of a peasant woman and the entire working peasantry in "liberated" Russia.
The compositional structure of the chapter (gradual escalation of dramatic situations) helps the reader to understand how the character of Matryona Timofeevna develops and strengthens in the struggle with life's difficulties. But for all the typical biography of Matryona Korchagina, there is something in it that distinguishes her from a number of others. After all, Matryona was denounced as a lucky woman, the whole district knows about her! The impression of unusualness, originality, vital uniqueness of fate and, most importantly, the originality of her nature is achieved by the introduction of the chapter "Governor". How not a lucky woman, whose son the governor herself baptized! There is something to marvel at the villagers ... But even more surprising (already for the reader!) Is Matryona herself, who, not wanting to bow to fate, is sick, pregnant, runs at night to an unknown city, “reaches” the governor’s wife and saves her husband from recruitment . The plot situation of the chapter “Governor” reveals the strong-willed character, determination of the heroine, as well as her sensitive heart for goodness: the sympathetic attitude of the governor evokes in her a feeling of deep gratitude, in excess of which Matryona praises the kind lady Elena Alexandrovna.
However, Nekrasov is far from the idea that "the secret of people's contentment" lies in the lord's philanthropy. Even Matryona understands that philanthropy is powerless before the inhuman laws of the existing social order (“peasant / Orders are endless ...”) and ironically over her nickname “lucky”. While working on the chapter "The Governor", the author, obviously, sought to make the impact of the meeting with the governor's wife on the further fate of the heroine less significant. In the draft versions of the chapter, it was indicated that Matryona, thanks to the intercession of the governor's wife, happened to help out her fellow villagers, that she received gifts from her benefactor. In the final text, Nekrasov omitted these points.
Initially, the chapter about Matryona Korchagina was called "The Governor". Apparently, not wanting to attach too much importance to the episode with the governor's wife, Nekrasov gives the chapter a different, broadly generalizing name - "Peasant Woman", and the story about the meeting of Matryona with the governor's wife (it is needed to emphasize the unusual fate of the heroine) pushes back, makes the penultimate plot episode of the chapter. As the final chord of the confession of the peasant woman Korchagina, there is a bitter "woman's parable" about the lost "keys to women's happiness", a parable expressing the people's view of women's fate:
Keys to female happiness
From our free will
abandoned, lost
God himself!
To remember this full of hopelessness legend, told by a passing wanderer, Matryona is forced by the bitter experience of her own life.
And you - for happiness stuck your head!
It's a shame, well done! —
she throws with a reproach to the strangers.
The legend of the happiness of the peasant woman Korchagina has been dispelled. However, with the entire content of the chapter "Peasant Woman" Nekrasov tells the contemporary reader how and where to look for the lost keys. Not “keys to female happiness”... There are no such special, “female” keys for Nekrasov; from social oppression and lawlessness.
The Russian peasant woman became the heroine of many poems and poems by Nekrasov. In her image, Nekrasov showed a person of high moral qualities, he sings of her stamina in life's trials, pride, dignity, caring for her family and children. The female image was most fully revealed by Nekrasov in the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” - this is the image of Matryona Timofeevna Korchagina.
The part “Peasant Woman” in the poem is the largest in volume, and it is written in the first person: Matrena Timofeevna herself tells about her fate. Matryona Timofeevna, according to her, was lucky as a girl:
I was lucky in the girls:
We had a good
Non-drinking family.
The family surrounded their beloved daughter with care and affection. In the seventh year, the peasant's daughter began to be taught to work: "she herself ... ran to the herd for a dumpling, brought breakfast to her father, grazed the ducklings." And this work was her joy. Matrena Timofeevna, having worked out in the field, will wash herself in the bathhouse and is ready to sing and dance:
And a good worker
And sing and dance the huntress
I was young.
But how few bright moments in her life! One of them is an engagement to his beloved Filippushka. Matryona did not sleep all night, thinking about the upcoming marriage: she was afraid of “bondage”. And yet love turned out to be stronger than fears of falling into slavery.
Then it was happiness
And hardly ever again!
And then, after marriage, she went “from a girl’s holi to hell.” Exhausting work, “mortal insults”, misfortunes with children, separation from her husband, who was illegally recruited, and many other hardships - such is the bitter life path of Matryona Timofeevna. With pain she says about what is in her:
No broken bone
There is no stretched vein.
Her story reflected all the everyday hardships of a Russian peasant woman: the despotism of family relations, separation from her husband, eternal humiliation, the suffering of a mother who lost her son, material need: fires, loss of livestock, crop failure. Here is how Nekrasov describes the grief of a mother who lost her child:
I rolled around with a ball
I twisted like a worm
Called, woke Demushka -
Yes, it was too late to call! ..
The mind is ready to be clouded by a terrible misfortune. But a huge spiritual strength helps Matryona Timofeevna to survive. She sends angry curses to her enemies, the camp and the doctor, who torment the “white body” of her son: “Villains! Executioners!” Matrena Timofeevna wants to find “their justice”, but Savely dissuades her: “God is high, the tsar is far ... We cannot find the truth.” “Yes, why, grandfather?” - asks the unfortunate. “You are a serf woman!” - and this sounds like a final verdict.
And yet, when misfortune happens to her second son, she becomes “impudent”: she decisively knocks down the elder Silantius, saving Fedotushka from punishment, taking his rods on herself.
Matryona Timofeevna is ready to endure any trials, inhuman torments in order to defend her children, her husband from everyday troubles. What tremendous willpower a woman must have to go alone on a frosty winter night dozens of miles away to a provincial town in search of the truth. Boundless is her love for her husband, which has withstood such a severe test. The governor, amazed by her selfless act, showed “great mercy”:
They sent a messenger to Klin,
The whole truth was brought -
Filipushka was rescued.
Self-esteem, which manifested itself in Matrena Timofeevna in her girlhood, helps her to go majestically through life. This feeling protects her from the impudent claims of Sitnikov, who seeks to make her his mistress. Anger against the enslavers thickens in a cloud in her soul, she herself speaks about her angry heart to the peasant truth-seekers.
However, these trials cannot break her spirit, she retained her human dignity. True, in the face of the force of circumstances created by the social structure of that time, when the “daughter-in-law in the house” was “the last, last slave”, “intimidated”, “cursed”, Matryona Timofeevna also had to put up with it. But she does not take for granted such family relationships that humiliate her, require unquestioning obedience and humility:
Walked with anger in my heart
And didn't say too much
Word to nobody.
The image of Matrena Timofeevna is given in the poem in dynamics, in development. So, for example, in the story with Demushka, at first, in a fit of despair, she is ready to endure everything:
And then I surrendered
I bowed at my feet...
But then the inexorability of the “unrighteous judges”, their cruelty, gives rise to a feeling of protest in her soul:
They don't have a soul in their chest
They have no conscience in their eyes
On the neck - no cross!
The character of the heroine is tempered precisely in these difficult trials. This is a woman of great mind and heart, selfless, strong-willed, resolute.
The chapter "Peasant Woman" is almost entirely built on folk poetic images and motifs. In the characterization of Matrena Timofeevna, folklore genres are widely used: songs, lamentations, lamentations. With their help, the emotional impression is enhanced, they help to express pain and longing, to show more vividly how bitter the life of Matryona Timofeevna is.
In her speech, a number of folklore features are observed: repetitions (“creeping crawling”, “noise-running, “a tree burns and groans, chicks burn and groan”), constant epithets (“violent head”, “white light”, “fierce grief” ), synonymous expressions, words (“fertilized, dismissed”, “how she yawned, how she growled”). When constructing sentences, he often uses exclamatory forms, appeals (“Oh, mother, where are you?”, “Oh, poor young woman!”, “The daughter-in-law is the last in the house, the last slave!”). There are many sayings and proverbs in her speech: “Do not spit on red-hot iron - it will hiss”, “The working horse eats straw, and the idle dance - oats”; often uses diminutive words: "mother", "pale", "pebble".
These features make Matryona Timofeevna's speech uniquely individual, give it special liveliness, concreteness, and emotionality. At the same time, the saturation with sayings, songs, laments testifies to the creative warehouse of her soul, wealth and strength of feeling. This is the image of a peasant woman not only strong in spirit, but also gifted and talented.
Matryona Timofeevna's story about her life is also a story about the fate of any peasant woman, a long-suffering Russian woman. And the part itself is not named after Matryona Timofeevna, but simply “Peasant Woman”. This emphasizes that the fate of Matrena Timofeevna is not at all an exception to the rule, but the fate of millions of the same Russian peasant women. The parable about “the keys to the happiness of women” also speaks of this. And Matryona Timofeevna concludes her thoughts with a bitter conclusion, turning to the wanderers: “You started not a business - look for a happy woman among the women!”
Happy Peasant Matryona
Matryona Timofeevna Korchagina, nicknamed the Governor, from the village of Klin, is the main character of the third part of the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” by Nekrasov. This is how the peasants characterize her: “A Kholmogory cow, not a woman! Good-natured and smoother - there are no women. To answer the question of whether she is happy, Matryona tells her life without concealment and sums up: there were happy moments in her life (girlhood, matchmaking of the groom, saving her husband from unrighteous recruitment). She says: “I am not trampled with my feet, I am not knitted with ropes, I am not stabbed with needles.” But can a woman who has been passed over be happy? a storm of the soul, the blood of the first-born, mortal insults and a lash, but did she not taste the inexorable shame? By inexcusable shame, Matryona means the harassment of the master's manager Sitnikov, who, fortunately for Matryona, died of cholera.
The keys to women's happiness, according to the legend told by the old praying woman to Matryona, are lost from God himself.
Portrait of Matryona Timofeevna
This thirty-eight-year-old stern woman, considered already an old woman, is beautiful in a peasant way: portly, wide, dense, with large stern eyes, rich eyelashes. Her hair is streaked with grey, her skin is dark. For her portrait, Nekrasov uses epithets. Matryona's clothes testify to her industriousness: a white shirt, a short sundress (to make it more convenient to work).
Girlhood Matryona
Matryona considers her childhood happy. Father woke her up early, but mother felt sorry for her. But peasant life is work from childhood. At the age of seven, Matryona was already running into the herd, carrying breakfast to her father, herding ducks, rowing hay. She liked this kind of life: work in the field, a bathhouse, work at the spinning wheels with her friends, and sometimes songs and dances.
Matryona's betrothed was a guy from a foreign side (forty miles away) - a stove-maker Philip Korchagin. Mother tried to dissuade Matryona: "It's cold there, it's hungry there." Matryona resigned herself to fate.
The fate of Matryona in a strange family
The fate of a girl married into a strange family, Matryona sings to peasant listeners in folk songs. In the family of her husband Matryona lived like hell. She had to wait on her elder sister-in-law Marfa, look after her father-in-law so that she would not go to a tavern, and endure the abuse of her mother-in-law. The husband advised Matryona to be silent and endure. But with him were "frets". Matryona admits that her husband hit her only once, and does not see anything shameful in this: it is not worthwhile for a wife to consider her husband's beatings.
But usually the husband stood up for Matryona, as in a famine year, when the mother-in-law accused her daughter-in-law of hunger, because on Christmas she put on a clean shirt (superstition).
Matryona mother
Matryona has five sons, one has already been taken as a soldier. Twenty years ago, Matryona gave birth to her first child, the son Dyomushka, with whom a misfortune happened. Nekrasov describes the trouble with the help of psychological parallelism. Just as a mother-nightingale cries about her burnt chicks, which she didn’t save because she wasn’t near the nest, so at the behest of her mother-in-law, Matryona left Dyomushka with her husband’s grandfather, a hundred-year-old Savelich, but he didn’t save him: the pigs ate the baby.
Matryona's grief is exacerbated by "unrighteous judges" who slander her that she was in cohabitation with Savelich, that she killed the child in collusion with him, that she poisoned him.
For a peasant woman, life and death are a single continuous process in which everything must be according to the rite. For her, an autopsy is a shame, a greater misfortune than death: "I do not grumble ... that God took away the baby, but it hurts why they cursed him."
Matryona gave birth to three children in 3 years and plunged into worries: "There is no time to think or grieve", "eat - when you are left, sleep - when you are sick."
A mother's love for her children is boundless; for the sake of her children, she is ready to oppose God himself. She did not starve babies on fast days, as the pious wanderer ordered, although she was afraid of God's punishment.
For the sake of her eldest son Fedot, Matryona suffered a beating with a whip. The eight-year-old shepherd Fedot took pity on the hungry wolf she-wolf, who was howling as if she were crying. He gave her the already dead sheep, which he fearlessly plucked from its mouth at first. When the headman decided to teach Fedot about the sheep, Matryona threw herself at the feet of the landowner, who ordered him to forgive the boy and teach the woman.
Matryona is a special peasant woman
Matryona, although obedient to her parents, relatives and husband, is able to analyze and choose, to resist public opinion.
Savely, a former convict, helps Matryona realize how to live in an unrighteous society. It is necessary to carry offerings to the authorities, it is not worth looking for the truth from God and the king: "High is God, far is the king." Savely says that you need to endure, because "you are a serf woman!"
Matryona Governor
Matryona became famous among the peasants and gained the respect of her husband's relatives when she saved her husband from military service, although his older brother had already left for his family.
Fearing a difficult future for herself and her fatherless children, who would be “pinched and beaten,” Matryona ran at night to ask for mercy from the governor. Taught by experience, Matryona gave two kopecks to the guard, a ruble to the porter Makar Fedoseich, for escorting her to the governor in time.
Circumstances were favorable for Matryona. The peasant woman threw herself at the feet of the governor's wife and opened her complaint to her: they take the breadwinner and parent by deceit, not in a divine way. The governor's wife was affectionate with her, baptized the boy who was born immediately Liodorushka and saved Philip. For this good deed, Matryona orders everyone to glorify and thank the governor Elena Alexandrovna.
- Images of landlords in Nekrasov's poem "Who should live well in Rus'"
