Katusha Maslova Character Analysis

All were glad: the plants, the birds, the insects, and the children. But men, grown-up men and women, did not leave off cheating and tormenting themselves and each other. It was not this spring morning men thought sacred and worthy of consideration, not the beauty of God’s world, given for a joy to all creatures—this beauty which inclines the heart to peace, to harmony, and to love—but only their own devices for enslaving one another.

And shouts and jokes, and brawls and music and tobacco and wine, and wine and tobacco, from evening until daylight, no relief till morning, and then heavy sleep; the same every day and all the week. Then at the end of the week came the visit to the police station, as instituted by the Government, where doctors—men in the service of the Government—sometimes seriously and strictly, sometimes with playful levity, examined these women, completely destroying the modesty given as a protection not only to human beings but also to animals, and gave them written permissions to continue in the sins they and their accomplices had been committing all the week. Then followed another week of the same kind: always the same every night, summer and winter, work days and holidays.

When she left him, trembling and silent, giving no answer to his words, he again went out into the porch and stood trying to understand the meaning of what had happened.

It was getting lighter. From the river below, the creaking and tinkling and sobbing of the breaking ice came still louder, and a gurgling sound could now also be heard. The mist had begun to sink, and from above it the waning moon dimly lit up something black and weird.

‘What is the meaning of it all? Is it a great joy, or a great misfortune, that has befallen me?’ he asked himself.

‘It happens to everybody—everybody does it’, he said to himself, and went to bed and to sleep.

‘I have come to say goodbye’, he said, crumpling in his hand an envelope with a hundred-rouble note inside. ‘There, I—’

She guessed what he meant, knit her brows, and shaking her head pushed his hand away.

‘Take it; oh, you must!’ he stammered, and thrust the envelope into the bib of her apron, and ran back to his room, groaning and frowning as if he had hurt himself. And for a long time he strode up and down writhing as in pain, and even stamping and groaning aloud as he thought of this last scene.

Maslova said nothing in her defence. When the president told her she might do so, she only lifted her eyes to him, cast a look round the room like a hunted animal, and, dropping her head, began to cry, sobbing aloud.

‘What’s the matter?’ the merchant asked Nekhlyudov, hearing him utter a strange sound. This was a forcibly suppressed sob. Nekhlyudov had not yet understood the significance of his present position, and attributed the sobs he could hardly keep back and the tears that filled his eyes to the weakness of his nerves. He put on his pince-nez in order to hide the tears, then got out his handkerchief and began blowing his nose.

The difference between what he had been then and what he now was, was enormous: just as great, if not greater, than the difference between Katusha in church that night, and the prostitute who had been carousing with the merchant and whom they had condemned this morning. Then he was free and fearless, and innumerable possibilities lay ready to open before him; now he felt himself caught in the meshes of a stupid, empty, valueless, frivolous life, out of which he saw no means of extricating himself even if he wished to, which he hardly did. He remembered how proud he was at one time of his straightforwardness, how he had made a rule of always speaking the truth, and really had been truthful; and how he was now sunk deep in lies, the most dreadful of lies—lies considered as truth by all who surrounded him. And, as far as he could see, there was no way out of these lies. He had sunk in the mire, got used to it, wallowed in it.

It was the smothered sobbing of the red-haired woman. The red-haired woman was crying because she had been abused and had not got any of the vodka she wanted so badly; also because she remembered how all her life she had been abused, mocked at, offended, and beaten. Trying to comfort herself she brought back to mind her love for the factory workman, Fedka Molodenkov, her first love, but then she remembered too how that love had ended. This Molodenkov, being drunk one day, for fun smeared her with vitriol on a tender part, and while she writhed in pain he and his companions roared with laughter. Remembering this she pitied herself, and, thinking no one heard her, began to cry as children cry, sniffing with her nose and swallowing the salt tears.

Nekhlyudov would have liked to tell all the jurymen about his relations to yesterday’s prisoner. ‘By rights’, he thought, ‘I ought to have got up yesterday during the trial and disclosed my guilt.’ But when he entered the Court with the other jurymen, and witnessed the same procedure as on the day before: ‘The Court is coming’, again proclaimed, again three men with embroidered collars ascending the platform, the same settling of the jury on their high-backed chairs, the same gendarmes, the same portrait, the same priest: Nekhlyudov felt that though it ought to have been done, he would have been as unable yesterday as today to interrupt all this solemnity.

These recollections did not correspond with her present conception of the world, and were therefore quite struck out of her memory, or, rather, lay somewhere buried and untouched, closed up and plastered over so that they should not escape; as bees, in order to protect the results of their labour, sometimes plaster up a nest of wax-worms. Therefore, the present Nekhlyudov was not the man she had once loved with a pure love, but only a rich gentleman whom she could and must make use of, and with whom she could have only the same relations as with men in general.

One of the most widespread superstitions is that every man has his own special definite qualities: that he is kind, cruel, wise, stupid, energetic, apathetic, and so on. Men are not like that. We may say of a man that he is more often kind than cruel, more often wise than stupid, more often energetic than apathetic, or the reverse; but it would not be true to say of one man that he is kind and wise, of another that he is bad and stupid. And yet we always classify mankind in this way. And this is false. Men are like rivers: the water is the same in one and all; but every river is narrow here, more rapid there, here slower, there broader, now clear, now dull, now cold, now warm. It is the same with men. Every man bears in himself the germs of every human quality; but sometimes one quality manifests itself, sometimes another, and the man often becomes unlike himself, while still remaining the same man.

‘And was it a fine baby?’ Nekhlyudov asked.

‘Such a baby, that if you wanted a finer you could not find one. Your very image’, the old woman added, with a wink.

‘Why did it sicken? Was the food bad?’

‘Eh, what food? Only just a pretence of food. Naturally, when it’s not one’s own child. Only enough to get it there alive. She said she just managed to get it to Moscow and there it died. She brought a certificate—all in order. She was such a wise woman.’

And this was all Nekhlyudov could find out about his child.

When Nekhlyudov repeated in his mind the thoughts of the day before, he was surprised that he could have believed them for a moment. However new and difficult it might be to do what he had decided on, he knew that it was the only possible way of life for him now; and however easy and natural it might be to return to his former state, he knew that state to be death. Yesterday’s temptation seemed like the feeling when one awakes from deep sleep, and, without feeling sleepy, wants to lie comfortably in bed a little longer, knowing nevertheless that it is time to rise and begin the glad and important work that awaits one.

‘How can you hope to reform her after the life she has led?’ she asked.

He sat quite straight on a small chair and listened attentively, trying to understand her and to answer rightly. The state of mind called forth in him by his last interview with Maslova still filled his soul with quiet joy and goodwill to all men.

‘It is not her but myself I wish to reform,’ he replied.

Nataly sighed.

‘There are other ways than marriage to do that.’

‘But I think it is the best. Besides, it leads me into a world in which I can be of use.’

‘I cannot believe you will be happy’, said Nataly.

‘My happiness is not the point.’

Maslova could see that Mary Pavlovna knew, and was even pleased to know, that she was beautiful, yet the effect her appearance had on men was not at all pleasing to her: she was even afraid of it, and had an absolute disgust and fear of all falling in love. Her men companions knew this, and never fell in love with her—or, at any rate, concealed it if they did—and behaved to her as they would to a man; but with strangers, who often molested her, the great physical strength on which she prided herself stood her in good stead.

He felt for her something he had never experienced before. This feeling had nothing in common with his first poetic love for her, still less with the sensual love that had followed, or even with the satisfaction of a duty fulfilled (not unmixed with self-admiration) with which, after the trial, he decided to marry her. The present feeling was simply one of pity and tenderness […] It was the same feeling he now had, only with this difference: that whereas formerly it was momentary, now it became permanent.

‘You must decide’, Nekhlyudov repeated.

‘What am I to decide? Everything has long been decided.’

‘No, you must decide whether you will accept Vladimir Simonson’s offer’, said Nekhlyudov.

‘What sort of a wife can I be—I, a convict? Why should I ruin Vladimir Simonson too?’ she said, with a frown.