Adelaida Ivanovna Character Analysis

Fyodor Pavlovich’s first wife, the mother of Dmitri Fyodorovich, and the cousin of Pyotr Alexandrovich Miusov. She belonged to the wealthy and aristocratic Miusov family. Adelaida is beautiful and has a dowry that includes twenty-five thousand roubles, a small village, and a “rather fine townhouse.” Thus, no one in her family could understand why she married Fyodor, whom they regarded as a “runt,” other than for the sheer excitement of breaking away from her social class and its expectations. She is described as “hot-tempered,” “bold, dark-skinned, impatient,” and “strong”—qualities that are particularly on display when she develops contempt for her husband and beats him in anger. She abandons Fyodor for “a destitute seminarian” and leaves Dmitri with his father. She dies in St. Petersburg of either typhus or starvation.