“I was destroyed by this systematic persecution…”: The problem of re-educating a wife in P. Letnev’s story Unbearable

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the work of the forgotten writers of the second half of the 19th century Praskovya Alexandrovna (1829-1892) and Anna Alexandrovna (1833–1914) Lachinovs, who published under the collective pseudonym of P. Letnev. Many works of the Lachinovs, including the story Unbearable (1891), address the problems of marriage and family. The main focus of the article is on the depiction in the story of the psychology of family relationships, in particular, the dynamics of the psychological confrontation of the main character Vera Pavlovna, defending her human rights, her husband, who strives to suppress his wife as a person and make her obey his will, is analyzed. P. Letnev focuses on the emotional and psychological experiences of the heroine, her refusal to play the role of a victim, the process of moral and everyday struggle with male tyranny. A noteworthy detail is the similarity of the name of the protagonist with the name of the heroine of N. G. Chernyshevsky’s novel; however, the novel by P. Letnev shows the image of a woman not of the future, but of the present, who finds it ‘unbearable’ to confront the established way. The compositional structure of the work gives reason to say that the work combines the “external” and “internal” points of view (B. A. Uspensky) on the character and actions of Vera Pavlovna. The constructed ego-document - the diary of the main character – expresses her position, destroying the idea of the correctness and inviolability of the foundations of the patriarchal way of life, which allows us to show the traumatic family experience of the protagonist. Special attention in the article is paid to the techniques by which the individual “I” of Vera Pavlovna is created, destroying the authoritarian patriarchate discourse.

Keywords

• p. a. and a. a. lachinov
• problems of marriage and family
• mental trauma
• women’s emancipation