The Situation “A Woman Among Men” in the Works by M. Gorky and Ye. Zamyatin: “Twenty-Six and One” and “Eleven and One”

Abstract

The article compares M. Gorky’s short story “Twenty-six and One” (1899) and the screenplay (synopsis) by Ye. Zamyatin “Eleven and One” (c. 1929) in the aspect of plot and system of motifs. The plot “a woman among men” (borrowed by Zamyatin from Gorky), while demonstrating an invariant core, undergoes a number of modifications. The reason lies not so much in the temporal distance between the story and the screenplay as in the genre conventions of cinematic melodrama (idealization of the heroine and her status as an “object,” fatalistic overtones, twist ending, etc.). While Gorky’s female character in a situation of male violence shows agency and defends her rights and dignity against the “twenty-six,” in Zamyatin the outcome for the female character is completely determined by men (despite the fact that she is an educated person and a “comrade” of the “eleven” in all matters, and not a socially deprived maid of dubious behavior, as in Gorky). At the same time, the two works contain a number of similar motifs, primarily a male attitude towards a woman, which, on the one hand, consists in her “deification,” and on the other, in possessiveness, deprivation of subjectivity.

Keywords

• m. gorky
• ye. zamyatin
• masculinity and femininity
• melodrama
• female agency.