Female images in the works of An Ostrovsky. Female images in the works of A

Among the playwrights A.N. Ostrovsky differs from many classics of Russian literature. He does not have ideal heroines, such as Elena (the novel "On the Eve"), Olga (the novel "Oblomov"), Ostrovsky is realistic. Not a single character in his plays is ideal.

The motley gallery of female images in “The Thunderstorm,” as in his other dramatic works, is realistic and lifelike.

(Irina Zarubina as Varvara Kabanova from the film "The Thunderstorm", USSR, 1933)

The first character introduced in the play is Varvara Kabanova. This girl is Martha's daughter. Being smart and cunning, Varvara despises the foundations of Domostroy. She's trying to do things her way. A frivolous, carefree soubrette persuades Katerina to go on a date with Boris. The girl believes that you need to act only as you want, but you cannot confess your sins. The heroine does not openly oppose the cruelty of the order. She fights for her freedom using lies. And when the mother orders her daughter to be locked up, Varvara runs away from home with Kudryash, trying to start a different life, not based on the patriarchal laws preached to her by her mother.

(Faina Shevchenko as Kabanikha, dramatic production, 1934)

The second, no less striking image is the merchant’s wife Kabanikha. Marfa Kabanova personifies tyranny and cruelty, despotism in the family, which are inherent in Kalinov. She considers the foundations that have developed in her family to be Domostroy. Condemns a daughter-in-law who does not act as the law prescribes. And when Katerina confesses to her wrongdoing, the cruel merchant’s wife feels happy that she has a reason to constantly humiliate the woman, trampling on the heightened sense of freedom instilled in Katerina in her home. At the end of the play, the eldest Kabanova is left alone in an empty house. The daughter ran away with her dear friend Kudryash, despising the Domostroevsky laws of the city. Even the beloved son, who never contradicted his mother, abandoned her. Her world and beliefs were shattered.

(Kiryushina Galina Aleksandrovna as Katerina, stage of the Maly Theater)

Katerina is the main character of the play. It is her mental suffering that the audience observes throughout the play. Being sincere and sensitive, the young woman of her childhood lived surrounded by the love and care of her parents. That's why she grew up as a romantic dreamer. But the girl gets married and finds herself in another world, which is saturated with the anger and despotism of Tikhon’s mother. Tikhon obeys his mother in everything. It becomes unbearable for her to live like this, and then, deciding to change something, Katerina agrees to Varvara’s entreaties and goes on a date with Boris. She falls in love with Boris. Unable to cope with remorse, the young woman dies by throwing herself into the water. Before her death, Katerina publicly repents of her sinful love for Boris. She goes to the cliff because she sees no way out.

(Nina Alisova as Larisa from the film "Dowry" 1936)

Larisa from the Play “The Dowry” is similar to Katerina in some character traits and in the fact that both died. Larisa was brought up in a single-parent family; her mother subordinated the girl to herself in everything and resolved important issues herself. It was on her instructions that Larisa was supposed to marry an unloved person.

Larisa's mother, a widowed noblewoman, believed that you had to be cunning. But without this, the woman simply could not survive

All female characters in the plays are depicted realistically. And despite social dependence, they play a major role in the work. It was their presence in the work that helped reveal the essence of the conflict. Ostrovsky was against violent changes in society, although he condemns such things. And the image of Katerina shows the urgent conflict of backward foundations, the need for changes in society.

Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky is a Russian playwright, whose work became the most important stage in the development of the Russian national theater. During his life he wrote many worthy works, but the dramas “The Thunderstorm” and “Dowry” became the most widely known. Both plays are devoted to the problem of the position of women in society, which is played out on the two most significant female images of the works: Larisa Ogudalova and Katerina Kabanova.

Katerina is a sincere, open and bright person, which makes her stand out sharply from the background of the society in which she is forced to live.

She was brought up on love, mutual understanding and respect for her neighbor, which she cannot achieve from her current family in relation to herself. Katerina cannot get along in the environment in which she found herself after her marriage, and in the end her hostility towards her own married life results in a protest against the patriarchal way of life.

By nature, Larisa Ogudalova is a proud, rather reserved, but unusually friendly girl. Larisa is unhappy in love, in which she is similar to Katerina Kabanova; she also cannot find support and participation in her family, which leads to the brewing of the heroine’s internal conflict. Her mother, Kharita Ignatievna, cares only about her daughter’s future well-being, trying to find a richer groom, but despite all her efforts, Larisa, unexpectedly for herself, agrees to marry a poor official. She is ashamed of her future husband and humiliated by his attempts to compare with Paratov, for whom she still has tender feelings. In Larisa’s soul there is a terrible struggle between the desire to come to terms with the fate of the wife of a minor official and the dream of a beautiful and bright life.

Despite the similarity of the situations in which both girls find themselves, their protest and reaction to what is happening is expressed differently. Larisa is indifferent and only sometimes does she make individual remarks that betray her dislike for bourgeois life. Throughout the play we see little of any emotion that Larissa shows. Katerina, on the other hand, reacts most vividly to the situation around her; she is frank with the reader from the very beginning. Perhaps that is why she comes out more decisively with her protest than Ogudalova the younger. She repents of what she has done and, no longer able to continue such a life, throws herself into the water, which Larisa herself, although she dreams of death, does not dare to do.

Thus, the internal conflict brewing in both heroines, which later turns into a protest against society, has a different basis. In the case of Katerina, this is a protest of the victim of tyranny against the tyrants themselves; Larisa opposes the “trade” of human feelings and consumer attitudes towards personality. Both girls, who so passionately strived for freedom, eventually achieve it, but at what cost?

Collection of works: Female images in A. N. Ostrovsky's plays "The Thunderstorm" and "Dowry"

Two dramas by A. N. Ostrovsky are devoted to the same problem - the position of women in Russian society. Before us are the fates of three young women: Katerina, Varvara, Larisa. Three images, three destinies.

Katerina differs in character from all the characters in the drama “The Thunderstorm”. Honest, sincere and principled, she is not capable of deception and falsehood, resourcefulness and opportunism. Therefore, in a cruel world where wild and wild boars reign, her life turns out to be unbearable and impossible and ends so tragically. Katerina’s protest against Kabanikha is a struggle of the bright, pure, human against the darkness of lies and cruelty of the “dark kingdom.” No wonder Ostrovsky, who paid great attention to names and surnames, gave the heroine of “The Thunderstorm” the name Ekaterina, which translated from Greek means “eternally pure.” Katerina is a poetic person. Unlike the rude people around her, she feels the beauty of nature and loves it. It is nature that is natural and sincere. “I used to get up early in the morning; in the summer, I’d go to the spring, wash myself, bring some water with me and that’s it, water all the flowers in the house. I had many, many flowers,” she says about her childhood. Her soul is constantly reaching out to beauty. The dreams were filled with miracles, fabulous visions. She often dreamed that she was flying like a bird. She talks about the desire to fly several times. With this, Ostrovsky emphasizes the romantic sublimity of Katerina’s soul. Married early, she tries to get along with her mother-in-law, to love her husband, but in the Kabanovs' house, no one needs sincere feelings. The tenderness that fills her soul finds no application. Deep melancholy sounds in her words about children: “If only there were someone’s children!” Eco woe! I don’t have any children: I would still sit with them and amuse them. I really like talking to children - they are angels.” What a loving wife and mother she would have been under different conditions!

Katerina’s sincere faith differs from Kabanikha’s religiosity. For Kabanikha, religion is a dark force that suppresses the will of man, and for Katerina, faith is the poetic world of fairy-tale images and supreme justice. “... I loved going to church to death! Surely, it used to be that I would enter heaven, and I didn’t see anyone, and I didn’t remember the time, and I didn’t hear when the service was over,” she recalls.

Bondage is Katerina's main enemy. The external conditions of her life in Kalinov seem to be no different from the environment of her childhood. The same motives, the same rituals, that is, the same activities, but “everything here seems to be from under captivity,” says Katerina. Captivity is incompatible with the freedom-loving soul of the heroine. “And captivity is bitter, oh, so bitter,” says she is in the scene with the key, and these words, these thoughts push her to the decision to see Boris. Katerina’s behavior, as Dobrolyubov said, revealed a “decisive, integral Russian” who “will withstand himself, despite any obstacles, and when his strength is not enough, he will die, but will not betray himself.”

Varvara is the complete opposite of Katerina. She is not superstitious, is not afraid of thunderstorms, and does not consider strict adherence to established customs obligatory. Due to her position, she cannot openly oppose her mother and therefore is cunning and deceives her. She hopes that marriage will give her the opportunity to leave this house, to break out of the “dark kingdom.” To Katerina’s words that she doesn’t know how to hide anything, Varvara replies: “Well, you can’t live without it! Remember where you live! Our whole house rests on this. And I was not a liar, but I learned when it became necessary.” Varvara despises her brother’s spinelessness and is indignant at her mother’s heartlessness, but she cannot understand Katerina. She is only interested and concerned about the external side of life. She resigned herself and adapted to the laws of the old world around her.

Larisa, unlike Katerina, grew up and was raised in conditions where the weak are humiliated, where the strongest survive. Her character does not have the integrity that Katerina has. Therefore, Larisa does not strive, and cannot, realize her dreams and desires. Her name translated from Greek means “Seagull”. This bird is associated with something white, light, piercingly screaming. And this image fully corresponds to Larisa.

Katerina and Larisa have different upbringings, different characters, different ages, but they are united by the desire to love and be loved, to find understanding, in a word, to become happy. And each one goes towards this goal, overcoming the obstacles created by the foundations of society.

Katerina cannot connect with her loved one and finds a way out in death.

Larisa's situation is more complicated. She became disillusioned with her loved one and stopped believing in the existence of love and happiness. Realizing that she is surrounded by lies and deception, Larisa sees two ways out of this situation: either the search for material values, or death. And given the circumstances, she chooses the first. But the author does not want to see her as an ordinary dependent woman, and she leaves this life.

Two capacious artistic symbols define and emphasize the meaning of the play “The Thunderstorm”. The first is the powerful natural cataclysm mentioned in the title, which swept through not only nature, but also the human community, and shattered the heroine’s soul, exhausted from an excess of unclaimed reserves of love. The second is the great Volga River, into which the unfortunate woman threw herself, her cradle and her grave. The general meaning of these symbolic images is freedom. Freedom and love are the main things that were in Katerina’s character. She believed in God freely, in her own way, not under pressure, and she submitted to the authority of her elders in the same way. By her own free will she sinned, and when they refused her repentance, she punished herself. Moreover, suicide for a believer is a terrible sin, but Katerina agreed to it.

Her impulse for freedom, for freedom, turned out to be stronger than the fear of torment beyond the grave, but, more likely, it was her hope in God’s mercy, for Katerina’s God, undoubtedly, is kindness and forgiveness incarnate. Katerina is a truly tragic heroine. For the hero of a tragedy is always a violator of some order, a law.

Although he subjectively does not want to violate anything, objectively his action turns out to be a violation. For this, he suffers punishment from a certain transpersonal force, which is often the hero of the tragedy himself. So is Katerina. She did not even think of protesting against the order and the world in which she lived (and what Dobrolyubov groundlessly attributed to her). But by freely surrendering to the feeling that first visited her, she violated the patriarchal peace and immobility of the surrounding world. She had no conflict with this world, with those around her. The cause of her death was an internal conflict.

The world of Russian patriarchal life (and Katerina is the highest, complete expression of the best, most poetic and living in this world) in Katerina exploded itself, from the inside, because freedom, that is, life itself, began to leave it. In Ostrovsky's forty original plays, which covered contemporary life, there are practically no male heroes, that is, positive characters who occupy a central place. Instead of them, Ostrovsky's heroines are loving, suffering souls. Katerina Kabanova is just one of them. She is often compared to Larisa Ogudalova from Dowry.

There are reasons for this: love suffering, indifference and cruelty of others and, most importantly, death in the finale. But that's all. In fact, Katerina and Larisa are rather antipodes.

Larisa does not have the main thing that Katerina has - integrity of character, the ability to act decisively, energetically, as N.A. Dobrolyubov said. In this sense, Larisa is certainly part of the world in which she lives. But the world of “The Dowry” is different from the one described in “The Thunderstorm”: in 1878, when the play appeared, capitalism was established in Russia. In “The Thunderstorm,” the merchant class is just becoming the bourgeoisie, traditional patriarchal relationships are becoming obsolete, dying, opportunities for a person like Katerina to express their aspirations for freedom are lost, deception and hypocrisy are established (Kabanikha, Varvara), which Katerina does not accept. Larisa is also a victim of deception and hypocrisy, but she has different life values, unthinkable for Katerina.

First of all, Larisa received a Europeanized upbringing and education. She is looking for sublimely beautiful love, striving for an elegantly beautiful life. For this, of course, she needs wealth. Of course, her fiancé Karandyshev is not a match for her in every way. But her idol, the embodiment of her ideals, the brilliant master Paratov, is even worse. Inexperience and adherence to destructive values ​​attract Larisa into his arms, like a butterfly flying towards a candle flame.

But she does not have a strong character or integrity of nature. It would seem that the educated and cultured Larisa should have expressed protest, unlike Katerina. But no, she shows weakness in every way.

The weakness is not only in her decision to kill herself when everything collapsed and everything became hateful, but also in her reluctance to confront the norms of life that are deeply alien to her. Don't be a toy in someone else's dirty hands. Beautiful, as Karamzin said about his poor Liza (by the way, it’s not for nothing that Larisa dresses up in the second act as a shepherdess, the heroine, alas, of an unfulfilled idyll), soul and body, Larisa herself turns out to be an expression of the deceitfulness of the surrounding life, emptiness, spiritual coldness hiding behind a spectacular appearance shine.

At all times, in life and in works of literature, at home and not at balls, with a man or with friends, women remained and remain different. Each of them has its own character, its own ideals, hobbies and aspirations. One half of the female part of humanity is completely opposite to the second, and this is normal, this is the course of life, but sometimes it happens that these very antipodes are at enmity with each other and, of course, the one who is stronger and more powerful wins. So, for example, in Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky’s work “The Thunderstorm” two completely opposite images fit under one roof.

The first female image - Katerina. This is a very honest and kind girl who loves and respects everyone, she never insults anyone, does not build or lecture. The girl grew up in a very good family, where she was loved, and she was free all her girlhood until she met Tikhon and married him. Since childhood, Katerina was open to everything new, the world and people, and she also sincerely believed in God and helped her parents. Once in Tikhon’s house, she also fell into the hands of his mother, and was amazed at how different everything was here. The girl had no choice but to listen to Kabanova and suffer and suffer until death came for her, or, as it turned out in reality, she would not go towards her death.

Kabanova- a powerful and despotic woman who, on the one hand, believed that the man in the family is the boss and must be obeyed, and on the other hand, she commanded her son and his wife. The Domostroy order reigned in Kabanova’s house; she demanded that you obey her, respect her, and do any work she gives. She constantly humiliated Katerina, treated her not as a person, put pressure on her, and when she, having committed a sin, repented, the woman was happy, because this was a new reason to torment the poor girl. Everyone understands that this could not last forever. Unfortunately, nothing good came of this, and Katerina committed suicide, and Kabanikha, who tried to impose her opinion on everyone, force them to obey her and live according to traditions and follow customs, was eventually left alone, even her son, whom she had high hopes. But, as you know, good is always stronger than evil, it defeats it, and justice ultimately triumphs. So in this work, Kabanikha received what she deserved, albeit at such a price as the death of the unfortunate young girl.

Unfortunately, Kabanova still managed to bring her daughter-in-law to such a state, but Katerina, being pious and very honest, could not live with the thought that she had committed a huge sin, and not like Kabanova - she herself would never forgive herself for it .

Of course, in life there is not only black and white. So in “The Thunderstorm”, there is another image - Varvara. This is the daughter of the despotic Kabanikha, who, despite her mother’s morals, continued to walk with her lover. She was not like her brother, she was freer. That is why Varvara helped the main character. She arranged a date with Boris and always supported her with words. Varvara was undoubtedly kind, but this kindness ceases to be so when we remember who her mother is. Varvara is broken by Kabanikha, so a priori she cannot be a positive character.

This is how such different women fit under one roof and on the pages of one book.

Option 2

The female image occupies a significant part in Russian literature. It is women who become examples of real life with experiences and difficulties in the works of the great Russian classics.

Known not only in the 19th century, but also in the modern world, playwright Alexander Ostrovsky also paid special attention to the female image. All the heroines in his works are diverse, with imperfect characters, bright behavior and their own individuality. You can clearly see the variety of images in the dramatic story “The Thunderstorm”.

"The Thunderstorm" was written in 1859. The action takes place in a fictional city on the banks of the Volga River. The main characters are the Kabanov family. The young girl Katerina, on the instructions of her parents, married the drunkard Tikhon, because he came from a noble family. In the new house, Tikhon’s mother, Kabanikha, rules everything. The mistress of the house humiliates and oppresses her daughter-in-law in every possible way, forcing her to do stupid things. And only in Varvara, Kabanikha’s daughter, does Katerina find understanding and sympathy. At the center of the work are social conflict and bright female images that are contrasted with each other.

The first female image is the image of the main character Katerina. The heroine is presented as a sincere, dreamy and romantic girl. Having married Tikhon, Katerina finds herself in a completely different house, filled with anger and hatred. The girl finds solace in Varvara and her new lover Boris. But Katerina cannot cope with her feelings and chooses the path of suicide.

Marfa Kabanova or Kabanikha speaks in the following way. Ostrovsky contrasted this female image with Katerina. Kabanikha is a powerful and cruel merchant who finds joy in humiliating those around her. Everyone living in her house should act only according to the instructions of the mistress. Marfa Kabanova is a symbol of cruelty, tyranny and despotism.

An equally striking image is Varvara, Kabanikha’s daughter. Alive, going against the system and the rules of her mother, Varvara helps Katerina and provides support. But the heroine does not act openly, she prefers cunning and lies. At the end, Varvara runs away with her lover Kudryash, disregarding her mother’s laws.

Each of the heroines is interesting in its own way, because each represents an era of that time.

How often we hear from others, and we ourselves often use in speech, many sayings and proverbs. It’s not for nothing that they are called the grains of wisdom of the people. It’s true: the statements are short – the grains are also small, and from the grains a fruit grows