What did Katerina's death change in the dark kingdom? Katerina - a ray of light in a dark kingdom - essay

Homework for the lesson

1. Collect quotation material to characterize Katerina.
2. Read II and Act III. Note phrases in Katerina’s monologues that indicate the poetry of her nature.
3. What is Katerina’s speech like?
4. How does life in your parents’ house differ from life in your husband’s house?
5. What is the inevitability of Katerina’s conflict with the world of the “dark kingdom”, with the world of Kabanova and Wild?
6. Why is Varvara next to Katerina?
7. Does Katerina love Tikhon?
8. Happiness or unhappiness on life path Katerina Boris?
9. Can Katerina’s suicide be considered a protest against the “dark kingdom”? Perhaps the protest is in love for Boris?

Exercise

Using material prepared at home, characterize Katerina. What traits of her character are revealed in her very first remarks?

Answer

D.I, yavl. V, p.232: Inability to be a hypocrite, lie, directness. The conflict is immediately obvious: Kabanikha does not tolerate self-esteem or disobedience in people, Katerina does not know how to adapt and submit. In Katerina there is - along with spiritual softness, trembling, songfulness - and a firmness and strong-willed determination that Kabanikha hates, which can be heard in her story about sailing on a boat, and in some of her actions, and in her patronymic Petrovna, derived from Peter - “ stone". D.II, yavl. II, pp. 242–243, 244.

Therefore, Katerina cannot be brought to her knees, and this significantly complicates the conflictual confrontation between the two women. A situation arises when, as the proverb goes, the scythe lands on a stone.

Question

How else does Katerina differ from the inhabitants of the city of Kalinov? Find places in the text where the poetry of Katerina’s nature is emphasized.

Answer

Katerina is a poetic person. Unlike the rude Kalinovites, she feels the beauty of nature and loves it. In the morning I got up early... Oh, yes, I lived with my mother, like a flower blooming...

“I used to get up early; if it’s summer, I’ll go to the spring, wash myself, bring some water with me and that’s it, I’ll water all the flowers in the house. I had many, many flowers,” she says about her childhood. (D.I, Rev. VII, p. 236)

Her soul is constantly drawn to beauty. Her dreams were filled with wonderful, fabulous visions. She often dreamed that she was flying like a bird. She talks about her desire to fly several times. (D.I, Rev. VII, p. 235). With these repetitions, the playwright emphasizes the romantic sublimity of Katerina’s soul and her freedom-loving aspirations. Married early, she tries to get along with her mother-in-law and fall in love with her husband, but in the Kabanovs’ house sincere feelings no one needs.

Katerina is religious. Given her impressionability, the religious feelings instilled in her in childhood firmly took possession of her soul.

“Before I died, I loved going to church! Surely, it used to be that I would enter heaven, and I wouldn’t see anyone, and I wouldn’t remember the time, and I wouldn’t hear when the service would end,” she recalls. (D.I, Rev. VII, p. 236)

Question

How would you characterize the heroine’s speech?

Answer

Katerina’s speech reflects all her wealth inner world: strength of feelings, human dignity, moral purity, truthfulness of nature. The strength of feelings, depth and sincerity of Katerina’s experiences are expressed in the syntactic structure of her speech: rhetorical questions, exclamations, unfinished sentences. And in especially tense moments, her speech takes on the features of a Russian folk song, becoming smooth, rhythmic, and melodious. In her speech there are vernacular words of a church-religious nature (lives, angels, golden temples, images), means of expression folk poetic language (“Violent winds, bear with him my sadness and melancholy”). Speech is rich in intonations - joyful, sad, enthusiastic, sad, anxious. Intonations express Katerina’s attitude towards others.

Question

Where did these traits come from in the heroine? Tell us how Katerina lived before marriage? How is life in your parents' house different from life in your husband's house?

Answer

P.235 d.I, yavl. VII (“Was I like that!”)

Conclusion

Outwardly, the living conditions in Kalinov are no different from the environment of Katerina’s childhood. The same prayers, the same rituals, the same activities, but “here,” the heroine notes, “everything seems to be from under captivity.” And captivity is incompatible with her freedom-loving soul.

Question

What is Katerina’s protest against the “dark kingdom”? Why can’t we call her either “victim” or “mistress”?

Answer

Katerina is different in character from everyone else characters"Thunderstorms". Whole, honest, sincere, she is incapable of lies and falsehood, therefore in the cruel world where the Wild and Kabanovs reign, her life is tragic. She does not want to adapt to the world of the “dark kingdom,” but she cannot be called a victim either. She protests. Her protest is her love for Boris. This is freedom of choice.

Question

Does Katerina love Tikhon?

Answer

Given in marriage, apparently not of her own free will, she is at first ready to become an exemplary wife. D.II, yavl. II, p. 243. But such rich nature how Katerina cannot love a primitive, limited person.

D. V, yavl. III, P.279 “Yes, he was hateful to me, hateful, his caress is worse to me than beatings.”

Already at the beginning of the play we learn about her love for Boris. D. I, phenomenon VII, p. 237.

Question

Happiness or misfortune in the life path of Katerina Boris?

Answer

Love for Boris itself is a tragedy. D.V, yavl. III, p. 280 “It’s unfortunate that I saw you.” Even the narrow-minded Kudryash understands this, warning with alarm: “Eh, Boris Grigoryich! (...) After all, this means you want to ruin her completely, Boris Grigoryich! (...) But what kind of people are here! You know. They’ll eat you, "They'll hammer it into the coffin. (...) Just watch - don't cause trouble for yourself, and don't get her into trouble! Let's face it, even though her husband is a fool, her mother-in-law is painfully fierce."

Question

What is the difficulty? internal state Katerina?

Answer

Love for Boris is: a free choice dictated by the heart; deception that puts Katerina on a par with Varvara; refusal of love means submission to the world of Kabanikha. Love-choice dooms Katerina to torment.

Question

How are the heroine’s torment, struggle with herself, and her strength shown in the scene with the key and the scenes of the meeting and farewell with Boris? Analyze vocabulary, sentence construction, folklore elements, connections with folk songs.

Answer

D.III, scene II, yavl. III. pp. 261–262, 263

D.V, yavl. III, p. 279.

Scene with the key: “What am I saying, am I deceiving myself? I should even die to see him.” Date scene: “Let everyone know, let everyone see what I do! If I wasn’t afraid of sin for you, will I be afraid? human court? Farewell scene: “My friend! My joy! Goodbye!" All three scenes show the heroine's determination. She did not betray herself anywhere: she decided to love at the behest of her heart, admitted to betrayal out of an inner feeling of freedom (a lie is always unfreedom), came to say goodbye to Boris not only because of the feeling of love, but also because of the feeling of guilt: he suffered because of... for her. She rushed to the Volga at the request of her free nature.

Question

So what lies at the heart of Katerina’s protest against the “dark kingdom”?

Answer

At the heart of Katerina’s protest against the oppression of the “dark kingdom” is a natural desire to defend the freedom of her personality. Bondage is the name of her main enemy. With all her being, Katerina felt that living in " dark kingdom"worse than death. And she preferred death to captivity.

Question

Prove that Katerina's death is a protest.

Answer

Katerina's death is a protest, a rebellion, a call to action. Varvara ran away from home, Tikhon blamed his mother for his wife’s death. Kuligin reproached him for being unmerciful.

Question

Will the city of Kalinov be able to live as before?

Answer

Most likely no.

Katerina's fate takes place in the play symbolic meaning. Not only the heroine of the play dies - patriarchal Russia, patriarchal morality dies and becomes a thing of the past. Ostrovsky's drama seemed to capture people's Russia at a turning point, on the threshold of a new historical era.

To conclude

The play still asks many questions to this day. First of all, it is necessary to understand the genre nature, the main conflict of “The Thunderstorm” and understand why N.A. Dobrolyubov wrote in the article “A Ray of Light in the Dark Kingdom”: “The Thunderstorm” is, without a doubt, the most decisive work Ostrovsky. The author himself called his work a drama. Over time, researchers increasingly began to call the “Thunderstorm” a tragedy, based on the specifics of the conflict (obviously tragic) and the character of Katerina, who raised those that remained somewhere on the periphery of society’s attention big questions. Why did Katerina die? Because she got a cruel mother-in-law? Because she, being her husband’s wife, committed a sin and could not withstand the pangs of conscience? If we limit ourselves to these problems, the content of the work is significantly impoverished, reduced to a separate, private episode from the life of such and such a family and is deprived of its high tragic intensity.

At first glance, it seems that the main conflict of the play is the clash between Katerina and Kabanova. If Marfa Ignatievna had been kinder, softer, more humane, it is unlikely that tragedy would have happened to Katerina. But the tragedy might not have happened if Katerina had been able to lie, adapt, if she had not judged herself so harshly, if she had looked at life more simply and calmly. But Kabanikha remains Kabanikha, and Katerina remains Katerina. And each of them reflects a certain life position, each of them acts in accordance with its own principles.

The main thing in the play is inner life the heroine, the emergence in her of something new, still unclear to her. “There’s something so extraordinary about me, as if I’m starting to live again, or... I don’t know,” she confesses to her husband’s sister Varvara.

The basis of A. N. Ostrovsky’s play “The Thunderstorm” is the conflict of the “dark kingdom” and the bright beginning, presented by the author in the image of Katerina Kabanova. A thunderstorm is a symbol of the heroine’s mental turmoil, the struggle of feelings, moral elevation in tragic love, and at the same time - the embodiment of the burden of fear under the yoke of which people live.
The work depicts the musty atmosphere of a provincial town with its rudeness, hypocrisy, and the power of the rich and “elders.” The “Dark Kingdom” is an ominous environment of heartlessness and stupid, slavish worship of the old order. The kingdom of obedience and blind fear is opposed by the forces of reason, common sense, enlightenment presented by Kuligin, as well as the pure soul of Katerina, which, albeit unconsciously, with the sincerity and integrity of her nature is hostile to this world.
Katerina spent her childhood and youth in a merchant environment, but at home she was surrounded by affection, her mother’s love, and mutual respect in the family. As she herself says, “... she lived, did not worry about anything, like a bird in the wild.”
Given in marriage to Tikhon, she found herself in an ominous environment of heartlessness and stupid, slavish admiration for the power of the old, long-rotten order, which the “tyrants of Russian life” so greedily clutch at. Kabanova tries in vain to instill in Katerina her despotic laws, which, in her opinion, constitute the basis of domestic well-being and the strength of family ties: unquestioning submission to the will of her husband, obedience, diligence and respect for elders. This is how her son was raised.
Kabanova intended to mold Katerina into something similar to what she turned her child into. But we see that for a young woman who finds herself in her mother-in-law’s house, such a fate is excluded. Dialogues with Kabanikha
show that “Katerina’s nature will not accept base feelings.” In her husband's house she is surrounded by an atmosphere of cruelty, humiliation, and suspicion. She tries to defend her right to respect, does not want to please anyone, wants to love and be loved. Katerina is lonely, she lacks human participation, sympathy, love. The need for this draws her to Boris. She sees that outwardly he does not look like other residents of the city of Kalinov, and, not being able to recognize inner essence, considers him a man from another world. In her imagination, Boris seems to be the only one who will dare to take her from the “dark kingdom” to fairy world.
Katerina is religious, but her sincerity in faith differs from the religiosity of her mother-in-law, for whom faith is only a tool that allows her to keep others in fear and obedience. Katerina perceived the church, icon painting, and Christian chants as an encounter with something mysterious, beautiful, taking her far from the gloomy world of the Kabanovs. Katerina, as a believer, tries not to convert special attention to Kabanova's teachings. But this is for the time being. The patience of even the most patient person always comes to an end. Katerina “endures until... until such a demand of her nature is insulted in her, without the satisfaction of which she cannot remain calm.” For the heroine, this “demand of her nature” was the desire for personal freedom. To live without listening to stupid advice from all sorts of wild boars and others, to think as one thinks, to understand everything on one’s own, without any extraneous and useless admonitions - this is what Katerina has greatest importance. That's something she won't let anyone trample on. Her personal freedom is her most precious value. Katerina even values ​​life much less.
At first, the heroine resigned herself, hoping to find at least some sympathy and understanding from those around her. But this turned out to be impossible. Even Katerina began to have some “sinful” dreams; as if she were racing against three frisky horses, intoxicated with happiness, next to her loved one... Katerina protests against seductive visions, but human nature defended her rights. A woman has awakened in the heroine. The desire to love and be loved grows with inexorable force. And this is a completely natural desire. After all, Katerina is only 16 years old - the very flowering of young, sincere feelings. But she doubts, reflects, and all her thoughts are fraught with panic. The heroine is looking for an explanation for her feelings, in her soul she wants to justify herself to her husband, she is trying to tear away vague desires from herself. But reality, the real state of affairs returned Katerina to herself: “Before whom am I pretending...”
Katerina's most important character trait is honesty with herself, her husband and other people; unwillingness to live in a lie. She says to Varvara: “I don’t know how to deceive, I can’t hide anything.” She does not want and cannot be cunning, pretend, lie, hide. This is confirmed by the scene when Katerina confesses to her husband that she is cheating.
Its greatest value is freedom of the soul. Katerina, accustomed to living, as she admitted in a conversation with Varvara, “like a bird in the wild,” is burdened by the fact that in Kabanova’s house everything comes “as if from under captivity!” But before it was different. The day began and ended with prayer, and the rest of the time was spent walking in the garden. Her youth is covered in mysterious, bright dreams: angels, golden temples, paradise gardens - can an ordinary earthly sinner dream of all this? And Katerina dreamed exactly like this mysterious dreams. This testifies to the extraordinary nature of the heroine. The reluctance to accept the morality of the “dark kingdom”, the ability to preserve the purity of her soul is evidence of the strength and integrity of the heroine’s character. She says about herself: “And if I get really tired of it here, they won’t hold me back by any force. I’ll throw myself out the window, throw myself into the Volga.”
With such a character, Katerina, after betraying Tikhon, could not stay in his house, return to a monotonous and dreary life, endure constant reproaches and moralizing from Kabanikha, or lose freedom. It is difficult for her to be in a place where she is not understood and humiliated. Before her death, she says: “What goes home, what goes to the grave, it’s all the same... It’s better in the grave...” She acts according to the first call of her heart, according to the first spiritual impulse. And this, it turns out, is her problem. Such people are not adapted to the realities of life, and always feel that they are superfluous. Their spiritual and moral strength, which is able to resist and fight, will never dry up. Dobrolyubov rightly noted that “the strongest protest is the one that rises... from the chests of the weakest and most patient.”
And Katerina, without realizing it, challenged the tyrant force: however, he led her to tragic consequences. The heroine dies defending the independence of her world. She doesn't want to become a liar and a pretender. Love for Boris deprives Katerina’s character of integrity. She is cheating not on her husband, but on herself, which is why her judgment of herself is so cruel. But, dying, the heroine saves her soul and gains the desired freedom.
Katerina's death at the end of the play is natural - there is no other way out for her. She cannot join those who profess the principles of the “dark kingdom”, become one of its representatives, since this would mean destroying everything that is bright and pure in herself, in her own soul; cannot come to terms with the position of a dependent, join the “victims” of the “dark kingdom” - live according to the principle “if only everything is sewn and covered.” Katerina decides to part with such a life. “Her body is here, but her soul is no longer yours, she is now before a judge who is more merciful than you!” - Kuligin says to Kabanova after tragic death heroine, emphasizing that Katerina has found the desired, hard-won freedom.
Thus, A. N. Ostrovsky showed his protest against the hypocrisy, lies, vulgarity and hypocrisy of the world around him. The protest turned out to be self-destructive, but it was and is evidence free choice an individual who does not want to put up with the laws imposed on her by society.

According to N.A. Dobrolyubova, “The Thunderstorm” is “Ostrovsky’s most decisive work.” In this play, the author depicts the tragedy of a freedom-loving, rebellious soul in an atmosphere of silence and tyranny. Thus, the playwright expresses his strong disagreement with the soulless system of the “dark kingdom.”

The life of the main character of the play, Katerina Kabanova, ends dramatically. She is driven to extremes and forced to commit suicide. How to evaluate this act? Was it a sign of strength or weakness?

Katerina's life cannot be called a struggle in in every sense this word, and, therefore, it is difficult to talk about defeat or victory. There were no direct clashes between Katerina and the “dark kingdom”. The heroine's suicide can be called more of a moral victory, a victory in the quest to gain freedom. Her voluntary departure from life is a protest against the semi-prison order in the provincial town and the callousness in Katerina’s family.

The play describes merchant life with its patriarchal structure, with its own established concepts of morality, largely indirect and hypocritical. People living in this closed world either fully support its order (Dikoy and Kabanikha), or are forced to come to terms with it outwardly (Varvara, Tikhon). But Katerina, finding herself in these conditions, is unable to come to terms with her situation.

Katerina is strikingly different from the people around her. The love of freedom and sensitivity to beauty have been inherent in her since childhood. “I lived, didn’t worry about anything, like a bird in the wild,” recalls the heroine. Katerina finds beauty in nature, in the songs of praying mantises, in church services.

For her God is moral law which cannot be transgressed. Katerina's religiosity is bright and poetic. Ostrovsky portrays a strong and integral nature, incapable of deception or pretense. Living in Kabanikha’s house, Katerina does not humiliate herself, pretending to be obedient. She always remains true to herself: “Whether in front of people or without people, I’m still alone, I don’t prove anything of myself.”

Life with unloved husband under the supervision of a tyrannical mother-in-law, it seems like hell to the heroine. Katerina “withered completely” in this inhospitable house - miniature copy"dark kingdom" However, her heart did not calm down in captivity. The heroine fell in love with a man who stood out from merchant environment. For Katerina, he personifies a different - brighter, free, kinder - world.

For the sake of her love, Katerina is ready to betray her husband and is faced with a choice: either duty or deception. The heroine decides to commit treason, considering it a grave sin and suffering from it. Having not yet accomplished anything, she already experiences the horror of moral failure in advance: “It’s as if I’m standing over an abyss and someone is pushing me there, but I have nothing to hold on to.” However this desperate step is a chance for Katerina to break free.

Having cheated on her husband, Katerina is tormented by the realization of her guilt and wants to atone for her sin. Following Christian morality, she is sincerely convinced that repentance partially atones for guilt. Moreover, the heroine cannot live by deception, since this disgusts her open, ingenuous nature. This is its significant difference from Varvara’s position.

Thus, Katerina confesses everything to her husband, thereby cutting off her path to salvation. Now life in Kabanikha’s house begins to weigh doubly on Katerina. Live in spiritual vacuum loses all meaning for her: “Why should I live now, well, why? I don’t need anything...”, the heroine decides. She sees no other way to break free except to take her own life.

Katerina cannot leave home, because a woman in the 19th century had almost no rights, belonged to her husband body and soul, and could not control herself independently. Katerina also could not leave with Boris, since he turned out to be a completely insignificant, weak, characterless person, incapable of decisive action.

We can say that by taking her own life, Katerina went against God, became great sinner, for which one could not even pray. However, the heroine is sure: “Whoever loves will pray...”. Death does not frighten her. Even in death, Katerina sees beauty: she paints a picture of calm and tranquility.

So, Katerina’s suicide, in my opinion, is to a certain extent a justified action, which the heroine saw for herself as the only possible one under the given conditions. Katerina’s death is a kind of moral victory, a manifestation not of weakness, but of fortitude. The death of Katerina is another step towards the destruction of the “dark kingdom” of tyrants that has already begun.

2. The image of Katerina in the play “The Thunderstorm”

Katerina is a lonely young woman who lacks human participation, sympathy, and love. The need for this draws her to Boris. She sees that outwardly he is not like other residents of the city of Kalinov, and, not being able to recognize his inner essence, considers him a person from another world. In her imagination, Boris seems to be a handsome prince who will take her from the “dark kingdom” to the fairy-tale world that exists in her dreams.

In terms of character and interests, Katerina stands out sharply from her environment. The fate of Katerina, unfortunately, is a vivid and typical example of the fate of thousands of Russian women of that time. Katerina is a young woman, the wife of the merchant son Tikhon Kabanov. She recently left her native home and moved into her husband’s house, where she lives with her mother-in-law Kabanova, who is the sovereign mistress. Katerina has no rights in the family; she is not even free to control herself. She remembers with warmth and love parents' house, my girl life. There she lived at ease, surrounded by the affection and care of her mother. The religious upbringing she received in the family developed in her impressionability, daydreaming, belief in the afterlife and retribution for man's sins.

Katerina found herself in completely different conditions in her husband’s house. At every step she felt dependent on her mother-in-law, endured humiliation and insults. From Tikhon she does not meet any support, much less understanding, since he himself is under the power of Kabanikha. Out of her kindness, Katerina is ready to treat Kabanikha as her own mother. "But Katerina's sincere feelings do not meet with support from either Kabanikha or Tikhon.

Life in such an environment changed Katerina's character. Katerina’s sincerity and truthfulness collide in Kabanikha’s house with lies, hypocrisy, hypocrisy, and rudeness. When love for Boris is born in Katerina, it seems like a crime to her, and she struggles with the feeling that washes over her. Katerina's truthfulness and sincerity make her suffer so much that she finally has to repent to her husband. Katerina's sincerity and truthfulness are incompatible with the life of the “dark kingdom”. All this was the cause of Katerina’s tragedy.

"Katerina's public repentance shows the depth of her suffering, moral greatness, and determination. But after repentance, her situation became unbearable. Her husband does not understand her, Boris is weak-willed and does not come to her aid. The situation has become hopeless - Katerina is dying. It is not Katerina's fault one specific person. Her death is the result of the incompatibility of morality and the way of life in which she was forced to exist. The image of Katerina was of great importance for Ostrovsky’s contemporaries and for subsequent generations educational value. He called for a fight against all forms of despotism and oppression of the human person. This is an expression of the growing protest of the masses against all types of slavery.

Katerina, sad and cheerful, compliant and obstinate, dreamy, depressed and proud. Such different mental states are explained by the naturalness of each mental movement of this simultaneously restrained and impetuous nature, the strength of which lies in the ability to always be itself. Katerina remained true to herself, that is, she could not change the very essence of her character.

I think that the most important character trait of Katerina is honesty with herself, her husband, and the world around her; it is her unwillingness to live a lie. She does not want and cannot be cunning, pretend, lie, hide. This is confirmed by the scene of Katerina’s confession of treason. It was not the thunderstorm, not the frightening prophecy of the crazy old woman, not the fear of hell that prompted the heroine to tell the truth. “My whole heart was exploding! I can’t stand it anymore!” - this is how she began her confession. For her honest and integral nature, the false position in which she found herself is unbearable. Living just to live is not for her. To live means to be yourself. Its most precious value is personal freedom, freedom of the soul.

With such a character, Katerina, after betraying her husband, could not stay in his house, return to a monotonous and dreary life, endure constant reproaches and “moral teachings” from Kabanikha, or lose freedom. But all patience comes to an end. It is difficult for Katerina to be in a place where she is not understood, her human dignity is humiliated and insulted, her feelings and desires are ignored. Before her death, she says: “It’s all the same whether you go home or go to the grave... It’s better in the grave...” It’s not death that she desires, but life that is unbearable.

Katerina is a deeply religious and God-fearing person. Since, according to the Christian religion, suicide is a great sin, by deliberately committing it, she showed not weakness, but strength of character. Her death is a challenge" dark force”, the desire to live in the “bright kingdom” of love, joy and happiness.

Katerina's death is the result of a collision between two historical eras.With her death, Katerina protests against despotism and tyranny; her death indicates the approaching end of the “dark kingdom.” The image of Katerina belongs to the best images Russian fiction. Katerina - new type people of Russian reality in the 60s of the 19th century.

Whole, honest, sincere, she is incapable of lies and falsehood, which is why in a cruel world where wild and wild boars reign, her life turns out so tragically. Katerina’s protest against Kabanikha’s despotism is a struggle of the bright, pure, human against the darkness, lies and cruelty of the “dark kingdom”. No wonder Ostrovsky, who is very great attention paid attention to the selection of names and surnames of the characters, and gave this name to the heroine of “The Thunderstorm”: translated from Greek, “Ekaterina” means “eternally pure.”

Katerina is a poetic person. Unlike the rude Kalinovites, she feels the beauty of nature and loves it. “I used to get up early; If it’s summer, I’ll go to the spring, wash myself, bring some water with me and that’s it, I’ll water all the flowers in the house. I had many, many flowers,” she says about her childhood. Her soul is constantly drawn to beauty. Her dreams were filled with wonderful, fabulous visions. She often dreamed that she was flying like a bird. She talks about her desire to fly several times. With these repetitions, the playwright emphasizes the romantic sublimity of Katerina’s soul and her freedom-loving aspirations. Married early, she tries to get along with her mother-in-law and love her husband, but in the Kabanovs’ house no one needs sincere feelings. And the gentle, poetic Katerina “withered completely” in this gloomy atmosphere. Like a proud bird that cannot live in a cage, she dies in Kabanikha’s house.

Poetry and spiritual purity Katerina manifests herself in her every word. “Where should I go, poor thing? Who should I grab hold of? My fathers, I am perishing!” - she says, saying goodbye to Tikhon. With what natural simplicity and accuracy these words convey her condition! The tenderness that fills her soul finds no outlet. Deep human longing resounds in her dream of children: “If only there were someone’s children! Eco woe! I don’t have children: I would still sit with them and amuse them. I really like talking to children - they are angels.” Which loving wife and she would have been a mother in different conditions!

Katerina is religious. Given her impressionability, the religious feelings instilled in her in childhood firmly took possession of her soul. But how different is Katerina’s sincere, childishly pure religiosity from Kabanikha’s sanctimonious religiosity! For Kabanikha, religion is a dark force that suppresses the will of man, but for Katerina it is poetic world fairy tale images. “...To death I loved going to church! “Exactly, it happened 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. In Kalinov, no one prayed as sincerely as Katerina. “Oh, Curly, how she prays, if only you would look! What an angelic smile she has on her face, and her face seems to glow,” says Boris, and Kudryash immediately unmistakably determines that we're talking about about Katerina.

And then Same time. religion is a cage in which the “dark kingdom” locked Katerina’s soul. After all, the fear of “sin” torments her even more than Kabanikha’s oppression. And the fact that she managed to overcome him testifies to moral strength Katerina.

At the heart of Katerina’s protest against the oppression of the “dark kingdom” is a natural desire to defend the freedom of her personality. Bondage is the name of her main enemy. Outwardly, the living conditions in Kalinov are no different from the environment of Katerina’s childhood. The same prayers, the same rituals, the same activities, but “here,” the heroine notes, “everything seems to be from under captivity.” Bondage is incompatible with her freedom-loving soul. “And bondage is bitter, oh, how bitter!” - she says in the scene with the key, and this thought leads her to the decision to see Boris. With all her being, Katerina felt that living in the “dark kingdom” was worse than death. And she chose death over captivity. “Sad, bitter is such liberation,” wrote Dobrolyubov, “but what to do when there is no other way out.”

In Katerina’s behavior, according to Dobrolyubov, a “decisive, integral Russian character” was revealed, which “will withstand itself, despite any obstacles, and when there is not enough strength, it will die, but will not betray itself.” Dobrolyubov noted that the character of Katerina, constituting “a step forward not only in Ostrovsky’s dramatic activity, but also in all of our literature,” reflects a new phase in the development of Russian folk life. There is a need for people with decisive character, which would embody general requirement truth and rights into decisive action. Katerina was the first type of such a person in Russian literature. Therefore, Dobrolyubov compared it with a ray of light, illuminating not only the horrors of the “dark kingdom”, but also the signs of its near end.

The great Russian actress Glikeria Nikolaevna Fedotova spoke about the stage embodiment of the image of Katerina: “I have been playing this role since I was young, but only now I understand how to play it. And I didn’t understand at all before that that Katerina is a ray of light in a dark kingdom. And it is necessary that through every word, every movement, this shining ray should be visible somewhere, which strives to break through the darkness. And let Katerina, not finding the road to a bright and joyful life, die: it is not helplessness, not sadness or inner devastation that leads to this end. On the contrary - a bright impulse. And only now he has no way out of the dark kingdom, but someday, soon there will be... This is how Ostrovsky conceived Katerina, this is how she should be played.” Wonderful Russian actresses L.P. Nikulina-Kositskaya, the first performer of the role of Katerina, P.A. Strepetova, M.N. Ermolov, left unforgettable, creatively original portraits of Katerina in the history of Russian theater.

Katerina’s protest against Kabanikha’s despotism was not only personal character in the context of the struggle against serfdom, it had great revolutionary significance, although Katerina herself acted completely unconsciously, defending only the freedom of her own personality.