Leskov lady macbeth analysis of the work. Essay on the topic: Reason and feelings in the story Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, Leskov

This work. Speaking about the history of writing the story, we note that it is known from Leskov’s biography: the author himself was involved in criminal cases, and this suggests that the story of “Lady Macbeth” could well have been based on real events, because we are talking about crimes and concepts of morality. The work was written in 1864.

Genre, composition and main theme

Although this article has already noted that the work is a story, Nikolai Leskov himself defined the genre as an essay, since it contains elements of the narration of real events and has its own backstory. Therefore, it would not be a mistake to call both an essay and a story a genre of work.

Since any classical work has certain problems, when analyzing “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk”, we will also not miss the mention of the problems raised by the author. And the main one is a moral problem, which the heroes of the work do not talk about, but this theme is clearly expressed if you follow the events and dialogues taking place. The analysis is provided to readers, because everyone can have their own understanding of morality, but there are certain standards, to deviate from which means to act immorally.

Another problem is the manifestation of love, or rather, consideration of what a passionately loving woman is capable of. What is the main theme of the work?

Of course, this is the theme of love. Intoxicated with feelings, but cold at the moment of committing the crime, Katerina shows by her example what she is ready for for the sake of her own happiness. Although we can't call her happy after everything she's done. That is why this is an essay - there is no assessment of the characters and characteristics of their personalities, but only terrible crimes are described, which can be assessed from the outside.

Basic images

• Katerina. The main character of the essay. She was not beautiful in appearance, but she was an attractive woman, charismatic. Single, living without children and husband. From the description of her life, we understand that she is not a potential criminal. And she is ready to enter into a relationship with the first person she meets who pays attention to her.
• Sergey. A clerk who did not love Katerina, but played with her and her feelings.
• The father-in-law who mocked Sergei. He was later killed by Katerina.
• Fedya Lyamin. The son of a murdered husband, a little boy. It was his murder that gave the heroine the idea that it was difficult for her to stop killing.

Important details of the analysis of "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District"

Of course, Lady Macbeth is a morally difficult work about the consequences of love for an eternally lonely woman. Each murder is described in detail. Love was not a rush of feelings in the life of the main character; she was withdrawn and boring, spent all her time at home and was idle. Katerina Lvovna understood that love is a certain characteristic of a person that everyone, including her, should have. But then she did not realize what such reasoning would lead her to.

Sergei, being her accomplice, hiding his father-in-law’s body together, committed crimes for the sake of profit. But Katerina was obsessed, she was unstoppable. After this murder, she felt like the mistress of the house, she gave orders to everyone, but at the same time Sergei was always with her. For the sake of him and their love, she was ready to do anything. Which she confirms by following his lead and not daring to say a word against him.

When Fedya arrived at their house, Sergei became the initiator of the murder. He convinced the woman that the boy was an obstacle to their family happiness. In his opinion, the boy will destroy their union. The image of Fedya is one of the most significant in the essay “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk,” which we are analyzing. Together with the boy, Catherine’s soul dies. She decides to brutally kill, even while pregnant.

Committing murder after murder, changes are noticeable in Sergei’s portrait, such as trembling lips, tremor of the chin and others, but Katerina remains completely soulless. But in the denouement of the essay, Katerina herself becomes a victim, and you even feel sorry for her. She no longer loves anyone, including herself.

The work caused a storm of condemnation and indignation. It did not fit the literary criteria and political mood of the time. The image of Katerina was not recognized as a typical Russian female image.

In this article we have presented you with a brief analysis of the story "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk", you will find more information on the topic by visiting our literary

Lesson 10. Topic:N.S. Leskov "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk"

Target:

problem analysis of the story

comparative analysis of the heroines of Leskov’s story and Ostrovsky’s play “The Thunderstorm”

mastering the concept of literary polemics

During the classes:

I love literature as a medium that

gives me the opportunity express everything that I

I think it's true and for good...

N.S. Leskov

I. Updating knowledge

Are you familiar with the wordcontroversy? literary controversy?

(Students will remember the articles by Dobrolyubov and Pisarev on Ostrovsky’s “The Thunderstorm.” The result of the conversation is a table reflecting the starting point of critics’ approach to A.N. Ostrovsky’s play—the question of the driving force of the Russian revolution—and the positions taken by Dobrolyubov and Pisarev in the dispute.

Teacher's word : N.S. Leskov was a passionate person. And in nothing, perhaps, was this passion more evident than in the literary polemics that he waged (more precisely, into which he threw himself) from his first steps in literature. “Without knowing Russia, do not undertake to start revolutions in it,” Leskov said to his contemporaries Herzen and Chernyshevsky. “Without knowing Russia, don’t presume to judge the Russian national character,” Leskov said to his contemporaries Ostrovsky, Pomyalovsky, and Pisemsky.

A challenge to modern playwrights and novelists was the words about what kind of love there is in Russia: “... Love is not yours, not brainy, our Russian, convict, splintered love, about which these hellishly painful songs are sung, for which they are strangled and cut.” ("Nowhere"). And in “Lady Macbeth...”, in a direct polemic with Ostrovsky’s “The Thunderstorm,” this love is shown and, most importantly, the original Russian female character.

II. Understanding the name

What is strange about the title of Leskov’s essay? (A clash of concepts from different stylistic layers: “Lady Macbeth” is Shakespeare’s tragedy, Mtsensk district is a remote Russian province)

Genre? –(Feature article) - Why?(It is important for the author to convince the reader that everything described actually happened)

III. Problem analysis of the story

Artistic retelling - monologue "The story of the marriage of Katerina Izmailova" (chapter I)

From the image of Katerina Izmailova we constantly turn to the image of Katerina Kabanova, the comparison results are recorded in the table

nature

songs

simplicity and freedom

Find the key word in Chapter I.(Boredom)

Boredom was the cause of passion. Scene from ch. 3 - reading.

We compare the date scene with “The Thunderstorm” and record our observations in the table.

nature, songs

afraid of sin

dark corner

boredom, yawning

not afraid of anything

“Unbearable” for Katerina for her awakened love-passion, which easily overcomes any obstacles, everything is simple. And Leskov persistently emphasizes the bestial, demonic nature in his heroine, as if echoing the words of the king from Shakespeare’s tragedy: “I dare everything that a man dares, and only a beast is capable of more.” Confirm with text the author’s mention of the animal principle (chapter 5, chapter 8, chapter 15).

Chapter 5. “And by morning he [Boris Timofeevich] died, and just like the rats died in his barns.

Chapter 8 “...Zinovy ​​Borisovich...rushed terribly..., like an animal, he bit his [Sergei] throat with his teeth.

Chapter 15. “Katerina Lvovna rushed at Sonetka like a strong pike at soft flesh, and neither of them showed up again.”

Katerina Lvovna knew the happiness of loving and being loved. “There is righteous happiness, and there is sinful happiness. The righteous will not step over anyone, but the sinful will step over everything” (Leskov “The Immortal Golovan”). What is Katerina going through?

"Death of Father-in-Law" - retelling

"The Death of a Husband" - expressive reading by role

Compare the behavior of Sergei and Katerina during the murder.(“Sergei’s lips trembled, and he himself had a fever. Katerina Lvovna’s lips were only cold,” ch. 8.)

According to the Bible, the law of marriage is “Two are one flesh.” And Katerina Lvovna crushed this flesh with her own hands - calmly, even with impudent pride in her invincibility.

And yet dreams are symbolic. How symbolic are the words in the mouth of Grandma Fedya: “Work hard, Katerinushka, you, mother, are a heavy person yourself, you yourself are waiting for God’s judgment, work hard.”

Decipher these words.

How did Katerina work? (Committed another murder)

How does nature, feminine nature warn her against her plans? (Chapter 10, “Katerina Lvovna suddenly turned pale, her own child turned under her heart for the first time, and there was a cold feeling in her chest”)

Who is the initiator of this murder?(Sergey)

What does the name Fedor mean?(God's gift)

The angelic soul is destroyed, and therefore retribution comes immediately (chap. 11)

There are two forces - two fatal forces,

We have been at their fingertips all our lives.

From lullabies to the grave, -

One is death, the other is human judgment.

Human judgment, earthly judgment, has been completed. Did he make a special impression on Katerina Lvovna? (chapter 13)(No, only one thing is important to her - her beloved is nearby)

Did hard labor change the heroine?(She suffers, but repentance never comes to her)

Is our attitude towards heroine changing?(Yes, we feel sorry for her)

B. Shaw warned: “Fear the man whose God is in heaven.” How do you understand these words?

Work in groups. Episode analysis.

Find keywords, decipher symbolism.

White color

young apple blossom

Dirt

darkness gray sky

the wind moans

PARADISE - in nature

HELL all around

In the shower - ?

There is a cleansing pain in the soul

How does Leskov show the awakening of guilt in Katerina? (Chapter 15, “And suddenly from one broken shaft the blue head of Boris Timofeevich appears, from another the husband looked out and swayed, hugging Fedya with his head down. Katerina Lvovna wants to remember the prayer and moves her gums, and her lips whisper: “how you and I walked, sat through the long autumn nights, sent people away from the world with a cruel death”)

Volga immediately makes me remember another Katerina - from "The Thunderstorm". Identify the differences in the tragic outcome of the heroines’ destinies.

Sonnetka

Monologue - impulse to freedom

repentance

changed life in Kalinov

pulled the body out of the water

tragic ending

Suicide and revenge at the same time

didn't change anything

didn't pull it out

People like Katerina Izmailova will follow their passion to the end. Here is Russian dirt, and Russian soul, here are the deepest beginnings of the Russian national character.

IV. Return to the concept of "controversy"

So, “Lady Macbeth...” is the central link in the dispute between Leskov and Ostrovsky. Is Leskov not a participant in the literary dispute between Dobrolyubov and Pisarev? (Return to the diagram created at the beginning of the lesson)

Neither Dobrolyubov nor Pisarev imagined what would happen when the very bottom “broke off their chains” and unfolded to the full breadth of their awakened nature. It will be scary. What will come is not the apotheosis of freedom, but a chain of sinister atrocities. Both prophecy and warning. This is how Leskov looks into the twentieth century.

V. Let's summarize.

Let's return to the image of Katerina Izmailova. Who is she? Write it down (passionate nature, sick soul, etc.)

VI. Homework

For all: Miniature essay (optional): “Katerina Izmailova or Katerina Kabanova: who is closer to me?” or “What I felt after reading “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk”

L. Suvorova

Concept of the essay by N.S. Leskova

"Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk"

The plot of N. Leskov’s essay “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District” is unusual for Russian literature. The heroine is Katerina Izmailova, a young married merchant’s wife, who, as if for no particular reason, embarks on the path of murder and drags Sergei, a seemingly outsider, into her dirty deed. But fate, by the will of the author, punishes the Russian Lady Macbeth, however, giving her accomplice a chance to survive.

There are many types of love: love for the Fatherland, for father and mother, for heavenly powers, love for work. Nikolai Leskov, I think, artistically explores such a phenomenon as the love-passion of a woman, the nature of this passion, the nature of its bearer and the consequences of such love.

Based on the topic of the writer’s research, we will sequentially find out the following important points in the construction and development of the plot:

1. Why N. Leskov made a woman, and not a man, the bearer of love-passion (remember, for example, Don Juan).

2. How does love as a passion differ from love as a feeling?

3. Why is the heroine a merchant’s wife, and not a noblewoman, not a peasant, or even a bourgeois?

4. Why is this kind of love accompanied by murders. Is the plot built according to the laws of life or does the reader deal with the whim of the author’s imagination, arbitrariness?

5. The heroine came to death. Is there an artificiality or necessity of the situation in the ending that the author honestly follows?

In other words, we set a modest task to find out how much the poetics of the work: composition, system of images, symbolism of details, portraits of heroes, landscape and even names help the reader to understand the author's intention.

So, in Russia, among the merchants, life goes on as usual behind high fences. In the ordinary and measured flow of such an existence, its own storms occur, Shakespearean passions boil.

“In the sixth spring of Katerina Lvovnina’s marriage, the Izmailovs’ mill dam burst... A huge breakthrough occurred: the water went under the lower bed of the idle cover, and there was no way to grab it with a quick hand.”

Vigorously, from the second chapter, N. Leskov “twists” the plot. And the reader can immediately note two points in the construction of the plot: the river broke through the dam and “went under the lower bed of the idle cover.”

An attentive reader will pay attention to the symbolic content of the details that the author himself highlights. “Single hider” is a hint at the childless life of Katerina Izmailova. Six years of family life did not please the Izmailovs with children. She herself “toiled at home all day long, alone and dressed... She yawned and yawned, not thinking about anything in particular...”

And suddenly a river breaks through this quiet, even boring life, like a dam. The river is a symbol of life, but in this context it is also a symbol of love-passion - the basement, the “hiding” of feelings. Such passion is like a river, it is spontaneous and not controlled by reason. Katerina Lvovna fell in love with the clerk and practically did everything from him because there was less “one commander” in the house - her husband.

“Katerina Lvovna was not born a beauty, but she was a very pleasant woman in appearance. She was only 24 years old; She was not tall, but slender, with a neck as if carved from marble, round shoulders, a strong chest, a straight, thin nose, black, lively eyes, a high white forehead and black, almost blue, black hair.”

Note that the portrait has more external features. About the hair color it is said “black” twice - a hint at the black soul and the things that Katerina will do. Adjectives: short, slender, chiseled; round, strong; straight, tall - they seem to denote sculpture, plastic art, in which the appearance is a means of expressing the inner.

I would like and can compare the portrait of Katerina Lvovna with the portrait of Grusha from “The Enchanted Wanderer”. “She fluttered her eyelashes... and it was as if they were alive on their own and, like some birds, moving... and he noticed that... there seemed to be a breath of anger all over her. ...Here it is, I think, where real beauty is, what nature calls perfection”...

It seems that the writer also describes the appearance, but the impression is completely different, and you agree with the author that Pear is the embodiment of real beauty, and the latter is unthinkable without spiritual filling.

So, Katerina’s body, flesh, outer shell was good, but what about the heroine’s soul?

N. Leskov talks about the soul of a woman indirectly, through plot twists.

Sergei weighed Katerina on the scales.
- Wonderful.
- Why are you marveling?

Why did it take you three pounds? I reason like this, you have to be carried in your arms all day long and you won’t tire yourself out, but you’ll only feel it for the pleasure....”

Light in body, heavy in soul.

One of the men counters Sergei:
- That’s not how you reason, good fellow... What is this heaviness in us? Does our body pull? Our body, dear man, means nothing when weighed: our strength, the strength that pulls, is not the body.”

And what is this force that pulls, if not the soul? The soul is.

Another symbol of Katerina’s soul is her home. The attentive reader notices that the shutters in the house are closed and the rooms are curtained. Let's give examples.

“Everywhere is clean, everywhere is quiet and empty... Nowhere in the house is there a living sound, not a human voice.” “It was scorching hot outside the lunch field, and the nimble fly was unbearably annoying. Katerina Lvovna closed the window in the bedroom with shutters and also covered it from the inside with a woolen scarf.”

There are many doors in a merchant's house, that is, the interior space is fragmented and lacks integrity. If, figuratively speaking, some spiritual entity had flown there, there would have been no place for it to settle permanently.

The action of the story practically does not extend beyond the boundaries of the house. If Katerina goes out into the garden, it is to drink tea, that is, to please her stomach and body.

But the landscape sketch is still present. “A ravine, a nightingale clattered under the fence, a fat horse sighed languidly, a cheerful flock of dogs rushed by and disappeared into the ugly, black shadow of dilapidated, old salt shops.” The writer smiles - the dogs are cheerful, obviously because they had a “wedding” - a hint at the most immediate events of the essay.

Let us note that the landscape we have presented is concrete and material, like Katerina herself. But other landscape sketches characterize the heroine differently. It turns out that nature, as a means of expressing the inner state of a merchant's wife, can be very spiritual, emphasizing the contrast of a spiritless, but outwardly living woman.

“The moonlight, breaking through the leaves and flowers of the apple tree, scattered in the most bizarre, light spots throughout the entire figure of Katerina Lvovna.” A gentle warm breeze (wind, breeze, breeze) slightly stirred the sleepy leaves and carried the subtle aroma of flowering herbs and trees... Golden night! Silence, light, aroma and beneficial, revitalizing warmth..."

The “inanimate” landscape is depicted as a kind of living creature: the writer, as it were, “turns on” the readers’ vision (“lunar”, “bizarre”, “light”), and touch (“warm breeze”), and smell (“aroma”) . We will be able to see such a wealth of spiritual essence in Katerina Lvovna.

Therefore, it is clear why the disaster happened; just as the disaster at the dam was no coincidence. A similar “breakthrough” occurred in Izmailova’s feelings.

“She suddenly unfolded to the full breadth of her awakened nature and became so determined that it was impossible to calm her down.” “He [Sergei] fell in love with her to the point that there was no measure of her devotion to him. She went mad [like a river] with her happiness: her blood was boiling, and she could no longer listen to anything...” You read about Katerina’s reaction to the coming love, but you see how the river breaks through the dam and, swirling with breakers, rapidly rushes down, and it seems that nothing can stop this raging element.

Already on the ferry, the last stage of the tragedy begins. Here is how N. Leskov writes about the heroine’s state: “There was no longer any measure for this insult, nor was there any measure for the feeling of anger that boiled at that moment in Katerina Lvovna’s soul.” It was as if a nine-meter wave had risen and everything would be swept away. Indeed, many times the writer showed the reader that Katerina acts like a destructive force, not controlled by reason. Where was the woman’s mind when she, without hesitating for a minute, without thinking about the consequences of a decisive act, brought Sergei to her husband? Where was her consciousness when she quickly decided to kill her father-in-law, her nephew, her husband, and Sonetka? Izmailova’s reason also left her in the final scene, when she started a fight with Sergei’s mistress on the ferry, not thinking that she was on shaky “soil” and that there was a cold river abyss all around.

The symbol of this passion is the rope. Moreover, the image of a rope runs through the entire essay, turning either into a harmless belt or changing its face to the insidious garrote of a snake-noose. Here are the faces of the rope.

1. - Well, allow me a pen. Katerina Lvovna was embarrassed, but extended her hand. - Oh, let me go ring: hurt! – Katerina Lvovna screamed when Sergei squeezed her hand in his hand... .

2. Sergei lowered chain dogs.

3. Month in a dream (= baby).

4. Zinovy ​​Borisovich: Where is this from? string? Katerina: In the garden... I found it and tied up my skirt.

5. On the temple and cheek of Zinovy ​​Borisovich thin with a string scarlet blood ran.

6. When (after the murder of Zinovy ​​Borisovich) they returned to the bedroom, thin, ruddy strip dawn broke in the east and, gilding the lightly dressed apple trees, peered through the green sticks garden gratings to Katerina Lvovna's room.

7. Sergei walked with his throat wrapped punchy handkerchief.

8. Nephew’s last name is Fedor Lyamin.

9. Katerina conspires with Sergei to kill Fedya. Sergei’s reaction: something flashed from eye to eye. The network is lightning fast.

10. Light strip between the shutters, where the men going to the all-night vigil peeked.

11. “Kiss me so that from this apple tree that is above us, young blossoms will fall to the ground,” Katerina Lvovna whispered, entwined near the lover.

12. Sergei with whips punished.

13. Katerina Lvovna’s hopes did not deceive her: heavily bound in chains, the branded Sergei walked out of the prison gate in the same group with her.

14. But Sonetka was of a completely different kind. They talked about this: Loach…

15. Stockings with arrows.

16. Sergei’s name – earring, ring.

17. Retinue the rope with which the convicts beat Katerina Lvovna.

18. The weather kept getting worse. From the gray clouds... snow began to fall in wet flakes... . Finally it appeared dark lead strip, you can’t see the other end of it. This strip is the Volga.

19. Road, along which the convicts walked, is also an allegory of the rope that twists in a tight ring around the fate of the Russian man.

20. But at this time from another wave almost waist-high rose above like a wave Katerina Lvovna rushed at Sonetka like a strong pike at soft-feathered flesh, and neither of them showed up again.

How not to be amazed at the variety of forms of rope that the writer notices?

This rope acquires an ominous symbol that corresponds to the author’s intention - the appearance of a snake.

Zinovy ​​Borisovich makes a remark to his daughter-in-law and says the words: “What are you doing, a snake?” Katerina called Sergei a “mean snake.” At the same time, of course, the biblical Tempting Serpent comes to mind. Love “sucks like a black snake” at Katerina’s heart. How can we not remember Cleopatra?

When people are overwhelmed by love-passion, then, according to the creator of the essay, it is out of harmony with the head and conscience. There is nothing human in this love. Therefore, everywhere in the text there are hints that these are not people at all, but animals.

The yard servants joked: they called the cook Aksinya a “pig” and began to weigh her on a weighing beam. The image of a “pig”-“hog” will come back to haunt the name of the father-in-law - Boris Timofeevich. But if Aksinya was “hanged” as a joke, then Boris Timofeevich will be sacrificed like a pig - seriously and scary.

Cats live in Katerina's dreams. The cat of the first dream is clearly Sergei. The cat was affectionate and purred. The second cat is the father-in-law himself. The patronymic Timofeevich evokes an association with another “patronymic”, so to speak. Cats are often called very similarly: cat - kotofeevich. Probably, the father-in-law also sinned in his youth, but in old age he played a different role, which we have already mentioned.

« Lounging and stretching", Katerina Lvovna was lying in a luxurious position, inviting Sergei for love games. Well, who loves to bask and stretch if not a cat?

It is no coincidence that Leskov ends the short summer night with a special soundtrack: “a shrill cat duet was heard from the kitchen roof.” Katerina and Sergei may be offended by the author, but their relationship is not called a union of loving hearts, but more basely - a “cat duet.”

“Katerina Lvovna quickly jumped off in just a shirt... Sergei is not snuck down the pole, and took refuge under a splint on a little gallery.” Verbs are associated with the behavior of cats.

The murder scene is completely reminiscent of a game of cat and mouse. Only scary games where the victim will not be able to escape from the claws of the beast. It is no coincidence that the writer gives Sergei the following remark: Sonetka’s worn-out shoe is cuter than her [Katerina’s] face, “such a tattered cat.”

Let's add two more details to the ones found. The author says about the beautiful Fiona that she was of a “soft and lazy” disposition. And further: “Fiona was a Russian simplicity, who was even too lazy to tell someone: go away.” To whom, if not a cat, do they say that?

If Katerina and Sergei are given the roles of cats and cats, then Zinovy ​​Borisovich, Katerina’s husband, will remind the reader of a workhorse. “Sergei can hear how... he washes himself, snorts and splashes water in all directions..."

Why does N. Leskov use the image of a cat among all domestic animals? I remember the paintings of Boris Kustodiev. In one of them, a merchant's wife drinks tea while sharing an evening meal with a cat. A cat is a pet, it “lives on its own”, it is a symbol of a well-fed life, well-being, and prosperity. But, on the other hand, a cat is a fierce beast, it is a hunter and will never miss its prey, as Katerina Izmailova demonstrated.
N. Leskov invites the reader to feel that love-passion is not love at all. Love is, one might say, a manifestation of feelings, and feelings, as psychologists say, are nurtured, ennobled by education and all sorts of taboos. And love-passion affects only emotions in a person that are more primary than feelings, physiological. The entire natural world experiences emotions; even plants react to “bad” or “good,” not to mention the behavior of higher animals. But N. Leskov does not impose his position on readers; he acts wiser and, as an artist, does it very accurately. He suggests thinking about the characters’ remarks and the peculiarities of their actions.

For example, the author puts into Sergei’s mouth the following words addressed to Katerina: “I own your whole white body,” as if he owns a hearty white loaf. Lovers lie more and more often than communicate humanly. Let us remember the communication between Anna Sergeevna Odintsova and Evgeny Bazarov. They talk about the purpose and meaning of life, they nerd together. Katya Odintsova and Arkady Kirsanov also find topics for mutual communication and, therefore, for spiritual, human communication. The Mozart melody that the girl played said a lot to the young man in love with her. Sergei, looking for a lead for communication, asked about the book. It seems that a spiritual reason for communication was found, but Sergei’s desire was not supported by Izmailova. And it’s impossible to imagine that “cat and cat” would talk about heavenly things.

N. Leskov gives another spiritual lesson to his readers: passion is forgiven to a man, but not to a woman. In the crowd of convicts, “For some reason, Sergei aroused much more general sympathy than Katerina Lvovna. Smeared and bloody, he fell, descending from the black scaffold...” So, no more and no less, “scaffold” is the name given to the love passion of a raging woman, not inspired by the values ​​of life.

After reading the sad story, the reader asks himself the last question: how could this even happen? What reasons contributed to the emergence of such a phenomenon as criminal love? It is necessary to find the answer, because books are able to give the correct answer earlier than life itself.

The story takes place against the backdrop of Russia.XIXcentury. The first accusation against merchant life.“Immeasurable boredom in a locked merchant’s mansion with high fences and chained dogs more than once brought melancholy to the young merchant’s wife, reaching the point of stupor.” It is no coincidence that Sergei remarked: “You are now like a canary in a cage.”

Women born and raised in noble environment, due to their social status, they had to engage in self-education, study languages, art, women's crafts, they had to play music in order to then pass on their experience to their children. In a good way, they should teach in schools and instill good manners in children who grew up in socially disadvantaged conditions.

Peasant women looked after the large farm, worked hard in the fields themselves, and taught their children the labor and life skills necessary for life.

Bourgeois women, city women, served somewhere, and could devote the evening either to their leisure time, or to their family, church.

You can recall another option - the model of life of Western women, farmers' wives. Let's remember Scarlett O'Hara. She was active and socially useful. There was no room for boredom in her life. Katerina Izmailova, perhaps, could also help her husband, but this was not accepted in the merchant life of that time. And the Fatherland did not provide economic opportunities to attract women to work together. Neither God nor the author gave Katerina children. Hence the mortal boredom and the attempt to somehow dispel this very boredom. Out of boredom, Eugene Onegin spends eight fruitless years in the world. Pechorin rushes about from the same boredom, ruining his fate and the fates of the people who got in his way.

That is, N. Leskov accuses boring, vulgar, inhumane Russian reality. The reader's heart, like the writer's heart, literally bleeds when his eyes read the following lines:

“The most bleak picture: a handful of people, cut off from the light and deprived of any shadows of hope for a better future, drowning in the cold black dirt of a dirt road. Everything is around to the point of horror ugly: endless dirt, gray sky, defoliated, wet willows... The wind moans, then gets angry, then howls and roars... In these hellish, in the heart-rending sounds that complete the horror of the picture, the advice of the wife of the biblical Job is heard: “Curse the day of your birth and die.”

Those who do not want to listen to these words, those who are not flattered by the thought of death even in this sad situation, but frightened, must try drown out these howling voices and something else more ugly. The common man understands this very well: he then unleashes all his bestial simplicity begins to drown out, mock over oneself, over people, over feelings. Not particularly gentle, he becomes purely evil.”

A woman who is deprived of the opportunity to improve herself and find meaning in her life also becomes “purely evil.” This problem was also noted by other Russian writers. You can recall F. Tyutchev’s poem “To a Russian Woman”:

Far from the sun and nature,
Far from light and art,
Far from life and love
Your younger years will flash by
Living feelings will fade,
Your dreams will be shattered...

And your life will pass unseen,
In a deserted, nameless land,
On an unnoticed land, -
How a cloud of smoke disappears
In a dim and foggy sky,
In the autumn endless darkness...

Sometimes in our places such characters are born that no matter how many years have passed since meeting them, you will never remember some of them without trepidation, says Leskov at the very beginning of his essay, as he himself called it, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District . Such words of the author are not accidental, because his heroine Katerina Lvovna Izmailova belongs to the number of such extraordinary natures, such strong characters.
Already in the title of his work, This text is intended for private use only - Leskov directly indicates the relationship of his heroine with Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth. Both of them kill in pursuit of their goal those who interfere with them; both perish under the weight of their crimes. However, in my opinion, the forces that drive these heroines, force them to commit murder and betrayal, are different, and radically so. If Lady Macbeth commits all her atrocities for the sake of ambition, for the sake of the desire to make her husband a king, then Katerina is driven by a blind bestial passion for her lover, clerk Sergei.
We can say that Katerina is a symbol of Shakespearean passions, which are deformed and perverted on Russian soil so much that even love turns into a destructive passion. Leskov, pays great attention to the analysis of the reasons for such a distortion of human feelings and characters. And, in his opinion, one of the reasons for this is the soulless, deadening emptiness of provincial life. It is not for nothing that Leskov’s word boredom becomes one of the key words when describing Katerina’s life: Exorbitant boredom in a locked merchant’s mansion with a high fence and chained dogs more than once brought melancholy to the young merchant’s wife, reaching the point of stupor... With all the contentment and good life of Katerina Lvovna in the mother-in-law's house was the most boring... Katerina Lvovna walks and walks through the empty rooms, begins to yawn with boredom and climbs up the stairs to her matrimonial bedchamber... And the same boredom wakes up again, the Russian boredom of a merchant's house, which, they say, makes you happy even hang yourself.
It was these conditions of complete spiritual vacuum and melancholy that led to the fact that even such a bright and pure feeling as love turned in the heroine’s soul into a blind and uncontrollable bestial passion.
Leskov emphasizes that the passion that flared up in Katerina’s soul is truly bestial by the fact that in the heroine’s character the pagan, physical principle is sharply contrasted with the spiritual principle. Katerina, although she is a woman, has enormous physical strength, and Leskov in every possible way emphasizes her outlandish heaviness and bodily excess. Passion for Sergei forces Katerina’s excesses to unfold with all the power of pagan power, and all the dark sides of her nature come out to freedom. She begins to live as if in accordance with the words of Macbeth: I dare everything that a man dares. And only a beast is capable of more.
Katerina’s actions, committed under the influence of passion and at first not even causing much condemnation, inevitably lead her to a failure into utter evil, to an absolute contradiction with Christianity. This is especially emphasized by the fact that she commits the murder of Fedya, Katerina’s last and most terrible crime, on the night of the Feast of the Entry of the Virgin into the Temple.
Even love, for the sake of which she committed murder, for which she ended up in hard labor, for which she experienced all the bitterness of betrayal on the part of Sergei, and for which she drowned her rival Sonetka in the icy river, does not justify Katerina. The feeling does not justify the heroine, since what Katerina feels in herself cannot be called love. This is a dark passion that blinds a person to the point that he no longer sees the difference between good and evil, between truth and lies. This; is repeatedly emphasized by Leskov, who, condemning his heroine, does not leave her the slightest chance of justification in the eyes of the reader.

The work was originally a sketch from a series of female portraits, conceived at the end of 1864. In a letter to N. N. Strakhov, an employee and critic of the magazine “Epoch”, on December 7, 1864, N. Leskov writes: ““Lady Macbeth of our district” is the 1st issue of a series of essays exclusively on typical female characters of ours (Oka and partly Volga) area. I propose to write twelve such essays..."

As for the remaining essays, the idea of ​​writing remained unfulfilled.

As for “Lady Macbeth...”, then from an essay, according to the original plan of a “local” nature, this work during its creation grew into an artistic masterpiece of world significance.

Katerina Izmailova is a “villain unwillingly,” and not according to subjective data, a killer not by birth, but by the circumstances of her life. Finding herself a slave to her own feelings, Katerina successively overcomes a whole series of obstacles, each of which seems to her to be the last on the path to complete liberation and happiness. The persistence with which the heroine tries to subjugate circumstances to her will testifies to the originality and strength of her character. She stops at nothing, goes to the end in her terrible and, most importantly, useless struggle and dies only after completely exhausting the remarkable reserve of spiritual and vital forces given to her by nature.

Leskov’s light self-irony, expressed in the title of the story, seems to indicate the transfer of Shakespeare’s character to a “lower” social sphere.

At the same time, self-irony is a purely Leskovian feature of social satire, consciously used by the writer, giving it an original coloring within the framework of the Gogolian direction of Russian literature.

Pikhter is a large wicker basket with a bell for carrying hay and other livestock feed.

A quitrent mayor is a peasant headman appointed by the landowner to collect quitrents.

Yasmen Falcon is a daring fellow.

Kitty is a leather tightening bag, purse.

Patericon - a collection of the lives of the reverend fathers.

Throne - a throne, or temple, holiday - a day of remembrance of an event or “saint” in whose name this temple was built.

Forshlag (German) - a small melodic figure (of one or more sounds) that decorates a melody, a trill. Roomy - shared.

Job is a biblical righteous man who meekly endured the trials sent to him by God.

“Outside the window in the shadows flashes...” is a not entirely accurately conveyed excerpt from Y. P. Polonsky’s poem “Challenge”, in the original - not “hollow”, but “cloak”.

Sources:

Leskov N. S. Novels and stories / Comp. and note. L. M. Krupchanova. - M.: Moscow. worker, 1981.- 463 p.