Information about the author:
Maria V. Mikhailova
Maria V. Mikhailova, DSc in Philology, Honored Professor, 1) Professor of the Department of the History of Modern Russian Literature and Modern Literary Process of Philological Faculty, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Leninskie gory 1/51, 119991 Moscow, Russia; Leading Research Fellow, 2) A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Povarskaya 25 a, 121069 Moscow, Russia.
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8193-6588
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Abstract:
The scholars examining the works of Vladimir Korolenko (1853– 1921) usually focus on the characterization of the ideological content of his writings and his search for the genre, while his representation of women almost never attracts attention (the exception are the heroine of the story The Strange One and mother and bride in The Blind Musician). There is a reason for this: women have indeed been pushed aside by Korolenko. He is primarily occupied by the moral search of his male characters for self-identification and by the social atmosphere in Russia. However, it can be argued that heroines not only “highlight” the most important moments in the life of Korolenko’s male protagonists, but also reveal such facets of life, which, while remaining in the shadows, determine its dynamics, and precisely indicate “pain points”. In this article the early story Episodes from the Life of a “Seeker” (1879) with its female “chorus” is considered as a source of female characters that attracted the writer in the future, in particular, in the stories The Strange One (1880), The Blind Musician (1898), Marusya’s Lodge (1899), Isn’t It Terrible? (1904).