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Abstract:

The article analyzes the image of Tatyana, the main character of M. Gorky’s short story A Woman (1912). The story is included in the cycle Through Russia, the purpose of which is to create “a sketch of the soul of Russian people”, however, it also develops gender issues, contains echoes of the ideas of V.V. Rozanov about the rehabilitation of the flesh and the worship of women’s vitality vitality, while not reaching the metaphysical “deification of sex”; for A.M. Kollontai this heroine becomes an artistic anticipation of the emerging social type of the “new woman”. Tatyana embodies both the real type and the abstract idea of the writer about the ideal femininity, endowed with maternal features. The perception of Tatyana by the narrator reveals the problematic nature of the category of compassion for Gorky in its connection with jealousy, aggression and sexual desire. Sexuality in the story is depicted as a reproductive principle, which moves the universe created in the space of the cycle. Tatyana’s personality is shown as contradictory, it combines independent thinking, rebelliousness, striving for a good goal and “passivism”, condemned by Gorky as a national trait.