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A.N. Ostrovsky

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the dramatist of the Russian theatre. Within Russia, Ostrovsky has always held

in esteem. Anton Chekhov's correspondence, for instance, frequently alludes to

Ostrovsky as do the critical works of Boris Tomashevsky. Theatre was Ostrovsky's

life and to many Ostrovsky was the theatrical life of Russia during the second

half of the nineteenth century. For the first time in Russian theatrical

history, a dramatist made his living writing for actors he new, creating roles

to exploit specific strengths of individual performers. Critics praise his early

works--All in the Family and The Thunderstorm in particular-- for their

"realism." But though few fail to recognize his significance in Russian

theatrical history, few agree on what kind of plays Alexander Ostrovsky wrote.

To Marc Slonim, Ostrovsky's plays lack "psychological depth." (1) That grizzled

prelate of Russian literature, D. S. Mirsky, though not the first to write

English criticism of Ostrovsky unquestionably the most widely

read, (2) pontificates that Ostrovsky's plays fail to display the

"firm consistency of classical art." (3) Simon Karlinsky, in a newer

book on 18th and early 19th century Russian drama, refers in spots to

Ostrovsky's merchant plays or to his melodramas, (4) though elsewhere

Karlinsky speaks of Ostrovsky's "well-made-play kind of craftsmanship."

(5) With uncharacteristic stinginess, Lawrence Senelick

condemns Ostrovsky for "generally loose" construction that produces a mere

"sequence of tableaux," going even further when he when he voices language

similar to an assertion Mirsky first made some sixty years ago: "most of his

work is so closely tied to specific Russian milieu that it is difficult for

foreign audiences to penetrate the wealth of local color and typically Russian

characterization." (6) Occasionally, though, a dissonant voice does cry out.

Translator, David Magarshack, praises Ostrovsky's "masterpieces" and their

"universal appeal," (7) and thus joins a woefully small and quiet minority

which, when it does choose to speak out, often does so with embarrassing

exaggeration.

Nonetheless, even such an abbreviated summary as the one above of majority and

minority opinions on Ostrovsky seems to argue that each side speaks about a

different dramatist: his plays have universal appeal, and his characters have

depth; his plays are narrowly Russian and dull, and his characters are

superficial. For almost every critic since Mirsky, Ostrovsky is an acutely

"national" dramatist, concerned only with the realistic portrayal of social

class, focused primarily on one particular social class--Russian merchants. Yet

absent from most of this commentary is actual commentary in any depth.

Perhaps the reason his plays fail to satisfy western critical demands is that

critics fail to recognize that like most other dramatists of the nineteenth

century, Ostrovsky wrote didactic, not mimetic, plays. Such art isn't "high" art

and, consequently, isn't worth considering. Ostrovsky shaped his works to argue

social theses. A short look at one of his later works demonstrates this clearly.

Though Ostrovsky revised to some extent each of his forty-eight plays before and

during production, only with Rich Brides (1875) did he substantially revise a

play after its premiere performance. (8) If available criticism has accurately

fixed on Ostrovsky's strengths, a natural expectation would be to find an author

revising a failed play to his strengths. It should be possible to examine some

of the significant modifications Ostrovsky made to his comedy and to explore the

implications of his alterations. And it is. At its premier, the play was not

well received. That reception most probably drove Ostrovsky back to his inkwell.

One reviewer, for instance, complained that the comedy was "superficial . . .

the first act . . . superfluous since the plot is begun only in the second act,

. . . the hero is a pitiful sight." (9) In a similar vein, M. S.

Saltykov-Shchedrin, co-editor of the journal in which the play was first

published, Notes of the Fatherland, told his fellow editor Nekrasov: "What a

shameful thing! In all four acts there's only one real scene--when the hero asks

the girl why she calls herself "niece.'" (10)

By 1878, Ostrovsky had gone far beyond his usual snipets of stylistic

substitutions and had reworked major scenes of Acts I, II, and IV for an edition

of his collected works. The revisions eliminated the confusion underlying most

commentary--that Tsyplunov is the hero (11) as well defined clearly that his

drama wanted more than any sort of naive realism. His drama wanted social

change. Rich Brides is a particularly worthy candidate for commentary through

whose pane a purposive dramatist can be observed at work. Ostrovsky effects

changes in character and consequent changes in audience perception of character

action. These changes highlight a dramatist who, when he plumbs his strengths,

squares his craft rightly on plot and character--two dramaturgical

architectonics most critics place beyond Ostrovsky's grasp. His plots teach

lessons about contemporary society. His characters engender sympathy and

accentuate the need for social change. Since Rich Brides isn't widely available

in translation and isn't generally well known, (12) to provide a feel for the

work, some preliminaries are helpful.

Seemingly, the story has a simple line of action. To an area of summer homes

outside of Moscow come the rich Tsyplunovs--mother and son. While there, Iury,

the son, renews a friendship with Valentina Belesova, a young, apparently rich

young woman who is accompanied by her uncle, General Gnevyshov. Behind the

scenes, the General and Mrs. Tsyplunov encourage a marriage for the two young

people. A "classic" comedy? Perhaps. But happy endings, traditional happy

endings at least, aren't such simple matters in Ostrovsky's dramatic worlds.

Iury Tsyplunov is a very shy young man who idolizes Women in general and avoids

women in particular who fail to measure up to his ideal, Valentina Belesova,

with whom he grew up as a child and whose memory continues to haunt him. But

Belesova isn't really the General's "niece"--she's his mistress. Moreover, the

General is anxious to break off that relationship since his wife has just

inherited an enormous sum and will reconcile if Belesova retreats. The story

that Ostrovsky dramatizes typifies his work: he undercuts traditional

expectations and the story lines that sustain them.

In the original version of the comedy (and unchanged in the final draft),

Tsyplunov and Belesova endure a predictable confrontation in Act III during

which Iury learns, as Valentina confesses, that she is "not . . .a child." (13)

Quickly the marriage is called off. In Act IV, a proud and defiant Valentina

summons Iury and demands an apology. Iury replies:

If you wish, I'll beg forgiveness. I'll humbly ask, if you'd like, on my knees. But that won't help you. You're wrong there. Perhaps my apology will calm you for a while; but those searing words that I spoke yesterday will remain. No petty diversion, no kind of game will erase them. They'll follow you everywhere and summon forth the blush of shame. (14)

The rightness of his moral stance stings her conscience. She confesses a

new-found love; he determines to help her. After the two face and reject

Gnevyshov, Tsyplunov asks his mother to introduce Valentina to "everything that

an intelligent, loving woman can do for a young soul" and looks to a future in

which he will again "catch sight of that youthful innocence" so characteristic

of Belesova the child. Iury's hope-filled lines that conclude the comedy focus

entirely upon himself: "Then the heaven about which I dream will be possible for

me." (15)

One nineteenth-century critic said of Rich Brides that it has "an absolutely

unheard of theme in Russian literature: the redemption of a fallen woman by

means of love." (16) Such an estimation may see Ostrovsky exploring the other

side of the redemptive process that Dostoyevsky had traced in several his works,

widely recognized, for instance, in Crime and Punishment. To be sure, Belesova

does seem redeemed in some sense of the word at the comedy's end. When the play

opens she is Gnevyshov's mistress. When it ends, she has renounced her former

life and life-style and finds herself graciously tucked into the Tsyplunov fold.

The Belesova of Act II who speaks of the strange Tsyplunovs now speaks of them

with love and respect. Obviously, or so the argument might go, this echoes the

language of love and dramatizes the actions of someone redeemed. But the manner

of Ostrovsky's 1878 revision argues strongly that as the curtain goes down on

Rich Brides Ostrovsky wanted his audiences to see Tsyplunov as something other

than a redeemer.

In the key refashioning of Act I, Ostrovsky transforms the mother-son discussion

of his original by shifting audience focus from the son to the mother. In the

early version, Mrs. Tsyplunov ignores her son's rude behavior to Bedonegova, a

widow who lives nearby, suggests marriage as a solution to his boredom, listens

passively to his idealistic views of (and his outbursts against) women, relives

with him the childhood story of Belesova, and resolves to find out more about

Belesova of the here and now. In the later version, Mrs. Tsyplunov castigates

his rude behavior, mocks his romantic posturing , patiently listens to childhood

recollections before urging him to more mature actions, and seeks additional

information about her son's new infatuation. Throughout the first version of the

scene, Ostrovsky invites audience attention to focus on Tsyplunov and his

personal pain. Mrs. Tsyplunov criticizes her son only twice, and meekly at that.

At one point, she accuses him of being "harsh toward people" while at another

she quietly asks him to consider the self-delusions his dreams foster. (17) In

each instance, Tsyplunov successfully turns away her gentle rebuke by returning

attention to himself. He, not his mother, controls the conversation. Turn to

Ostrovsky's 1878 version of the mother-son talk. Mrs. Tsyplunov drives the scene

from the first. She chides his attitude not only to the widow but to the whole

of womankind as well: "Your behavior was rather crude, my son. You shouldn't

talk with women like that." (18) As Mrs. Tsyplunov continues her attack on her

son's sanctimonious posturing, Ostrovsky redraws her character as he redefines

audience attitudes toward Tsyplunov. Gone is the plea to sympathize with the

suffering young man. In its place is a demand to criticize his behavior. Gone,

too, is the submissive mother. In her place Ostrovsky substitutes a strong,

sensitive woman disturbed both by the harm her son's behavior has on others and

by the harm it has on him. Her character gains dimension as his contracts. While

audiences may have smiled at the naive Tsyplunov of the first version, they

probably perceived him as a young man of high ideals. Ostrovsky's reworking of

the scene, however, raises the authoritative, critical voice of Tsyplunov's own

mother against him and against his ideals. Now when Tsyplunov complains that

most women prefer "people of undisciplined morality" to honest people such as

he, the revised character of Mrs. Tsyplunov retorts:

there's no more intolerable despot than an honest person. You create for yourselves imaginary goddesses and then have the audacity to rant when you can't find them in the real world. You, honest natures, not only banish forgiveness from your heart, you willingly insult your beloved if she doesn't reflect that pale, spiritless image which you've created in your idle imagination. (19)

The new view Ostrovsky gives us of characters and their relationships tarnishes

the high polish of Tsyplunov the redeemer. Cold and unbending moral stances

emerge as objects of dramatic wrath and as subjects of attack. Ostrovsky's

modifications continue to isolate Tsyplunov as one pole of male conduct, and an

undesirable pole at that, through his revisions to Act II.

For the version that premiered in 1875, Ostrovsky wrote a second act with three

key exchanges: Mrs. Tsyplunov and Gnevyshov arranging the marriage; Belesova and

Tsyplunov becoming better acquainted; Gnevyshov and Belesova defining their

actual relationship. With the single exception of the scene between Belesova and

Tsyplunov, in 1878 the act is essentially the same. Why did Ostrovsky focus on

this scene alone?

In the early version, Tsyplunov appears as a admirable, if somewhat priggish,

representative of morality. When the two first appear in the act, they enter

continuing an on-going conversation. Belesova is shown disagreeing with Iury but

not attacking: "What you say may be true, but I'm a little afraid of serious

people." One line. Compare this to her new lines, lines which Ostrovsky prefaces

with a laconic yet suggestive stage direction:

(With a little hidden dissatisfaction) I'm very grateful for your lecture on morality and the responsibilities of man. Yes, such a person must take life seriously. Such a person, as you say, is likely intelligent. That's very useful to know. If it's my misfortune to understand little of this and make little use of it, that's my own fault. (20)

The scene begins at a higher pitch and builds. Belesova now has dialogue that

attacks. Tsyplunov's lines become fewer. Belesova's multiply. By the time

Ostrovsky's revised scene ends, the playwright has painted Tsyplunov as a mate

undesirable for any match. Furthermore, he's strengthened Belesova's character

just as he had earlier strengthened Mrs. Tsyplunov's , again, at the expense of

Tsyplunov. With this new context firmly established, Ostrovsky concludes Act II

as he had three years earlier. For the first time, Belesova discovers why

Gnevyshov has thrown her at the Tsyplunovs--he wants her married. At the same

time, of course, the audience discovers that Belesova is Gnevyshov's mistress,

not his niece. As the dialogue makes plain, Belesova's choices in life are but

two: having Gnevyshov pass her off to a friend or marrying Tsyplunov.

To this point, the revisions outlined show Ostrovsky strengthening the

characters of two women, diminishing that of Tsyplunov, and working to define

more sharply than he had done originally the equal undesirability of Belesova's

alternatives: Tsyplunov or someone else like Gnevyshov. Though Ostrovsky leaves

intact the original soliloquy that ends Act II, Belesova's lines now gain added

poignancy. Her anguished debate now has greater definition. The choice isn't

simply one of marrying Tsyplunov or continuing her life as someone else's

mistress. The choice is one of marrying a man like Tsyplunov or continuing her

life as mistress. Grim alternatives, indeed.

In the first version of his fourth and final act for Rich Brides, Ostrovsky

seemingly abandons Belesova to Tsyplunov. In the second version, however,

Ostrovsky effectively saves her from him. As mentioned briefly above, both

versions follow the same line of action up to a point. Belesova summons

Tsyplunov. The two argue. Belesova acknowledges her sense of guilt and confesses

that Gnevyshov's seduction, not her conscious choice, shaped her life. Tsyplunov

resolves to help her break with the General. So far the actions of each version

follow the same tracks. But with Mrs. Tsyplunov's arrival in scene v, the

parallel lines of original and revision begin to diverge.

For the premiere of Rich Brides, Ostrovsky had Belesova and Mrs. Tsyplunov

withdraw to one side of the stage for a quiet talk while Tsyplunov worked to

tidy up loose ends with Gnevyshov. After this, the ladies rejoin the scene to

hear Tsyplunov's closing speech during which he delivers another of his

mini-encomia to his mother and expresses confidence that, with his mother's

help, Belesova will again become the Belesova of old. Admittedly, Ostrovsky

doesn't come out and say openly that eventually, after Belesova's purified, she

will marry Tsyplunov. What he does do is leave Tsyplunov victorious and center

stage for the final curtain. That's the comedy's conclusion for 1875. Belesova

and Mrs. Tsyplunov are weak. Tsyplunov is strong. In 1878, Ostrovsky found a

different direction for the conclusion to Rich Brides.

For his new ending to the comedy, after Mrs. Tsyplunov enters, Belesova has an

additional line, and the ladies have additional action. Belesova begs Mrs.

Tsyplunov for "just a few words"; both ladies leave the stage. While they are

gone, Tsyplunov tidies up those same loose-ends with Gnevyshov. But instead of

Tsyplunov's closing moral platitudes (he does get the final lines, but

considerably shortened final lines), Ostrovsky now gives center stage to the

ladies who return for the following scene:

Mrs. Tsyplunov and Belesova, now dressed simply, enter.

Tsyplunov

(Stricken by Belesova's simple attire) My dear mother. . . I was thinking about what we should do for Valentina Vasil'evna.

Mrs. Tsyplunov

(Smiling) Wait just a minute, my son. We have some things to tell you. You know that I love to hear you talk, but right now we have important business of our own which must be concluded quickly. (To Gnevyshov) Valentina will leave this house; you can lease it rather easily. Many want it. The summer is only just beginning.

Gnevyshov

Piramidalov, take care of the details. But I don't understand, why this?

Mrs. Tsyplunov

This house is large and expensive for Valentina. . . (To Belesova) But, you tell him yourself!

Belesova

(Gestures toward Tsyplunov) My dear mother promised to find me one or two rooms in the neighborhood, much more I don't need. Tomorrow I will sell the furniture and all my superfluous things; I'll take only the flowers. We're going now to look for a new apartment.

Tsyplunov

Dear mother! How grateful I am! We'll live happily at home. I think I can rightly say that heaven, about which I dreamed, is opening up for me again. Isn't it so? Don't you agree?

Mrs. Tsyplunov

That's for you to say, not me. I only know that I've found what I've been missing and what I wanted so--I've found myself a daughter. (21)

The scene is startling because Ostrovsky now gives Belesova a third choice--Mrs.

Tsyplunov emerges as a viable alternative, a clear rejection of both Tsyplunov

and Gnevyshov. Such a choice and such a rejection weren't possible in the early

version of the comedy. Mrs. Tsyplunov wasn't so a strong a character. Tsyplunov

wasn't so unsympathetically drawn. The young woman's options weren't so clearly

defined.

The recurring themes in all of Ostrovsky's writings for the stage involve the

strong dominating the weak, the misplaced values that a moneyed society often

adopts, and, not surprisingly for any nineteenth-century writer, the place of

women in society. Certainly, Rich Brides evidences these themes clearly. And as

the revisions strongly suggest, the bulk of traditional Western assessments of

Ostrovsky and his drama may be off the mark. In Rich Brides, Ostrovsky isn't an

accidental dramatist employing stereotypical characters. He is acutely aware

that the shape of the actions he presents may well be distorted through

inadequately delineated characters. Furthermore, these revisions should lay to

rest notions that Ostrovsky belongs to the school of Scribe or Augier. (22)

"Critics noticed, " writes Russian theatre historian, B. V. Varneke, "that the

comedy Rich Brides had much in common with Augier's play, [The Adventuress].

(23) That comedy portrayed the efforts of lovers, Clorinda and Hannibal, to

entrap the honorable Monte-Prade. Clorinda plans to marry him until Fabrice,

Monte-Prade's long-absent son, exposes the scheme. Her downfall is brought about

in Act II after a carefully constructed sequence of seesawing actions. She

repents her ways, reconciles herself to father and son, and then leaves. The

parallels tantalize on the surface of things. Each has a woman with a past who

seeks to marry into an honorable family; each has a scene a faire of

confrontation and exposure in the third act; each shows the woman undergoing

repentance and asking forgiveness. Yet, Augier's play is about family honor:

"you and I remain the guardians of the household," Fabrice tells his father in

the final line of the work. (24) Ostrovsky's play concerns something quite

different. Augier titillates with his well-made play and its contest of strength

between Fabrice and Hannibal. Ostrovsky emphasizes the conditions that produced

the situation at hand. Augier assumes society is right to reject such a woman;

Ostrovsky asks for understanding and critical re-evaluation of precepts. Rich

Brides, consequently, though it may display some of the techniques similar to

those of the piece bien fait, arguably employs them for different ends. Augier

exploits the building and release of excitement; Ostrovsky presents a case for

social change. Documenting by example, Ostrovsky revised his work to establish

society's culpability for wasted lives. Ostrovsky concentrates on the need for

social reform without ever overtly raising the question, "Do we need social

reform?" And when he revises to his strengths, he revises not to titillate, not

to press a specific social thesis, but he revises to attack social norms for the

costs they exact in lost human happiness. This view of Ostrovsky's craft is

considerably at odds with that of Mirsky and the generaltions that have followed

him.

Ostrovsky a rich subject of study. Other features of his comedy--such as the

title and its links to his other works, or major motifs of money and human

value, or the skillful way he uses his subplot to accent major themes--will

profit any who want to probe deeper and study more fully Ostrovsky's plays. In

this particular play, Rich Brides, Ostrovsky stands out as a dramatist

sensitive to audience perceptions of two major characters in the

comedy--Tsyplunov and his mother. By altering our perceptions of these

characters, he alters our perception of the play's action. At a crossroads,

Belesova finds two options of lifestyle: that of Gnevyshov or that of Tsyplunov.

In its earlier form, Rich Brides had depicted Gnevyshov as one of society's

moral corruptors. But Ostrovsky wasn't so clear in his depiction of Tsyplunov.

In its later form, Rich Brides makes make plain that the playwright wanted to

roughen any smooth edges he had inadvertently given to Tsyplunov's character, to

make him more abrasive, to make him less attractive, to make him a second,

equally undesirable option. In reshaping the comedy, at the same time Ostrovsky

sympathetically portrays Belesova, he unsympathetically portrays two elements of

Russian society that have caused her predicament. If this argument about

Ostrovsky's antagonistic attitude toward the Tsyplunovs of his world stands,

what also must stand is that Ostrovsky strengthened the characters of Mrs.

Tsyplunov and Belesova and weakened that of her son to clarify this attitude and

to provide an ending that resolves Belesova's predicament without forcing her

into the camp of either Tsyplunov or Gnevyshov. Thus, in the second version of

his comedy, Ostrovsky strikes out at sanctimonious moralists such as Tsyplunov

just as in the first version he had lashed out at destructive amoralists such as

Gnevyshov. Perhaps Ostrovsky realized that what he didn't do in the first

version of his comedy was to define sufficiently the poles to which Belesova

could have turned before he provided her with a third alternative that would let

her reject each of the other two. This more serious, more peculiarly ironic,

more decidedly satirical view that informs the 1878 version of Rich Brides gives

a much fuller expression to Ostrovsky's craft than does its predecessor and

justifies further examination of a dramatist too long neglected outside of his

homeland.

NOTES

1) Marc Slonim, Russian Theatre from the Empire to the Soviets (New York: Collier Books, 1967) 75.

2) This was William Ralston. See his review, "The Works of A. N. Ostrovsky," Edinburgh Review, 128 (1868), 80-97. Ralston articulates several positions on Ostrovsky--his Russianness, his fascination with the Russian merchant class, to cite two--that later critics often repeated without careful examination and qualification.

3) D. S. Mirsky, The History of Russian Literature (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, (1927) 306.

4) Simon Karlinsky, Russian Drama from Its Beginnings to the Age of Pushkin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985). See 94, 127, 178, 249.

5) Michael Heim and Simon Karlinsky, Anton Chekhov's Life & Thought (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973) 71.

6) Lawrence Senelick, "Ostrovsky," The McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of World Drama in 5 Vols, 2nd ed., vol. 5 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1984) 54.

7) David Magarshack, trans. Easy Money and Two Other Plays (London: Allen-Unwin, 1944)

8) See Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol 4 (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1973-80). The version Soviet editors include here is Ostrovsky's revision of 1878. However, at the rear of this volume (421-33), included in a section called "Variants," are the lines of the original. Subsequent references are to this volume of the collection and are documented by page number only. All translations are my own.

9) 519.

10) 518.

11) Several candidates for the cause of these failures present themselves. Ostrovsky hadn't won the kind of enthusiastic support from practicing critics in the 1870s that he had enjoyed from his champions of the 50s and 60s, Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov. Then, too, he was constantly embroiled in battles with theatrical administrators as he tried to reshape the Russian theatre and wrest more control for actors and writers from the tight clutches of Imperial bureaucracy. Furthermore, he may well have begun to show the strain of his life-long effort to earn a living through his pen and support his family.

12) I have reconstructed and translated the first-performed version of this comedy. See my "Alexander Ostrovsky's Rich Brides. A Translation from the Russian. Technical Note, " U. S. Air Force Academy, CO, 1988.

13) 247.

14) 254-5.

15) 259.

16) 519.

17) See 421-33.

18) 217.

19) 218-9.

20) 228.

21) 259-60.

22) See, for instance, Lucy Cox, "form and Meaning in the Plays of A. N. Ostrovskij," Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1975.

23) B. V. Varneke, Istoriya russkago theatra (St. Petersburg: N. N. Sergievskago, 1913), 566.

24) Emile Augier, The Adventuress (New York: F. Rullman, 1888), 39.