The search for a happy person leads the wanderers of N. A. Nekrasov’s poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” to the threshold of the house of Matrena Timofeevna Korchagina.
Happy life
The description of the fate of Matrena Timofeevna is devoted to the chapter "Peasant Woman". The governor, as the peasants call her, joyfully recalls her childhood years, when she felt free, happy, surrounded by care.
The subsequent events are a series of misfortunes. Married life is full of humiliation. The woman listens to the complaints of her mother-in-law, who considers the industrious daughter-in-law to be “drowsy”, “drowsy”. He endures cavils, beatings of her husband. A happy event was the birth of Demushka's son. Only the joy was short-lived. Grandfather Savely fell asleep - a little boy died.
Having recovered, Matrena continues to sacrifice herself for the sake of loved ones. Lies down under the rod instead of the son of Fedotushka (the child took pity on the whelp, feeding her a sheep). Saves her husband from service. Pregnant, in winter she goes to ask for help from the governor. The happiness of a woman is overcoming the trials of fate.
woman's parable
Men cannot find a happy woman, says Matrena Timofeevna. The key to women's happiness is "abandoned", "lost" says a woman's parable. The warriors of God found only the keys that make the peasant woman a slave.
There are a lot of heroes in the poem "To whom it is good to live in Rus'". Some of them pass by. They are mentioned in passing. For others, the author spared no space and time. They are presented in detail and comprehensively.
The image and characterization of Matrena Korchagina in the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” is one of these characters. Women's happiness - that's what the wanderers wanted to find in Matryona.
Biography of the main female character
Matrena Timofeevna Korchagina grew up in a family of simple peasants. When she meets the wanderers, she is only 38 years old, but for some reason she calls herself an "old woman". So quickly flies the life of a peasant woman. God gave the woman children - she has 5 sons. One (first-born) died. Why are only sons born? Probably, this is a belief in the appearance in Rus' of a new generation of heroes, honest and strong like a mother.
According to Matryona, she was happy only in the father's family. They took care of her, guarded her sleep, did not force her to work. The girl appreciated the care of her relatives, answered them with kindness and labor. Songs at the wedding, lamentations over the bride and the crying of the girl herself are folklore that conveys the reality of life.
Things have changed in my husband's family. There were so many sufferings that not every woman could endure them. At night, Matrena shed tears, during the day she spread like grass, her head was lowered, anger hid in her heart, but accumulated. A woman understands that everyone lives like that. Philip treats Matryona well. But it is difficult to distinguish a good life from cruelty: he flogs his wife with a whip until she bleeds, goes to work, leaves her alone with her children in a hated family. The girl does not require much attention to herself: a silk scarf and sleigh rides return her to cheerful singing.
The vocation of a Russian peasant woman is to raise children. She becomes a real heroine, courageous and strong. Grief is on the heels. The first son - Demushka dies. Grandfather Savely could not save him. The authorities mock the mother. They torment the body of a child in front of her eyes, the pictures of horror remain in her memory for life. Another son gave a sheep to a hungry she-wolf. Matryona protected the boy, standing in his place for punishment. Mother's love is strong:
"To whom to endure, so mothers!".
Korchagina came to the defense of her husband. The pregnant woman went to the governor with a request not to take him into the soldiers.
The appearance of a woman
Nekrasov describes Matryona with love. He recognizes her beauty and amazing attractiveness. Some features for the modern reader are not characteristic of beauty, but this only confirms how attitudes towards appearance have changed over the centuries:
- "impressive" figure;
- "wide" back;
- "dense" body;
- Holmogory cow.
Most of the characteristics are a manifestation of the tenderness of the author. Beautiful dark hair with gray hair, large expressive eyes with the "richest" lush eyelashes, swarthy skin. Ruddy cheeks and clear eyes. What bright epithets are chosen by those around for Matryona:
- "written kralechka";
- "filling berry";
- "good ... comely";
- "white face".
- The woman is neat in her clothes: a white cotton shirt, a short embroidered sundress.
Matryona's character
The main character trait is diligence. Since childhood, Matrena loves work and does not hide from it. She knows how to put haystacks, ruffle flax, thresh on the barn. The woman's household is large, but she does not complain. She gives all the strength that she received from God to work.
Other features of the Russian beauty:
Frankness: telling the wanderers her fate, she does not embellish or hide anything.
Sincerity: a woman does not prevaricate, she opens her whole destiny from her youth, shares her experiences and "sinful" deeds.
Love of freedom: the desire to be free and free remains in the soul, but the rules of life change the character, make one be secretive.
Courage: often a woman has to become a "brash woman." She is punished, but "arrogance and obstinacy" remain.
Loyalty: the wife is devoted to her husband, in all situations strives to be honest and faithful.
Honesty: Matryona herself leads an honest life and teaches her sons to be like that. She asks them neither to steal nor to cheat.
Woman sincerely believes in God. She prays and consoles herself. It becomes easier for her in conversations with the Mother of God.
Happiness Matryona
Wanderers are sent to Korchagina because of the nickname - the governor's wife. Rarely could anyone from a simple peasant woman become famous in the district with such a title. But did the nickname bring true happiness? No. The people slandered her as a lucky woman, but this is only one case in the life of Matryona. Courage and perseverance returned her husband to the family, life became easier. The children no longer had to go to beg in the villages, but it is impossible to say that Korchagina is happy. Matrena understands this and tries to explain to the peasants: among ordinary Russian women there are no happy women, and cannot be. God Himself denied them this - he lost the keys to joy and will. Her wealth is lakes of tears. The tests were supposed to break the peasant woman, the soul was supposed to become callous. The poem is different. Matryona does not die either spiritually or physically. She continues to believe that there are keys to female happiness. She rejoices every day and admires men. She cannot be considered happy, but no one dares to call her unhappy either. She is a real Russian peasant woman, independent, beautiful and strong.
The grandiose idea of Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov’s poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” was to show a large-scale cross-section of the entire Russian rural life of that time through the eyes of ignorant peasants, freedmen. From the bottom to the very heights, the heroes go in search of the “happiest person”, ask everyone they meet, listen to stories that are very often filled with worries, sorrows and troubles.
One of the most touching, soul-stirring stories: a story in which Matryona Timofeevna is described as a peasant woman, wife, mother. Matrena tells about herself fully, without fantasies, without concealment, she pours out her whole self, lyrically retelling such an ordinary story of a woman of her class for that time. In it alone, Nekrasov reflected the terrible and bitter, but not devoid of bright moments of happiness, truth about the most bonded, the most dependent. Not only from the will of the tyrant-master, but from the all-powerful master of the husband, from the mother-in-law and father-in-law, from her own parents, to whom the young woman was obliged to obey unquestioningly.
Matryona Timofeevna remembers her youth with gratitude and sadness. She lived with her father and mother like Christ in her bosom, but, despite their kindness, she did not mess around, she grew up as a hardworking and modest girl. They begin to welcome grooms, send matchmakers, but from the wrong side. Matrena's mother does not rejoice at the imminent separation from her beloved, she understands what her own child is waiting for:
» Someone else's side
Not sprinkled with sugar
Not watered with honey!
It's cold there, it's hungry there
There is a well-groomed daughter
Violent winds will blow,
Shaggy dogs bark,
And people will laugh!
This quote shows well how Nekrasov's poetic lines are filled with the lyricism of folk wedding songs, traditional lamentation for the outgoing girlhood. Maternal fears are not in vain - in a strange house, Matrena Timofeevna does not find love from new relatives, who always reproach her: “Drowsy, drowsy, messy!” The work that is thrown on the shoulders of a young woman seems exorbitant. There is no need to wait for intercession from Philip, the legal spouse, he spends all the time away from his young wife, looking for work to live on. Yes, and he himself does not hesitate to “teach” Matryona with a whip, although he treats her with affection, and if luck happens in business, he pampers the chosen one with gifts:
“Filipushka came in winter,
Bring a silk handkerchief
Yes, I took a ride on a sled
On Catherine's day
And there was no grief!
Sang like I sang
In my parents' house."
But now, among all the troubles of life, an event happens that turns the whole existence of Matryona - the birth of her first child! She gives him all her tenderness, unable to part, look at the wonderful gift of fate, with these words she describes the appearance of the boy:
“How written was Demushka
Beauty taken from the sun
The snow is white
Poppies have scarlet lips
The eyebrow is black in sable,
The Siberian sable
The falcon has eyes!
All the anger from my soul is my handsome
Driven away with an angelic smile,
Like the spring sun
Drives snow from the fields ... "
However, the happiness of a peasant woman is short-lived. It is necessary to harvest, Matryona Timofeevna, with a heavy heart, leaving the baby in the care of the old man Savely, and he, having dozed off, does not have time to save the boy who has got out of the cradle. The tragedy reaches its peak at the moment when Matryona is forced to look at the autopsy of Demushka's body - the city authorities decide that the mother herself planned to kill the child and conspired with the old convict.
Not broken by this grief, Matryona Timofeevna continues to live, embodying the whole strength of a Russian woman, able to endure many blows of fate and continue to love. The feat of her maternal heart does not stop, each of the subsequent children is dear to Matryona no less than the firstborn, for them she is ready to endure any punishment. Devotion to her husband, against all odds, is no less great. Saving Philip from being taken to the soldiers, she convinces the governor's wife to let the father of the family go home, and returns with a victory, for which the villagers give the woman the nickname "governor".
Self-denial, fidelity and a great ability to love - all these are the features of the image of Matrena Timofeevna, a Russian peasant woman who embodied all the difficult female lot.
In the image of Matryona Timofeevna, Nekrasov embodied the fate of all Russian peasant women. A lot of folklore elements surround this image, the heroine goes through all the stages typical for a married woman who lives in her husband's family and is a serf. The fate of Matryona is full of troubles and misfortunes, a rare joy, a warm human attitude brings the woman back to life and she again becomes cheerful and cheerful, as in her youth.
Matryona's life before marriage
Matryona tells the wanderers about her girlish life, using vocabulary with a diminutive connotation. Father and mother spoiled their daughter, they didn’t force her to work, she didn’t hear a bad word. Only at that time the girl got enough sleep and enjoyed the caress and care of her relatives. Later, when she was sent to a strange village after her wedding, she learned how hard a woman's life can be, even if her husband loves and pities her. Matryona describes her fate as follows: “Now there is only one richness: three lakes are weeping with burning tears.” The heroine of the poem is a strong woman, not only physically (“Kholmogory cow”), but also morally: she experienced a lot of grief, but life did not break her.
The poem “To whom it is good to live in Rus'” contains the most beautiful folklore traditions, which are introduced directly into the text of the work. It is the chapter describing the life of Matryona that is especially rich in oral folk art.
Appearance of Matryona Timofeevna
The surname of the heroine is Korchagina, she lives in the village of Klin. Matryona is 38 years old, she calls herself an old woman, realizing that youth and beauty are lost due to hard work. The author lovingly describes his heroine of the poem: “Beautiful; gray hair, large, stern eyes, rich eyelashes, stern and swarthy. She has a white shirt on, and a short sundress, and a sickle over her shoulder ... ”. The words that the author uses are taken from folk songs: “written kralechka”, “poured berry”, “girl's eyes”, “ruddy face”, “pretty”, “beloved”, “white face”. The beauty of Matryona is the beauty of a Russian woman, strong, strong, hardworking. Describing Matryona at work, the author draws every stroke with pleasure: the heroine evokes sincere sympathy from the reader. She is honest, straightforward, patient, caring, smart, savvy, and a little brash.
Characteristics of Matryona, her life philosophy
Matryona Timofeevna has five children, she is ready to give her life for each of them. When trouble happened - the youngest son overlooked the herd of sheep entrusted to him, she came to the master instead of her son to save the child from whipping. The very first son, Dyomushka, died when he was very young, he was instructed to watch his grandfather Savely, but then he fell asleep. The child got into the corral, where there were pigs, they ate him alive. The authorities insisted on an autopsy, accusing Matryona of colluding with her convict grandfather in killing the child. The woman had to endure a monstrous spectacle that she will never forget. Husband Philip loves Matryona, but sometimes he still dissolves his hands. When he brings her a gift and rides on a sleigh, the heroine feels happy again. She knows that many women got a fate even more difficult than hers: “It’s not a matter of looking for a happy woman between women ...”, “The keys to female happiness, from our free will are abandoned, lost from God himself! ..
". Matryona is frank with strangers, she found her woman's happiness in children, in work. The harsh mother-in-law, the bad attitude of her husband’s relatives led to the fact that a lot of pain, resentment and longing accumulated in her soul: “There is no unbroken bone in me, there is no unstretched vein, there is no unspoiled blood ...”
Matryona teaches her children to be honest, not to steal. She is a believing woman: “the more I prayed, the easier it became…”. It was faith that helped Matryona survive the most difficult moments in her life.
Our article contains quotes from Matryona Timofeevna, which characterize her image most clearly. The material will be useful in the analysis of the poem and writing creative works on the topic.
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Almost every writer has a secret theme that excites him especially strongly and passes through all his work as a leitmotif. For Nekrasov, the singer of the Russian people, the fate of the Russian woman became such a topic. Simple serfs, proud princesses and even fallen women who sank to the social bottom - for each, the writer had a warm word. And all of them, so different at first glance, were united by complete lack of rights and unhappiness, which were considered the norm at that time. Against the backdrop of universal serfdom, the fate of a simple woman looks even worse, because she is forced to “submit to a slave to the grave” and “be the mother of a son-slave” (“Frost, red nose”), i.e. she is a slave in the square. “The keys to the happiness of women”, from their “free will” have long been lost - this is the problem the poet tried to draw attention to. This is how the incredibly bright and strong image of Matryona Timofeevna appears in Nekrasov’s poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'”.
The story of the fate of Matryona is set out in the third part of the poem, which is called: "Peasant Woman".
A rumor leads the wanderers to the woman, stating that if any of the women can be called lucky, then only the “governor” from the village of Klin. However, Matrena Timofeevna Korchagina, a "dignified", beautiful and strict woman, having heard the peasants' question about her happiness, "twirled, thought" and did not even want to talk about anything initially. It was already dark, and the month with the stars went up into the sky, when Matrena nevertheless decided to “open her whole soul.”
Only at the very beginning, life was kind to her, Matrena recalls. Mother and father took care of their daughter, called "kasatushka", cherished and cherished. Let us pay attention to the huge number of words with diminutive suffixes: late, sun, crust, etc., characteristic of oral folk art. Here, the influence of Russian folklore on Nekrasov's poem is noticeable - in folk songs, as a rule, the time of carefree girlhood is sung, which contrasts sharply with the subsequent difficult life in the husband's family. The author uses this plot to build the image of Matryona and almost verbatim transfers the description of the girl's life with her parents from the songs. Some of the folklore is introduced directly into the text. These are wedding songs, lamentation over the bride and the song of the bride herself, as well as a detailed description of the matchmaking ceremony.
No matter how hard Matryona tries to prolong her free life, she is still married to a man who is also a stranger, not from her native village. Soon the girl, together with her husband Philip, leaves the house and goes to an unfamiliar land, to a large and unfriendly family. There she goes "from a girl's holi" to hell, which is also transmitted with the help of a folk song. “Drowsy, drowsy, messy!
"- so they call Matryona in the family, and everyone tries to give her more work. There is no hope for the intercession of her husband: although they are of the same age, Philip treats his wife well, but sometimes he beats (“the whip whistled, blood splashed”) and does not think to make her life easier. In addition, he spends almost all his free time on earnings, and there is “no one to love” Matryona.
In this part of the poem, the extraordinary character and inner spiritual stamina of Matryona become clearly visible. Another would have despaired long ago, but she does everything as ordered and always finds a reason to rejoice at the simplest things. Her husband returned, “he brought a silk handkerchief / Yes, he took a ride on a sled” - and Matryona sang joyfully, as she used to sing in her parents' house.
The only happiness of a peasant woman is in her children. So the heroine of Nekrasov has her firstborn, whom she can’t get enough of: “How hand-written was Demushka!”. The author very convincingly shows: it is the children who do not allow the peasant woman to become embittered, they support truly angelic patience in her. The great vocation - to raise and protect her children - raises Matryona above the gray everyday life. The image of a woman turns into a heroic one.
But the peasant woman is not destined to enjoy her happiness for a long time: work must continue, and the child, left in the care of the old man, dies due to a tragic accident. The death of a child at that time was not a rare event, this misfortune often fell upon the family. But Matryona is harder than the others - not only is this her first-born, but also the authorities who came from the city decide that it was the mother herself, in collusion with the former convict grandfather Savely, who killed her son. No matter how much Matryona cries, she has to be present at the autopsy of Demushka - he was “spilled”, and this terrible picture was forever imprinted in her mother’s memory.
The characterization of Matryona Timofeevna would not be complete without another important detail - her willingness to sacrifice herself for others. Her children are what remains the most sacred for a peasant woman: “Just don’t touch the little ones! I stood up for them…” Indicative in this regard is the episode when Matryona takes upon herself the punishment of her son. He, being a shepherd, lost a sheep, and he was to be flogged for this. But the mother threw herself at the feet of the landowner, and he "mercifully" forgave the teenager, ordering in return to flog the "impudent woman." For the sake of her children, Matrena is ready to go even against God. When a wanderer comes to the village with a strange demand not to breastfeed her children on Wednesdays and Fridays, the woman is the only one who did not listen to her. “To whom to endure, so mothers” - in these words of Matryona the whole depth of her maternal love is expressed.
Another key feature of a peasant woman is her determination. Submissive and compliant, she knows when to fight for her happiness. So, it is Matryona from the whole huge family who decides to stand up for her husband when he is taken into the soldiers and, falling at the feet of the governor, brings him home. For this act, she receives the highest award - people's respect. Hence her nickname "Governor". Now the family loves her, and in the village they consider her lucky. But the hardships and "storm of the soul" that have passed through Matryona's life do not give her the opportunity to speak of herself as happy.
A resolute, selfless, simple and sincere woman and mother, one of the many Russian peasant women - this is how the reader of Matryona Korchagin's “Who Lives Well in Rus'” appears before the reader.
The description of the image of Matryona Korchagina and her characterization in the poem will help 10th grade students before writing an essay on the topic “The Image of Matryona Timofeevna in “Who Lives Well in Rus'””.
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