«Nekrasov girl» in the literary context of the era

Abstract

Along with the peasant type of girl (“Troika”), Nekrasov tried to create the image of a provincial young lady from a noble family. His poem “Sasha” and Turgenev’s novel “Rudin” were created in the friendly communication of writers, and both works were published simultaneously in the journal “Sovremennik” in 1856 (No. 1). In the article they are considered in the context of literary disputes about women’s emancipation and works of art of the mid1850s. The literary context of the Nekrasov poem, in addition to Turgenev’s “Rudin”, is the poem by V. A. Fet “Two sticky trees” and the story of I. I. Panaev “Relatives”. The latter reveals the theme of the intellectual development of a young girl under the influence of an educated man. The concept of “hot head” and “cold heart” appears for the first time in it, which Panaev introduced even before Turgenev. But his Natasha is clearly inferior in its development to Turgenev’s Natalia Lasunskaya, although the finals of both works are in many ways similar. The greatest similarity of the storyline of Nekrasov’s poem can be traced with Turgenev’s novel “Rudin”. The main characters of both works have common features: love for nature, the integrity of nature, the desire for knowledge, spiritual development. The Russian poet created a charming image of a girl who, through education, developed her mind and joined the advanced ideas of the time. The author is convinced that such girls will eventually determine the future of Russia. But if the “Turgenev girl” entered Russian literature as a cultural code, the “Nekrasov girl” did not become such a code. The poet devoted his main artistic searches to the image of a Russian woman, “a majestic Slav”.