The Meek One

Summary

The Meek One (Krotkaya), also translated as A Gentle Creature, is a long short story that Dostoyevsky published in his one-man journal A Writer's Diary in November 1876, prompted by newspaper reports of suicides, including that of a young seamstress who leapt from a window holding an icon. In a short preface Dostoyevsky calls it a 'fantastic' story, explaining that it is realistic in every respect except its form: it imagines the inner monologue of a man as though a stenographer could record his chaotic thoughts. The narrator, a middle-aged pawnbroker, paces his apartment hours after his young wife has killed herself; her body lies on the table. Trying to 'collect his thoughts' and understand what happened, he tells their story. She was a poor orphan of sixteen, living with abusive aunts, who came to pawn her few possessions to pay for newspaper advertisements seeking a governess post. He was drawn to her, learned of her situation, and proposed, rescuing her from marriage to a fat shopkeeper. She accepted. He had a secret: as a young officer he had been forced out of his regiment for refusing a duel, which he regards as an unjust disgrace, and he had become a pawnbroker as a kind of revenge on society. He resolved to win his wife's respect through stern silence, to make her learn his worth gradually, and treated her with calculated coldness. She rebelled, quarrelled with him over a pawn transaction, went out alone, and even met a former officer comrade of his, though she remained faithful. One morning he awoke to find her standing over him with his revolver pressed to his temple; he lay still with his eyes closed, and she lowered the gun. He took this as his victory, bought a separate bed, and treated her with silent superiority for the winter. She fell ill with a fever for six weeks and then became quiet and withdrawn. One spring day he heard her singing softly to herself, and suddenly his pride collapsed. He threw himself at her feet, kissed them, poured out his love, promised to take her to Boulogne, and talked feverishly for days. She wept, seemed frightened, and said she thought he would leave her alone. Then, while he was out for a short while, she jumped from the window, holding an icon. He returned five minutes too late. The story ends with his anguished repetitions over her body, his realization that he loved her and killed her through his pride, and his cry against inert, indifferent nature and the loneliness of human beings.

Plot or Argument

• Author's preface

  Dostoyevsky explains the 'fantastic' form: the imagined, stenographic record of a husband's thoughts beside his wife's body.

• Part One, Ch. 1–3: courtship and marriage

  The narrator meets the girl at his pawnshop, learns her history, and marries her; his plan of stern silence.

• Part One, Ch. 4–6: rebellion and the revolver

  His past disgrace, her defiance, the meeting with Efimovich, and the morning she holds a revolver to his head.

• Part Two, Ch. 1–2: illness and the change

  Winter of separation, her fever and withdrawal; he hears her singing and his pride breaks.

• Part Two, Ch. 3–4: the end

  His frantic declarations of love, her suicide, and his final lament over her body.

Characters

• The narrator, pawnbroker and husband

  Proud, wounded former officer who torments his young wife with silence and only understands his love too late.

• The meek one, his wife

  Sixteen-year-old orphan, proud and gentle, who marries him and finally kills herself.

• Lukerya, servant

  Maid who witnesses the wife's last moments.

• Efimovich, former comrade

  Officer from the narrator's old regiment whom the wife meets.

Lessons

• Pride as a weapon

  The narrator's wounded pride turns into a regime of control over his wife. Dostoyevsky shows how a man's humiliation can be transferred onto someone weaker.

  • How does the narrator justify his silence?
  • Is he a villain, a victim, or both?
  • What role does money play in the marriage?

• Understanding too late

  The narrator's insight comes only after her death, in a monologue that circles and contradicts itself. The story dramatizes the difficulty of seeing oneself truly.

  • How does the narrator's version of events change as he talks?
  • Does he ever fully accept responsibility?

• Hearing the silent

  We never hear the wife's account; we must infer her suffering from his words. The form invites readers to listen for the voice the narrator suppresses.

  • Why does she hold an icon when she dies?
  • What does her singing mean?

Context

In the 1870s Russian newspapers reported a wave of suicides, which Dostoyevsky discussed repeatedly in A Writer's Diary, linking them to the loss of faith and the isolation of modern life. The story is based in part on the case of a seamstress who jumped from a window clutching an icon.

Composition

Published in the November 1876 issue of A Writer's Diary, which Dostoyevsky wrote and published himself. Constance Garnett's English translation, as 'A Gentle Creature', appeared in 1917.

Reception

Considered one of Dostoyevsky's finest short works and a precursor of the modern interior monologue. It was adapted by Robert Bresson as the film Une femme douce (1969).

Comparisons

• white-nights

  Two Dostoyevsky monologues of lonely men in St Petersburg; the youthful dreamer of White Nights becomes, thirty years later, the embittered husband of The Meek One.

• the-death-of-ivan-ilyich

  Both use the presence of death to force a accounting for a life of pride and self-deception.

• effi-briest

  Two portraits of very young wives married to older, rigid men whose coldness destroys them.

• a-dolls-house-and-other-plays

  Ibsen's Torvald and Dostoyevsky's pawnbroker treat their wives as possessions to be shaped; Nora leaves, while the meek one dies.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• Dostoyevsky's preface, which explains why he calls the story fantastic: the events are realistic, but no one could actually hear a man's disordered thoughts beside his wife's body, so the story imagines a stenographer recording them.
• The narrator's interruptions of himself. He keeps breaking off to say that he will get to the point, that he is not justifying himself, that he must collect his thoughts. Notice what he avoids saying each time.
• The icon of the Virgin that the girl brings to the pawnshop in the opening chapter, and the icon she holds when she steps from the window at the end.
• The morning in Part One, Chapter 6, when the narrator wakes to feel the revolver at his temple, keeps his eyes closed, and lets her decide. He calls his stillness a victory; read his account of it carefully.
• The spring day in Part Two when he hears her singing quietly to herself for the first time, and his long system of silence collapses in a single moment.

Key terms and names

The meek one (Krotkaya)

The title name for the wife, who is never named in the story. The Russian word is the one used in the Beatitudes for the meek, yet the narrator also discovers that she is proud and capable of open revolt.

The pawnshop

The narrator's business, which he took up as a kind of revenge on the society that disgraced him. It brings the girl to him in the first place, and their first open quarrel is over a pawn transaction.

The refused duel

The incident in the narrator's past when he declined to fight a duel on behalf of his regiment's honor and was forced to resign. He considers the disgrace unjust and builds his whole plan of married life around making his wife eventually understand it.

The system of silence

The narrator's deliberate plan to meet his young wife's enthusiasm with sternness and reserve, so that she would come to respect him by degrees. He describes it as a careful strategy; the story shows it as slow cruelty.

Efimovich

An officer from the narrator's former regiment whom the wife arranges to meet. The narrator listens to their conversation secretly and finds that she remains faithful and mocks the officer.

Lukerya

The servant who is with the wife in her last minutes and who tells the narrator what she saw. Her testimony is the only outside view of the ending.

Five minutes too late

The narrator's repeated refrain that he returned home only moments after his wife's death. He clings to the bad timing as if it were the cause, when the whole story shows the deeper causes.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension How does the narrator first come to know the girl, and why does she accept his offer of marriage?
2. Comprehension What happened to the narrator in his regiment, and how does he think that event explains his later life?
3. Comprehension What happens on the morning the wife holds the revolver to her husband's head, and how does he respond afterward?
4. Interpretation The narrator says again and again that he wants to collect his thoughts and understand. At what moments does he come close to understanding, and what pulls him away?
5. Interpretation Why does hearing his wife sing break the narrator's pride when her rebellion, her meeting with Efimovich and even the revolver did not?
6. Interpretation When the narrator finally pours out his love and promises a new life in Boulogne, his wife is frightened rather than comforted. What does her reaction suggest about what his sudden love asks of her?
7. Big Question The narrator wanted his wife to respect him before he would let her love him. Can love be earned, demanded or engineered, or must it be received as a gift?

Faith Connections

• Matthew 5:5 (Scripture)

  Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Dostoyevsky's title takes the Beatitude's word for his heroine, and the story asks what becomes of meekness when it is met by a husband who reads gentleness as weakness to be mastered.

• 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 (Scripture)

  Paul's love is patient and kind, not arrogant, and does not insist on its own way. The narrator's plan of silence inverts nearly every phrase, insisting on his own way and waiting for his wife to recognize his worth, until he discovers too late what he has withheld.

• Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, Book VI, Chapter 3 (Great Conversation)

  Among the teachings of the Elder Zosima is the reflection that hell is the suffering of being no longer able to love. The narrator's final lament over his wife's body, in which he sees his love only when it can no longer be given, is a small, concrete version of what Zosima describes.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: The narrator believed that a wounded pride could be healed by being acknowledged, and that his wife's love could be secured by first compelling her respect through silence and sternness; but love that is withheld until the other person submits is not love, and a gentle and proud soul treated this way is driven into despair; so his system, which he thought would bind her to him, is what destroys her, and he comes to see that his pride killed her only when understanding no longer helps.

Rhetorical device: dramatic monologue with an unreliable narrator. The whole story is the husband's speech to himself as he paces beside his wife's body. He presents his silence as wise and his stillness under the revolver as courage, and the reader learns to see through his self-justifications by watching how often he insists that he is not justifying himself.

Debate: Resolved: The narrator's final realization is genuine repentance rather than another form of self-pity.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Dostoyevsky calls his heroine the meek one, but she also defies her husband, holds a revolver to his head, and chooses her own death. Argue what the title means by the end of the story, drawing on at least three scenes in which her gentleness and her pride appear together.

Comparison with The Death of Ivan Ilyich: Ivan Ilyich and Dostoyevsky's pawnbroker both discover at the edge of death, one his own and one his wife's, that the life they built was false. Compare the moment of recognition in each story and argue which man truly comes to understand what he has done, and what each author suggests is needed for that understanding.

Medical Lens

The story is a landmark in the literature of suicide and of acute grief. Dostoyevsky wrote it in response to press reports of suicides and explores the social and psychological contexts: poverty, coercive marriage, isolation and humiliation. The wife's six-week fever followed by quiet withdrawal, and her sudden death after her husband's overwhelming change of manner, have been read by clinicians as an illustration of the risk period when apparent recovery or a sudden change precedes suicide, though such readings are interpretive. The narrator's monologue, with its circling, self-justification and dawning insight, is a near-clinical portrait of the first hours of traumatic bereavement and of a rigid, controlling personality under collapse. A doctor attends during the illness, and the servant Lukerya is the last witness.

• Author's preface

  Dostoyevsky describes the narrator's state of shock and disordered thinking hours after the suicide.

  GriefPsychology Unconscious
• Part One, Ch. 5–6

  The wife stands over her husband with a revolver at his temple while he feigns sleep.

  Obsession MonomaniaPsychology Unconscious
• Part Two, Ch. 1

  Her prolonged fever; the narrator arranges a doctor and nursing care; her silent withdrawal afterwards.

  Fever InfectionNursing CaregivingPhysicians DoctorsMelancholia Depression
• Part Two, Ch. 3–4

  Her jump from the window holding an icon, Lukerya's account, and the narrator's anguish over the body.

  SuicideGriefDeath Dying

Creative Prompts

• Fiction

  Write the wife's diary for the winter after the revolver incident.

• Essay

  How does the 'stenographic' form of the story anticipate modern stream of consciousness?

• Adaptation

  Outline a short film that tells the story from Lukerya's point of view.

Further Reading

• A Writer's Diary, Fyodor Dostoyevsky

  Includes his essays on suicide surrounding the story.

• Notes from Underground, Fyodor Dostoyevsky

• Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time, Joseph Frank

• Suicide, Émile Durkheim

  1897 sociological study of suicide.