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 She fell ill with a fever for six weeks and then became quiet and withdrawn.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.

Top 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.

• 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.

• 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.

Verified Quotes

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.

• Part One, Ch. 5–6

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

• Part Two, Ch. 1

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

• Part Two, Ch. 3–4

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