Are we seeing a repeat of Poor Liza in poor Dunya? Is she poor or pure? Who is innocent or guilty in this story? How do the pictures of the Prodigal Son inform us? Why are the inscriptions in German?
As for the final story of Belkin’s Tales, what is Pushkin trying to accomplish? And does he?
Read the parable at
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke%2015:11-15:32&version=KJV
The pictures of the Prodigal Son inform the reader about a child leaving his father, ruining himself and repenting, then rejoicing in returning home. Although this could foreshadow Dunya leaving her father, and the ruin of her innocence with Minsky, she does return to a joyous reunion with her father. She returns to the town a beautiful and wealthy woman with three children; she was not thrown out on the street after several years, as her father had feared. Dunya is grieved to return and find her father dead, but does she really repent of leaving him?
Dunya does not directly receive money from Minsky (although she does become wealthy because of her connection with him), but he does hand money to her father. Examining this with the theme of Russian men paying women in literature, is Dunya really in the same position as Liza? While Liza is discarded and paid after Erast decides he no longer loves her, Dunya is not thrown onto the street. She maintains a position of wealth and privilege. Instead of Minsky paying Dunya after discarding her, he pays her father to let go of her, almost discarding her in a way. When her father sees her in St. Petersburg, it does evoke the image of Dunya as a kept woman – she is dressed very finely and Minsky visits her in her own separate apartment. I think Dunya is not pure, so in a way she can be looked at as poor like Liza in that she does appear to be a kept and paid woman. Dunya chose to leave with Minsky and continue to live with him, which makes her situation fundamentally different from Poor Liza. Perhaps the difference is between Erast and Minsky – both pay their women, but Minsky keeps Dunya around, while Erast discards Liza.
I don’t think anyone is innocent in “The Station Master.” Minsky takes away Dunya without her father’s consent and pays the stationmaster to leave her alone. Dunya runs away from her father and consents to be a kept woman for Minsky. The stationmaster has the best claim for innocence, but even he went back to grab the money (from Minsky) after he had discarded it.
I researched why the inscriptions might have been in German, and I found that Durer’s masterpiece was an engraving of the Prodigal Son. It was renowned for its Germanic quality, and aided in the use of vernacular instead of Latin. Since Pushkin was the Russian writer responsible for using the Russian variants instead of Church Slavonic, perhaps this reference is meant to draw attention to the “suitable” (69) use of their national vernacular by writers.
Dunya definitely does not end up like Liza, though it does seem like it will turn out that way. This expectation is created by Dunya’s father, Samson Vyrin, who talks about how many young ladies suffer a fate similar to Liza; they are courted by wealthy men who have no intention of marrying them, and then they are thrown out on the street. The pictures of the prodigal son also tell us of how the story should proceed. Dunya, who takes leave of her father to go lead a more extravagant life, is supposed to eventually lose that life and be reconciled with her father. However, these portraits also show that Dunya is not poor like Liza because the possession of them indicates a certain degree of education and wealth in the family. The narrator also comments on how able and worldly Dunya seems to him, and how coquettish she is. So, her character is not exactly pure and she is not poor, and in the end she finds love and wealth. Though at the end we have no clear idea about whether she is married or simply a “kept women”, it seems more likely that she has become a kept women. It seems likely because of the way she is treated by Minsky, and by the difference in social status. At the end nobody seems completely innocent in this story, but the reader cannot help feeling sorry for Samson Vyrin, who does not hear word from his only daughter in the last years of his life and lives alone thinking something awful must have happened to her.
Dunya is a much more complex character than Poor Liza. While Karamzin carefully portrayed Liza as completely innocent, to the point of simplicity, Dunya is a bold “little coquette” conscious of her own beauty. I was surprised, given that setup, that Dunya was reluctant to go driving with Minsky, and has to be persuaded to do so by her father. This gives him some share in the blame for what happened, although certainly Dunya bears plenty of blame herself, more than Liza did. The outcome is also not the same unmitigated misery that we find in “Poor Liza.” While Dunya certainly forsakes her father and leaves him to die unhappily, she seems to be reasonably happy with Minsky, and isn’t thrown into the streets as her father fears she will be. She may not meet the criteria for a respectable and virtuous woman, but she doesn’t drown herself, either. Liza could only maintain control over her life by ending it, while Dunya is clearly choosing to stay in the city with Minsky, and if she wanted to go back home, I imagine she would be able to. Speaking of control, I find it interesting that Vyrin rejects the money Minsky offers as a pacifier, while Liza and her mother always accepted the money they were given. By rejecting the money, he maintains some semblance of power in the situation, as does Dunya.
Just as the rest of Pushkin’s works that we have read depart from convention in a notable way, his retelling the parable of the Prodigal Son offers a markedly different message than the one Christ intended during His narration of the story. The primary difference in this story is there no “death” as unlike the wanton son in the bible Dunya does not suffer through a descent into slovenly and destitute behavior. She is coerced by Minsky to abandon life with her father, yet she leaves with no familial riches and despite living in less than honorable arrangements is still cared for and at the end, evidently bequeathed a life of luxury and comfort. Meanwhile we find Vyrin to parallel the father in the parable who does not enjoy the “resurrection”, so to speak, of his child, and instead we witness his maddening confrontation with loneliness and unrequited fatherly love. As the daughter is deprived of a collapse, the father is subjected to one himself – as opposed to redemption we are faced by an acutely Russian, inescapable tragedy.
As to my guess why the inscriptions may be in German: the second illustration seems to be a description of Rembrandt’s The Prodigal Son in Tavern. This painting has been housed in Dresden and thus may have inspired Germanic recreations as opposed to Rembrandt’s Dutch.
I must agree with above posts that this, even though similarities might be found, is not a repeat of poor Liza. While Dunya might be perceived as pure, she is not as naïve as Liza given that she has met many travelers from afar and listened to their stories. The only person that appears to be portrayed as guilty by the authors in my opinion is the Hussar. However blame can be given to the father for his form of naiveté. Given that he exposed her daughter to traveling men on a daily basis, he should not be surprised, when her daughter gets taken along by one of them, whether out of free will or not. If Dunya is guilty depends on whether she wanted to leave or was forced to. In either situation one can claim her guilty towards her father or herself. The picture of the Prodigal Son appears to be a kind of preview to what will happen, however in a little more tragic version. As to why the inscriptions are in German, I believe that neither the postmaster nor his daughter understood German and therefore the inscriptions might have been an omen that would have been taken more seriously if understood as Russians appear to be quite superstitious people. I’m not quite sure what exactly Pushkin is trying to accomplish. My best guess is, that by telling these tales, which are a just a tiny little bit too fantastic to be true; he mocks the Russian people and the tales/folklore they believe in. I do however not know their tales and therefor have not evidence to support this claim.
I liked the way the story of the prodigal son paralleled that of “the Stationmaster,” and I think to put Pushkin’s story in this light inherently suggests that Dunya has erred; that she is guilty and not a victim.
Throughout Pushkin’s work Dunya’s actions certainly seem to mirror those of the prodigal son, up to a specific point. To begin, Dunya is fiercely loved and cherished by her father, just as the figure of the father in the biblical story is portrayed as caring deeply for his son. Also, like the younger brother, Dunya is a good child and therefore fosters her father’s love, as well as the affection of all those she meets. Instead of leaving with her father’s blessing and then falling into a period of poor conduct, Dunya’s situation is almost the opposite. It is in the act of leaving without consent or forewarning that she enacts her greatest offense, and all future behavior is up to full societal and ethical standards. This is the main departure of Pushkin’s story from that of the bible, because the lack of repentance for Dunya’s choice in the long-run means that no such joyous reunion and subsequent absolution are necessary. Instead of being forced to return to the arms of her father in poverty and disgrace, Dunya returns in a state of happiness and economic security her father could have never imagined. Her return, in my eyes, is a sign of her complete independence and security in which she is finally read to revisit her father, not as a suppliant but solely out of filial love.
In regards to “the Amateur Peasant” it seems to support what we were talking about it class. Pushkin’s stories seem to either work out miraculously well, or inconceivably badly, depending on which would shock or divert the reader more.
As with the other stories we have read by Pushkin, Dunya’s is a unconventional end of a typical story line. Unlike Liza, who is painted as innocent and pure, Dunya has a certain awareness of her own power in her beauty. Her character leads the reader to believe that her actions will be much more deliberate than a naive character’s would be. References to the prodigal son and her own father’s predictions lead the reader to believe that Dunya will be discarded by Minsky and forced to return to her home to survive. Instead, she returns with three children as an established wealthy woman when her father is dead. Professor Beyer mentioned in class that Pushkin is always trying to surprise the reader, and this unconventional formula certainly applies to “The Postmaster”.
In “The Amateur Peasant Girl”, Pushkin seems to attempt to shock and confuse the reader yet again with the ambiguous ending. The reader is left thirsty for more, and Pushkin cleverly holds back the final details of Liza and Alexei’s relationship. Do they marry as their fathers hope? Or is Alexei betrayed by his precious “Akoulina”‘s deception? It is impossible to know.
When reading Pushkin’s stories, it is easy to imagine him smirking as he carefully leads the reader down a clear path and then cleverly jerks them off of it. Even with this awareness as a reader, his stories can be frustrating and surprising.
As those above have mentioned, Dunya is not quite the same as Liza: there is something all too knowing in how she interacts with strangers. We know from the narrator of Poor Liza that Liza is naïve and ignorant, and that this is something we should mourn – after all, it proved her downfall. But Dunya is represented from the beginning as beautiful but masterly in her interactions with those who stop by the post station of her father; she uses her beauty to calm her father’s clients. Consequently, she is all too aware of the power her beauty has on strange men.
When the story within a story is told, however, we are first informed that something is amiss by the new stranger’s ‘Circassian cap’ and military cloak: at the very least, this is a man who is in the military (influential, respected) and who has spent time in the restive regions around the Caucuses (worse: he himself could be Circassian!). The exotic mystique and his masculine attributes puts one on guard immediately. Later, we find that Dunya has left with the man, but it may well have been of her own volition…is this true? It is difficult to say based on the narrator’s perspective in the story, but I believe that what is important is that (at least until the end) the narrator does not attempt to understand Dunya’s actions for her. Instead, we as readers are gradually allowed clues that she may well be happy in her new life in St. Petersburg – distraught, but happy. If anyone, the father has more naivité in common with Poor Liza than Dunya. Finally, the clues might indicate that Dunya had planned on running away with the soldier, because when she is asked if she would like a ride to church (pg. 72) she hesitates – knowingly, it seems – before her father convinces her to go with him, which she does. She likely knew what the ride would entail.
Concerning the Prodigal Son, Dunya strikes off on her own much like the son of Biblical fame. We are to understand from the situation and juxtaposition of images that Dunya will eventually understand her folly and return home to be forgiven – but that does not happen. Instead, the father is left alone to worry while the Prodigal Daughter [presumably married to the officer] lives the good life. She only returns when her father is dead and can no longer look for her – she has the upper hand, in a sense. There seems to be a semi-critique of the German intellectual presence in Russia lurking behind the images’ inscriptions and comments about the German doctor – as if Pushkin is reluctant to give credence to their knowledge, Biblical or medical.
At first, I truly expected Dunya’s character to have a similar fate as Liza. Like Liza, she toils in order to support her poor, single parent, all the while keeping a smile on her face, seeming not to notice the work she is doing. However, I feel that Dunya is neither poor nor pure. First, I’ll address the purity. Although I believe that Dunya is pure in the sense that she’s a девушка, I don’t think that she can be unquestionably pardoned for her actions. Based on the report given to Samson by the driver, it appears that Dunya consented, if not reluctantly, to going with Minsky. The best word I can think of to describe Dunya in this respect is pragmatic. She is also unlike Liza in that she is clearly not in love with him. We are given no reason to believe that she is, at least not in the way that Liza loved Erast. Also, she is not poor, as later in the story we learn that her life turned out successfully- she is well dressed with several children and a nice carriage. She does not seem displeased with her life. The only reason for which she could possibly receive pity is her failure to reconcile with her father.
The guilt is spread equally. Dunya willingly leaves her father, Minsky deceives his gracious host, and Samson languishes, gives up, and becomes an alcoholic. This is very realistic. Maybe I live very pessimistically, but in my eyes, there has never been a situation in which someone bears all the guilt while another bears none at all. In this set of circumstances, the guilt seems to be spread particularly equitably.
The Prodigal Son theme is developed rather nicely at first with only a few discrepancies. Mainly, Samson does not consent to his daughter’s leaving. There is still the possibility of this story line playing out, but then it veers wildly off course when Samson dies in squalor before Dunya can return with her wealth. Somewhere in the vague middle of the story of Samson and Dunya, the roles completely switch. It’s as if Pushkin is trying to challenge our conception of the way the world should work- our romantic view of family relations. This is in keeping with his continuous ability to do exactly what is beyond the expectations with which each reader begins the story. I agree with Helena about the German inscriptions. I think Pushkin is trying to say something along the lines of, “look, these poor saps are going to get this story all wrong, as they have NO idea how it should really go!”
I would also like to point out that Samson is a rather fitting name for the postmaster. Dunya is the source of his strength (like Samson’s hair) and he cannot function without her.
If “An Amateur Peasant Girl” is the last of Belkin’s tales, then he accomplishes exactly what he did throughout his collection. The anticlimax is perfected here.
In contrast to Liza, Dunya is characterized only by her beautiful appearance, her circumstances and a few actions. She says next to nothing in the story (nothing if you discount her forestallment of Minsky’s rage) and Pushkin is not so bold as Karamzin in speculating as to her thoughts. She is no Poor Liza; her father lives and she has had more than enough experience with her admirers passing through the post station to strive for complete innocence (a kiss stolen by the narrator here and her use of womanly wiles to forestall Minsky’s rage bespeak a lack of naivete). As for the guilty parties in this story, it’s undeniable that Minsky is a seducer and plausible that Dunya agreed to run away, but it would be unfair to assign either complete guilt. Dunya, presumably felt constricted by the mundane stresses and repetitions of her life in the post station, and though she hurt her father her flight was provoked. Minsky, on the other hand, seems more generally guilty (especially, since it’s easier to ascribe evil intentions to men), but evidently he married Dunya. I think this plays well into the reference to the prodigal son, which is a story about realization of a wrong and the forgiveness thereof. Minsky, by marrying Dunya (albeit without the consent of her father), has made good on his crime against her, though her father remains alone. Dunya herself makes her amends as well and though I think her forgivable, she is nonetheless too late in her return. Therein, lie the two contrasts between the stories – the prodigal son leaves with a blessing and returns to a patient and joyful father, while Dunya absconded and returned to a father who had destroyed himself with worry and drink. In some ways this might be attributed to the differences between daughters and sons.
“The Amateur Maid” is making fun of romances and provincials…actually in some ways it reminds me of Chekhov’s “Proposal”; both are comedies of errors on the topic of marriage. Pushkin again toys with our expectations – notably, the gap between the gentry’s perceptions of Alexei and the peasantry’s (hope I’m using it correctly this time). Furthermore, it directly pokes fun at the over-indebted landowner and his provincial brethren. There also seems to be a hint of Russian pride in making fun of Grigori Ivanovitch.
To me, Pushkin’s emphasis on the Prodigal Son supports the notion that Dunya is neither victim nor villain, but rather a sound and genuinely good human being. For the presence of Samson’s paintings in the story is meant to reinforce the archetype that the story of the Prodigal Son represents: that society pushes young people to leave home, and follow the steps and missteps that will ultimately lead to their (however literal) “return” as a mature and knowledgeable being. Against such a background, it appears to me that Dunya has not done anything wrong. Perhaps the details of her leaving seem somewhat disrespectful to Samson, but in considering his initial inability to let her go, can we blame her for leaving in this clandestine manner? Indeed, I’d say she even does better than the Prodigal Son we are shown (who is, perhaps for the sake of a simplistic overview, turned loose by his “venerable” (69) and financially supportive father, and accepted without question upon his return). For Dunya does not become the “ruined youth” (69) characterized by both the boy in the paintings and Karamzin’s Poor Liza. Rather, her decision to leave home and love turn her into the “very beautiful lady” (76) young Vanka witnesses upon her return; in the end she has fulfilled her duty to return matured, and her reluctance, or inability, to quiet her father’s fears should not be seen as a shortcoming on her part. Does this mean that her father was therefore out of line? If anyone is guilty in this story, I would point my finger at Samson. Unlike the father in the parable, he does not understand his child’s wish to leave, and in turn becomes overly anxious about her safety. After seeing her in Petersburg, moreover, he appears beaten, as though he were a suitor and not her father, and that the Hussar had ruined his chances at eternal happiness. He simply does not let go, and his hope that she is successful or “in her grave” (75) shows that he does not fully understand the inevitability of her return. Pushkin thus highlights the society-wide struggle of a child trying to split from their parents’ influence and mature — to apply the theoretical archetype to the individual life. Bringing me to the last question, why the statements are in German. I believe that, artistically, this gives balance to Samson’s ignorance of the parable. Intellectually, he did not understand his paintings, as they were described in a foreign language, which mirrors the emotional misunderstanding seen through his drinking himself to death before Dunya felt ready to return.
The Station Master is not a repeat of Poor Liza. Dunya is also neither pure nor poor. In the story, she seems to hold the role of the pure, naïve virgin, but, as was mentioned earlier, Dunya seemed to want to leave and abandon her father. Also, Dunya was happy, not oppressed, in the presence of the Hussar officer. Finally, she never contacts her father and abandons him to his poverty and loneliness. Dunya seemed to be a large part of the Station Master’s livelihood; with her good looks and charm, she happened to attract a lot of business. I think that with her departure, things probably got astronomically worse for the poor Station Master. No one in this story is truly innocent actually. The Station Master not only absent mindedly gives his daughter to the officer but also wanted to find the money given to him by the Hussar. As Daniell said earlier, this is very symbolic and offensive in Russian culture. Also, the Station Master was told to file a report against the officer but decided instead to “abstain from taking any further steps in the matter” (75). The officer is obviously guilty as he feigned his sickness, paid off the doctor, and then eloped with Dunya. The Hussar, when confronted by the Station Master, first paid him off, which again is offensive, and then forcibly threw him out of Dunya’s apartment. Pushkin as created a story with no protagonist, no one to truly sympathize with.
The pictures of the Prodigal son give foreshadowing to the loss of Dunya. However, the pictures have German inscriptions in order to give the impression that the Russians do not know what is going to happen actually. In essence, the story of the prodigal son, Dunya, is being written by the German speakers (The Doctor and the Officer) rather than Dunya and the Post Master. The Russians, in the same sense, are submitted to the will of the Germans.
I believe that in the final story, The Amateur Maid, Pushkin wishes to turn the roles of traditional romantic novels around completely. Instead of the male suitor tricking the maiden, the maiden tricks the man. Instead of the love being forbidden, the fathers are in full support the denouement. Pushkin accomplished his goal and completely inverted the roles of a Romantic novel.
In the eyes of Samson Vyrin, Dunya is in fact as poor as poor Liza. According to Vyrin, “there is no evading what has been decreed” (71), and poor Dunya had to suffer her inevitable fate. Unlike that of Liza’s, however, Dunya’s fate ends up being a not so bad one when seen through an outsider’s eyes. It seems that she somehow ended up falling in love with her kidnapper, even though at first she was weeping on the troika ride to the church she was not supposed to pass. She seems to have fallen so deep into her new life with Minsky that she’d almost forgotten about her father, and even fainted at the sight of him when he broke into her room. One can say Dunya’s father is the guilty one in the story, as he trusted the German Hussar (those sneaky Немци!) he hardly knew and almost forced the hesitating Dunya to accept Minsky’s offer to take her to church. I believe there is no reason for the reader to believe that Dunya is pure or not pure, seeing as she says almost nothing and all we have to go by are her charm and good looks. She could just be a poor, pure girl who had to suffer the consequences fate had in store for her. I don’t know whether Pushkin wanted the reader to make a parallel between the fates of the Prodigal Son and Dunya, or for the reader to make a distinction between them. It is true that Dunya’s story is not the same as the Prodigal Son’s, seeing as the Son returned soon after squandering all of his fortune, while Dunya did not return for a long time, and when she did, she seemed to be very well off and maybe happy with her children.
Dunya is certainly not pure. Do you think that the narrator was the first man she kissed? The Stationmaster’s admission of how much men loved his daughter, and how often his daughter quelled a man’s temper, convincing him to stay for tea or a meal suggests that she was very possibly kissing-around. And while this may not be condemning, it is not the action of a completely innocent country girl (like Liza was). Sure, Liza was eventually corrupted but at least she was in love and in a committed relationship.
I do like the story in that it shows the aftermath of a romantic eloping on the family of the eloper. As such, I believe it sheds the Stationmaster in the most innocent light. He is left by his daughter. And sure his daughter may not have been happy with him — he was in fact using her — but he seemed to love and care for his daughter a great deal. Further, Dunya doesn’t seem to repent like the Prodigal Son. She visits her father more seemingly to check up on him than to seek repentance. Her grief at his grave can be read as mourning his death, not as regret for her decision to leave him. The Parable of the Prodigal Son seems to me to contrast the story of Dunya and the Stationmaster.
Finally, perhaps the German titles is a part of poking fun at the Germans or giving them a nod at their influence in Russian Culture. For, in “The Snowstorm” Pushkin seems to ridicule French influence in Russia (after defeating the French they sing a French song in Triumph and Maria is caught up in her naive notions inspired by French Romance novels). And the English are ridiculed to a greater extent as Mouromsky affects certain English mannerisms and preferences, which Berestoff detests and Pushkin seems to poke fun at.
As many others have pointed out, Dunya is unlike Poor Liza as she takes decisive action rather than allowing fate to determine her future. It is clear from Pushkin’s narrative that the arrangement to run off with the traveler was made while Minsky was ill at the post station. When Dunya hesitated before getting in her future husband’s coach, it is clear she chose to forsake her life at the post station in favor of momentary passion (of course the marriage will bring her additional wealth). The parable of the Prodigal Son serves as a general structure around which the story should operate—in Pushkin’s usual style, the ending proves unconventional and stirring when Dunya returns to repent but finds her father already deceased. This unfinished cycle indicates ultimate failure in terms of the father-daughter relationship, while the cycle is completed in the eyes of the narrator and reader when Dunya weeps over her father’s grave. As Patrick mentioned, I believe it is difficult to accuse one character of guilt—Dunya runs off and Minsky steals her, yet the postmaster is distracted, busily taking advantage of his daughter’s beauty and charm.
As mentioned in many of the posts above, there are differences between Poor Liza and Dunya, especially that 1) Dunya chose to go somewhat willingly 2) Minsky did not simply discard her. But I don’t agree that just because she was a coquette, she is not pure. What girl doesn’t like attention from men? How do you know that she had any impure thoughts in her mind when she is talking with travelers. That moment of hesitation when Minsky offers her a ride to the church is evident that she was not completely aware of what she was getting herself into. In her previous encounters with travelers, she behaved professionally as a hostess, exploiting men’s weakness, but it seemed to be the first time a traveler has gotten so close to her, and she seemed to see the situation clearer than her father, that if she left, she would not come back.
I agree with what Pat Ford said above about “The Amateur Maid”. The story continues to use satire, but I think it criticizes upper-class Russians’ obsession with Western European cultures more than perfect love stories. For example, Grigori Muromsky fails when he uses English methods to cultivate his Russian garden. Or, when Lizaveta and Alexei meet at the Muromsky’s, Lizaveta intentionally over-dresses herself in a ridiculous French costume and speaks French only, to differentiate herself and hide the Russianness that Alexei may have known Akoulina for.
In fact, Pushkin seems to be saying that one can no longer find real Russian girl among the upper-class, and have to look towards the countryside to find real, pure Russian girls. In this regard, Alexei Berestoff reminds me of Erast in “Poor Liza.” Erast was tired of the Russian girls in the city, for whatever reason, and delights in the simplicity that he hoped to find in Liza. In other words, Liza keeps it real. Similarly, Lizaveta attracts Alexei because Alexei imagines her to come from simple origins, and their relationship held the “charm of novelty”.
The connection between Dunya and the prodigal son is hard one for me to understand. The son asks to leave his father and take his portion of the inheritance with him; Dunya runs away without permission and her father has no estate to share. The prodigal son squanders all of his money and has to hire himself out as a shepherd; Dunya’s situation only improves from the time she leaves her father. The prodigal son returns to his father begging for a servant job; Dunya does not return to her father, rejects him the one time he comes to find her, and goes home only after he has died. Instead of killing the fattened calf and rejoicing “because [he] was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found,” she pays several people and again leaves town. In actuality, the two stories are in no way similar, yet Pushkin deliberately incorporates the prodigal son into “the stationmaster”. I think that the reason he has the story be on the wall in German is to show that it is not fully understood. Perhaps Dunya was trying to replicate the story to make her father happy (as the father in the Prodigal Son is overjoyed to see his son return), but misinterpreted the pictures and couldn’t read the German. If this is true, then she didn’t return home perhaps because she was waiting until she was in dire straits, a situation which never occurred. It could also be that Pushkin is trying to make a deeper point here, that The Bible is foolish and real life does not have happy endings. As we talked about in class, Pushkin was a genius and is often poking fun at something. By the inclusion of the parable of the Prodigal Son in this story, it seems to be that he is trying to make a comment about religion.
I wanted to offer an alternate reading to the way that the Prodigal Son can influence our reading of the Stationmaster. In the Prodigal Son, the father is clearly ‘good’ and the son is clearly converted from ‘evil’ or ‘temptation’. But, according to the narrator, this is not the Russian take on things, for the paintings are clearly German imports. The rest of the narrative comes to serve as a moral complication of the Prodigal Son story in a Russian context. First, the son is now a daughter, Dunya. Her relative passivity, in getting kissed or being whisked away by Captain Minsky, is totally different than the active participation in temptation by the son of Jesus’ parable. Throughout the rest of the story, the reader is not exactly clear whether to label her a victim or not (“Dunya had wept the whole of the way, although she seemed to go of her own free will,” 73), and so too with her father. Whereas the father of the Prodigal Son seemingly waits patiently for his son to return home upright, Dunya’s father is constantly trying in vain to right a wrong that he committed when he let MInsky take Dunya. Indeed, even in the paintings of the Prodigal Son, the father does indeed initiate the son’s temptations by giving him funds to spend; however, in the biblical story, right and wrong are clear.Finally, though the father desires to “Bring my lost lamb home again,” (73), it ultimately ends tragically when Dunya only returns to find her father’s unimpressive grave. Even the fact that there is a ‘black cross’ seems significant – Pushkin subverts the reader’s traditional sense of right and wrong when he doesn’t even give clarity and meaning to the final scene.
Let’s think back to the beginning of the story. One might ask why the narrator opens with a tangential explanation about the apparently clear moral standing of the postmaster – that he is always the lowest of the low. Pushkin seems to be establishing the same theme of questioning the status quo of what is normally considered good and bad – both inside and outside of Russian culture
Poor Dunya is no repeat of Poor Liza, the two are almost entirely different characters, only keeping the same Russian saintly feminine quality in common. She is not entirely poor and not entirely pure. An entirely pure lady would not have driven off with the young Hussar, however, Dunya redeems herself by visiting the grave of her father and remembering him in her thoughts.
I dont know why the Prodigal Sun myth is in German in this story. The tale of the Prodigal Sun is almost inverted in this story. The girl comes back after being in the world and she has gained while her home has fallen.
I dont know what Pushkin is trying to accomplish with his final story. It is a nice blend of swasbuckling characters, fair nobleman, and beautiful daughters as well as of a very opportune twist of fate, all the ingredients for a traditional Russian story. I dont think he has any “message” to convey.
Poor Liza and Dunya do not, in my opinion, correlate to one another. Liza by the end of the story not only loses her ‘purity’ but she also commits to suicide by drowning herself. On the other hand, even though Dunya runs away from home with Minsky she returns to visit her father after his death but is in good shape. “A very beautiful lady. She was in a carriage with six horses, and had along with her three little children, a nurse, and a little lapdog” (77). Even though Dunya was not ‘pure’ so to speak, she didn’t end up as what we might have thought. Dunya could have easily ended up living alone after Minsky had “gone to fight in the war”. Something interesting is the relationship with both Liza and her mother and Dunya and her father. Each of these girls love their parents but somehow betray them and leave them behind to suffer.
The Prodigal Son was an interesting image to compare the story with. It was interesting to see how Pushkin uses it to sort of outline what will occur in the story but in a different manor. We learn about the different pictures and what each of them entails. By the end, we are able to make the connection that Dunya’s life was very similar to that of the Prodigal Son, except that she must weep her father’s death while the son rejoices his return to his father.
I agree with David and Gene that, compared to the parable of the Prodigal Son, “The Postmaster” works oppositely: Dunya leaves essentially unwillingly, at her father’s instruction, with the Hussar; the father chases after his daughter instead of presuming her dead; he finds her and is reconciled to her death, and finally dies believing that she could care less; she returns to his grave, though doing so cannot make up for what her father lost in life. As Danielle points out, Dunya is also never richer (economically or familially) than when she’s away from and eventually returns home. Perhaps I’ve attributed too much paternal power over his daughter’s departure to the Stationmaster, considering that he very nearly depends on his daughter’s presence, but I’d point out that he both sanctions and commands—with the imperative “drive with him” (72)—that Dunya go with the Hussar, which I conceive of as her forced consent (the carriage driver says she cried the whole way—arguably out of remorse, but more likely from feeling given away by her father). A number of the stories we’ve read hinge heavily on this notion of assuming the best in someone at a weak moment, much as Karamzin’s poor Liza did not extract any promises from her lover because she had absolute faith in and respect for him. To this end, I see the closest parallel between “Poor Liza” and “The Stationmaster” in Liza and the Postmaster, for their irrational trust in a situation that flies out of their control largely because they need no promises from a life ultimately too good to be true; both of these characters effectively consent, albeit unknowingly, to their ruination. The German verses depicted in the pictures predict and prove their story’s incomprehension in Pushkin’s tale, both in that this variation will depart from the Biblical parable and because Samson will not have the happy ending that I assume he envisions, but cannot read.