Ivan Andreevich Bunin had an extraordinary talent to reveal the most secret corners of the character of his characters. Bunin's short story “Beauty”, a brief summary of which follows, is a work of small volume, but filled with the deepest moral meaning.
The history of the creation of "Beauty"
It is known that the author wrote this work, being at a fairly advanced age. This is the time when a certain reappraisal of values takes place and many things begin to be seen in a completely different light.
“Beauty” was created by Bunin in the 40s of the XX century and complemented a magnificent collection of short stories by Ivan Andreevich “Dark Alleys”. This story reflected the author’s thoughts about the combination of external and internal beauty, about how cruel a creature beautiful at first glance can be. Bunin's story “Beauty” summarizes very important information, cleared of unnecessary details. It is easy to read, "in one go", but it makes the reader think deeply.
I. A. Bunin, “Beauty”: contents
The story begins with a report that an elderly widow official married a young girl. She was a rare beauty. By himself, this man was quiet and modest, completely unattractive, quite ordinary. And others were wondering how he managed to marry such a beautiful girl. It was especially embarrassing to everyone that the official’s first wife was beautiful.
Everything was fine in the young wife. She was neat, economic, smart and calm. Immediately took all the power in the house into her fragile hands. But it so happened that the little seven-year-old son of her husband from her first marriage did not please her. She hated him and began to completely ignore him, pretending that the boy did not exist. Submissive to her power, the father of the child soon succumbed to the influence of his wife and, in order not to anger his spouse, he stopped paying attention to his child at all.
The boy was moved from his father's room into a small room, where there was a velvet upholstered sofa, which became his bed. Since the child was sleeping uneasily, the beautiful mistress was worried that he might wipe the velvet on the sofa. She ordered the maid to get the old mattress out of his late mother’s chest and lay the stepson’s bed on the floor.
After that, the boy healed completely apart from the whole family. No one was interested in or interested in him. All his amusements consisted of drawing with chalk on a blackboard or reading the same book, which was bought by him by his mother. No one cared about this child.
The main idea of the story
In the story of I. A. Bunin, "Beauty", the summary does not distort the storyline. The short-volume work impresses with the scale of grief of a little boy abandoned by loved ones. The beauty who became the mistress of the house, an imperious and uncompromising woman. She “calmly” hated the boy, that is, she showed incredible annihilating indifference to him. Thus, Bunin shows how terrible the essence of a person can be, hidden by a deceptive appearance. The heroine of the story at the end is not perceived by the reader as a beautiful woman, she remains only a “beauty” with a disgusting callous heart, devoid of heat.
Bunin's story “Beauty” with its brief content and deep meaning has attracted the attention of millions of readers around the world.