The theater season of 1859 was marked by a striking event - the premiere of the work “The Storm” by playwright Alexander Nikolayevich Ostrovsky. Against the backdrop of the rise of the democratic movement for the abolition of serfdom, his play was more than relevant. She was literally torn from the author’s hands immediately after writing: the production of the performance completed in July was already on the Petersburg stage in August!
Fresh look at Russian reality
A clear innovation was the image of the "lost" city shown in the drama Ostrovsky's "Thunderstorm". The playwright, born in the Moscow merchant district, thoroughly knew the world presented to him by the audience, inhabited by bourgeois and merchants. The tyranny of the merchants and the poverty of the philistines reached completely ugly forms, which, of course, were promoted by the notorious serfdom.
Realistic, as if written off from life, the production (at first in St. Petersburg) made it possible for people buried in everyday affairs to suddenly see from the side the world in which they live. It's no secret - mercilessly ugly. Hopeless. Indeed - the "dark kingdom." What was seen was a shock to people.
Averaged image of a provincial town
Not only the capital was associated with the image of the "lost" city in the drama Ostrovsky's "Thunderstorm". The author, working on material for his play, purposefully visited a number of settlements in Russia, creating typical, collective images: Kostroma, Tver, Yaroslavl, Kineshma, Kalyazin. Thus, the city dweller saw from the stage a wide picture of the life of central Russia. In Kalinov, a Russian citizen recognized the world in which he lived. It was like a revelation that needed to be seen, realized ...
It would be unfair not to note that Alexander Ostrovsky decorated his work with one of the most remarkable female images in Russian classical literature. The prototype for creating the image of Katerina for the author was actress Kositskaya Lyubov Pavlovna. Ostrovsky simply inserted her type, manner of speaking, and replicas into the plot.
The radical protest chosen by the heroine against the "dark kingdom" - suicide - was not original either. After all, there was no shortage of stories when a person was “eaten alive” in a merchant's environment behind “high fences” (the expressions were taken from Savel Prokofich’s story to a city man). Reports of such suicides have periodically appeared in the modern Ostrovsky press.
Kalinov as the kingdom of unfortunate people
The image of the "lost" city in the drama of Ostrovsky's "Thunderstorm" really was like a fabulous "dark kingdom". Very few really happy people lived in it. If ordinary people worked hopelessly, leaving them only three hours a day for sleep, then employers tried to enslave them even more so as to enrich themselves even more on the work of the unfortunate.
Wealthy citizens, merchants, fenced off fellow citizens with tall fences and gates. However, according to the same merchant Wild, there is no happiness behind these constipations, for they "fenced off" not from thieves, but so that it was not visible how "the rich ... eat home-eaten by food." And they are behind these fences "robbing relatives, nephews ...". They beat the house so that they "dare not dare".
Apologists for the "dark kingdom"
Obviously, the image of the “lost” city in the drama of Ostrovsky's “Thunderstorm” is not at all independent. The richest city dweller is the merchant Wild Savel Prokofich. This is a type of illegible person, who is used to humiliating ordinary people and not paying them for their work. So, in particular, he himself talks about an episode when a peasant addresses him with a request to borrow money. Savel Prokofich himself cannot explain why then he was furious: he cursed, and then almost beat the unfortunate ...
He is also a true tyrant for his kin. His wife daily begs visitors not to anger the merchant. His domestic rampage makes the family hide from this tyrant in the pantries and attics.
Negative images in the drama “Thunderstorm” are also complemented by the rich widow of the merchant Kabanova - Marfa Ignatievna. She, unlike the Wild, “eats a meal” of her family. Moreover, Kabanikha (such is her street nickname) is trying to completely subordinate the household to her will. Her son Tikhon is completely deprived of independence, is a miserable likeness of a man. The daughter of Barbara, on the other hand, “did not break,” but she changed radically internally. Her principles of life were deceit and secrecy. “That everything was sewn-covered,” - as Varenka herself claims.
Katerina Kabanikha brings her daughter-in-law to suicide, extorting observance of a far-fetched old Testament order: bowing to her incoming husband, "howling in public," seeing off her spouse. The critic Dobrolyubov in the article “Ray of light in the dark kingdom” writes about this mockery as follows: “He nibbles for a long time and relentlessly.”
Ostrovsky - Columbus Merchant Life
The characterization of the drama "Thunderstorm" was given in the press of the beginning of the XIX century. Ostrovsky was called the Columbus of the Patriarchal Merchants. His childhood and youth passed in the Moscow-populated area of ​​the merchants, and as a court clerk, he had more than once encountered the “dark side” of the life of various “Wilds” and “Boars”. What was previously hidden from society behind the high fences of the mansions became apparent. The play caused a significant resonance in society. Contemporaries recognized that a dramatic masterpiece raises a large layer of the problems of Russian society.
Output
The reader, getting acquainted with the work of Alexander Ostrovsky, will certainly discover a special, not personified character - the city in the drama "Thunderstorm". This city created real monsters, oppressing people: Wild and Boar. They are an integral part of the "dark kingdom."
It is noteworthy that it is these characters who do their best to support the dark patriarchal senselessness of house building in the city of Kalinov, and they personally instill man-hating mores in it. The city as a character in
Ostrovsky’s work is static. He seemed to have stopped in his development. At the same time, it is noticeable that the "dark kingdom" in the drama "Thunderstorm" is living out its times. The Kabanihi family is collapsing ... It expresses fears about its mental health by the Wild ... The townspeople understand that the beauty of the Volga nature discords with the difficult moral atmosphere of the city.