Mikhail Lermontov and A Rake’s Progress

Abstract

No less than Pushkin’s Onegin and Tatyana, Pechorin, the ‘hero’ of Lermontov’s only completed novel, A Hero of Our Time, has become a seminal figure in nineteenth-century Russian literature and the criticism of it. Perhaps more than any other single literary character in the language, the young travelling army officer who seeks adventure and challenge (and much else besides) in the Caucasus has given rise to a wide variety of different and often conflicting interpretations and opinions.² His portrait has also been acclaimed as the first psychological study in Russian, and the novel as revolutionary in form, structure and theme.³ The depiction of women and their destinies in the novel has received less serious attention, and such characters as Princess Mary, Bela and Vera are often seen simply as foils to an illumination of the central figure, or as mere victims of this ‘alarming type, that of the predatory man’.⁴ All this may be as true as any set of generalities about a ‘classic’ text and a deeply influential novel. However, a closer reading of the work from the present perspective reveals that the novel as a whole, and not simply Pechorin’s character and his treatment of women, is a deeply misogynist account of the female (and, specifically, the feminine) character.

… it is not easy to define the attractiveness of Pechorin: perhaps it lies in his exceptional quality of combining strength of character and adventurous action with introspection and a vivid mode of expression, to which may be added a taste for flouting social conventions.¹