page_title: The Landlady (novella)
section_title: Themes and style
hierarchical_section_title: The Landlady (novella) / Themes and style
caption_attribution_description: English: "A graphic representation of the multilevelled structure of The Landlady, to illustrate Dostoevsky s creative method, I: thematic; II: socio-political; III: meta- physical; IV: autobiographical; V: psychological; VI: literary; VII: literal. The numbers in level VI refer to the following stories: 1: Der Magnétiseur, Hoffmann; 2: Der unheimliche Gast, Hoffmann; 3: Improvizator, Odoevsky; 4: Der Sand- mann, Hoffmann; 5: A Terrible Vengeance, Gogol; 6: Der Artushof, Hoffmann"
context_page_description: The Landlady is a novella by Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky, written in 1847. Set in Saint Petersburg, it tells of an abstracted young man, Vasily Mikhailovich Ordynov, and his obsessive love for Katerina, the wife of a dismal husband whom Ordynov perceives as a malignant fortune-teller or mystic. The story has echoes of Russian folklore and may contain autobiographical references. In its time The Landlady had a mixed reception, more recently being seen as perhaps unique in Dostoevsky's oeuvre. The first part of the novella was published in October 1847 in Notes of the Fatherland, the second part in November that year.
context_section_description: According to Neuhäuser, The Landlady incorporates themes found in artistic fairy tales, which, unlike typical folk tales, are written by a particular person, and not collected from hearsay. According to Professor S. Gibian, The Landlady is a "recreation of folktale diction and imagery" and "its plot is based on the three folklore motifs, man–woman dominance, the incestuous father–daughter relationship, and Volga outlaw tales."
  The abstracted chief protagonist, Ordynov, is a prototype of future characters that would appear in "White Nights" and Netochka Nezvanova. C. E. Passage felt that the work was influenced by Gogol's Taras Bulba and A Terrible Vengeance, Odoevsky's Improvizator, Hoffmann's Die Elixiere des Teufels, Der Magnetiseur, Der unheimliche Gast, Der Sandmann and Der Artushof. In Dostoevsky: The Adapter, Passage argues that the "truth of the matter is that Dostoevsky was again compounding story elements as in the case of The Double."
  Alfred Bem postulates in Dramatizatsiia breda that The Landlady incorporates autobiographical elements. Influenced by Freud's psychoanalysis, he argued that Ordynov's familial relationship with Katerina and Murin was similar to Dostoevsky's own, and found reflections of the writer's affair with Avdotya Panayeva, whom he met within her husband's political circle. Bem states that tiring quarrels between circle members Nikolay Nekrasov and Ivan Turgenev worsened Dostoevsky's health, which was already unstable due to stress. Elements of Gothic literature were also detected in the story's dark atmosphere, and the strange character of the relationship between Katerina and Ordynov. Valery Kirpotin believes that the novella discusses good and evil. The critic Stanisław Mackiewicz felt that he had found the key to understanding its symbolic content and the reason for Belinsky's animosity: "I am of the belief that the young person represents the Russian intelligence, and the woman with the expressive name 'The Landlady' the Russian folk, while the haunted fortuneteller echoes the religious beliefs of that folk and especially the schismatic Old Believers."
  Sophie Ollivier says that the novella tries to "penetrate into the essence of the historical consciousness of the Russian people, of the Russian faith". Robert Mann believes that Murin is based on the Prophet Elijah, and that Ordynov has a similar religiosity to several literary characters in the 1860s and 1870s. Murin could also be a precursor of The Grand Inquisitor from The Brothers Karamazov.
caption: A graphic representation of the multilevelled structure of "The Landlady", to illustrate Dostoevsky's creative method, I: thematic; II: socio-political; III: meta-physical; IV: autobiographical; V: psychological; VI: literary; VII: literal. The numbers in level VI refer to the following stories: 1: "Der Magnétiseur", Hoffmann; 2: "Der unheimliche Gast", Hoffmann; 3: Improvizator, Odoevskii; 4: "Der Sandmann", Hoffmann; 5: A Terrible Vengeance, Gogol; 6: "Der Artushof", Hoffmann
exif: {}