 First edition | |
| Author | Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin |
|---|---|
| Original title | Господа Головлёвы |
| Country | Russia |
| Language | Russian |
| Genre | Family chronicle, satirical novel |
| Publisher | Otechestvennye Zapiski |
Publication date | 1875–1880 |
Published in English | 1910 |
The Golovlyov Family (Russian: Господа Головлёвы, romanized: Gospoda Golovlyovy; also translated as The Golovlevs or A Family of Noblemen: The Gentlemen Golovliov) is a novel by Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, written in the course of five years, first published in 1880, and generally regarded as the author's magnum opus.
The Golovlyov Family is regarded as a classic of Russian literature. According to D. S. Mirsky, it is "the gloomiest book in all Russian literature", and "this one book" places the author "in the very front line of Russian realistic novelists and secures him a permanent place among the national classics".[1]
The principal characters of the novel are based on the members of Saltykov's family. Saltykov's mother is closely portrayed in Arina Petrovna, while Porphyry has many features of Saltykov's older brother Dmitry. N. Belogolovy, Saltykov's friend and doctor, described the family as "savage and ill-tempered" and relations by its members as "marked by an animal cruelty, devoid of any warm familial aspects".[2]
In 1875 Saltykov started a series of satirical short stories The Well-Meant Speeches for the magazine Otechestvennye zapiski, which initially contained several stories about the Golovlyovs. However, the idea of a large family chronicle novel, designed to show the stagnation of the land-based gentry (dvoryanstvo), was formed only in 1876, when Saltykov stopped publishing stories about the family under the title The Well-Meant Speeches. In 1880 Shchedrin wrote the final chapter of the novel and reworked all of them to publish the novel as a separate book.
Arina Petrova, matriarch of the Golovlyov family, runs a large estate (4,000 serfs) in Russia. She learns that her first born son, Stepan/Styopka/The Dolt has squandered the land and house she gave to him. She was a practical and strict noblewoman, and she banished her drunken husband Vladmir Mihailitch to his room for several decades while she ran the estate. Arina sent Stepan to college, where he was the class clown. He worked in a series of government jobs, but lost them all due to laziness. He returns home after losing his estate. Arina’s second child is Anna, who ran off and married a musician named Ulanov. Anna has twin girls Anninka and Lubinka. Ulanov soon abandons his family, and Anna dies of an illness 3 months later. Arina hoped to be rid of her children by giving them estates. She was very upset when Anna died (“throwing her two brats on to my shoulders”) and when Stepan returned. Her third son is Porphyry/Iudushka/Bloodsucker; he is an obsequious, scheming son. Her fourth son is Pavel; he is normal and unremarkable in any way. She keeps her family on a very tight financial leash, and they live at poverty level despite their wealth. Stepan, having nowhere to go, sadly travels back home. Arina declares that she hates him, and says "he has been nothing but a worry and a disgrace to me all his life.” She wonders who she is saving her money for. Stepan is let back into the estate, but becomes depressed and runs away one winter evening. He is found alive but never speaks again; he dies shortly thereafter.
Serfdom is abolished by the Tsar. Vladimir Mihailitch dies and Arina divides her estate between her 2 remaining children. Pavel dies from alcoholism having refused to make a will. This means everything goes to Porphyry. Arina leaves the big house and moves in with her orphaned twin granddaughters to the Pogorelka estate. Porphyry gets married and has 2 sons. He becomes very religious, but it is only for show.
While Arina is very strict with the girls, her energy for managing an estate is waning. The girls demand to leave, and she lets them. Arina becomes depressed living in an empty house in rural Russia. She begins visiting her son for good food and conversation. Porphyry’s wife dies, and he takes a lover, Yevpraxeya. The twins write back that they have both become successful provincial actresses and can support themselves. Porphyry’s first son, Volodya, kills himself. Porphyry’s second son, Pyotr/Petenka, arrives unexpectedly to beg for money. He was an infantry treasurer that has gambled the unit’s money away. Pyotr explains that Volodya killed himself because Porphyry refused to support him and his new wife (Volodya informed, but didn’t ask permission for the marriage). Porphyry refuses to pay the debt, sending Pyotr away to await trial.
Arina falls ill. Porphyry calls for the twins as Arina dies. Prophyry’s son Pyotr is banished to Siberia and he dies on the way there. Anninka arrives to settle some paperwork since Arina died. The twins want to continue their acting careers, and have no interest in moving back. Porphyry has become a compulsive talker. Anninka’s visit with Porphyry is awful and she leaves as soon as the papers are signed.
Yevpraxeya becomes pregnant with Porphyry’s child. He is afraid of a scandal, so he ignores the pregnancy and denies any involvement. She gives birth to a boy; Porphyry feels guilty for having a child out of wedlock, so he sends the baby to the orphanage without Yevpraxeya’s knowledge.
Yevpraxeya, deprived of her child, decides to ruin Porphyry’s life. She begins to complain incessantly and refuses to listen to Porphyry’s constant babbling. She takes several lovers. Porphyry becomes a recluse and begins to lose his mind.
The twins’ middling acting careers eventually turn them into prostitutes. They both are with 2 municipal treasurers, who embezzle funds to fuel their relationships. When everything is discovered, the twins decide to commit suicide together. Only Lubinka drinks the poison and dies. A depleted Anninka arrives at Golovlyov in the winter. Anninka and Porphyry begin drinking heavily together each night. While reminiscing, they get into awful screaming fights. Porphyry slowly realizes that he has been awful to everybody his entire life. He wonders who he was saving all of his money for. As Holy Week approaches, Porphyry’s guilt overcomes him. He leaves in the night to ask for forgiveness at his mother’s grave. He is found frozen to death the next day. Anninka is unconscious on her death bed. A messenger goes to inform a distant relative (Nadya Galkin) about being the new heir to the Golovlyov estate and capital.
The Golovlyov Family grew up from The Well-Meant Speeches, a series of satirical stories and sketches, intended as critical studies of the "pillars of society". On January 2, 1881, Saltykov explained his work in a letter to Yevgeny Utin: "I took a look at the family, the state, the property and found out that none of such things exist. And that those very principles for the sake of which freedoms have been granted, were not respected as principles any more, even by those who seemed to hold them."[3] The novel focuses on the institution of the family as cornerstone of society: unlike the conservatives, who portray the traditional family in positive tones, Saltykov gives an image of a dysfunctional family.
Unlike his other works, in which Saltykov condemns the serfdom for its cruelty caused to the serfs, in The Golovlyov Family he condemns is for what it did to the masters, whom he shows to have been its moral victims. In contrast to the "gentry nests" depicted by Ivan Turgenev (Home of the Gentry) and Leo Tolstoy, Golovlyovo becomes a symbolical source of the family's malaise.[2]
However, as I. P. Foote notes, social-historical interest of the novel is overshadowed by the psychological portrayal of the two main characters, Porfiry Vladimirovich and Arina Petrovna.
James Wood calls Shchedrin a precursor of Knut Hamsun and the modernists:
The closer Shchedrin gets close to Porphyry, the more unknowable he actually becomes. In this sense, Porphyry is a modernist prototype: the character who lacks an audience, the alienated actor. The hypocrite who does not know that he is one, and really be told that he is one by anyone around him, is something of a revolutionary type of character, for he has no "true" knowable self, no "stable" ego... Around the turn of the twentieth century, Knut Hamsun, a novelist strongly influenced by Dostoevsky and the Russian novel, would invent a newkind of character: the lunatic heroes of his novels Hunger and Mysteries go around telling falsely incriminating stories about themselves and acting badly when they have no obvious reason to. [...] The line from Dostoevsky, through Shchedrin, and on to Hamsun, is visible. [4]
As Foote notes, the ending of the novel reveals "Saltykov's view that human decency and dignity can be obtained by even the most abject of beings". The role of conscience in "bringing about a transformation of human life" is an important theme in Saltykov's other works, particularly in the novel The History of a Town.[2]
