Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (story)
Encyclopedia
Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District is an 1865 novel
of the Russia
n writer Nikolai Leskov
.
Among its themes are the subordinate role expected from women in 19th century Europe
an society, adultery
, provincial life (thus drawing comparison with Flaubert's Madame Bovary
) and the planning of murder
by a woman, hence the title inspired by the Shakespearean character Lady Macbeth
from his play
Macbeth
. The title also echoes the title of Turgenev's story Hamlet of the Shchigrovsky District (1859).
Leskov's story inspired an opera
of the same name by Dmitri Shostakovich
, and the 1962 Polish
film
by Andrzej Wajda
, Sibirska Ledi Magbet (Siberian Lady Macbeth
).
shares the basic characters and outline, it has a number of differences from the original story in terms of plot and emphasis. One example is in the convoy after Katerina gives Sergei her stockings: in the opera, all the women mock Katerina, whereas in the story, Sergei and Sonya mock her while Fiona and Gordyushka shame them in response to their cruelty toward her.
Chapter 1
The Ismailov family is introduced: Boris, the father of Zinovy, the husband of Katerina for the past five years. Boris and Zinovy are merchants, ruling an estate with many peasant-slaves. Katerina is bored in their empty home, and tired of Boris' constant orders and scolding of her for not producing any children. She would actually welcome a child, and Zinovy's previous wife of twenty years fared no better.
Chapter 2
A dam bursts at a mill owned by Boris, and Zinovy leaves town to oversee its repair. Aksinya, the female cook, and Sergei, a newly arrived farmhand, are introduced. Katerina flirts somewhat innocently with Sergei. Aksinya tells Katerina, who has become bored enough to venture out amongst the peasants, of Sergei's reputation as a womanizer.
Chapter 3
Sergei comes into Katerina's room, and after some dialogue about romance, moves to kiss her roughly. She protests at first, but then gives in; after an implied sexual encounter, she tells Sergei to leave because Boris will be coming by to lock her door. He stays, saying he can use the window instead.
Chapter 4
After a week of the continued affair, Boris catches Sergei and accused him of adultery. Sergei won't admit or deny it, so Boris whips him until his own arm hurts from the exertion, and locks Sergei in a cellar. Katerina seems to come alive from her boredom, but Boris threatens to beat her as well when she asks for Sergei's release.
Chapter 5
Katerina poisons Boris, and he's buried without his son and without suspicion. She then takes charge of the estate and begins to order people around, openly being around Sergei every day.
Chapter 6
Katerina has a strange dream about a cat. Some dialogue occurs with Sergei, which by its end reveals his worry over Zinovy's return and desire to marry her.
Chapter 7
Katerina again dreams of the cat, which this time has Boris' head rather than a cat's. Zinovy returns and takes some time getting around to confront Katerina with what he's heard about her affair. Finally she calls Sergei in, kisses him in front of her husband, some violence occurs, and the two of them are strangling Zinovy.
Chapter 8
Zinovy dies, and Sergei buries him deep in the walls of the cellar where he himself had been kept.
Chapter 9
Some convenient circumstances regarding Zinovy's return shroud his disappearance in mystery, and while there's an inquiry, nothing is found and no trouble comes to Sergei or Katerina. The latter becomes pregnant. Everything seems to be working out for them, until Boris' young nephew Fyodor shows up with his mother, preventing Katerina from inheriting the estate. She has no problem with this and actually makes an effort to be a good aunt, but Sergei complains repeatedly for a time about their misfortune.
Chapter 10
Fyodor falls ill, and Katerina, while tending to him, has a change of heart because of Sergei's earlier complaints.
Chapter 11
Katerina and Sergei suffocate the boy, but a crowd returning from church storms the house, one of its members having spied the act through the shutters of Fyodor's room. Sergei, hearing the windows clattering from the crowd's fists, thinks the ghosts of his murder victims have come back to haunt him, and breaks down.
Chapter 12
Sergei admits to the crime publicly and, in repentance, also tells of where Zinovy is buried and admits to that crime as well. Katerina indifferently admits that she helped with the murders, saying it was all for Sergei. The two are sent to exile in Siberia. During their journey there, Katerina gives birth in a prison hospital, and wants nothing to do with their child.
Chapter 13
The child is sent to be raised by Fyodor's mother and becomes heir to the Ismailov estate. Katerina continues to be obsessed with Sergei, who increasingly wants nothing to do with her. Fiona and "little Sonya," two members of the prison convoy with Katerina and Sergei, are introduced, the former being known for being sexually prolific, the latter the opposite.
Chapter 14
Sergei is caught by Katerina while being intimate with Fiona. Katerina is mortified, but seeing Fiona's indifference to the whole situation, reaches something approaching cordiality with Fiona by writing her off. Sergei then pursues little Sonya, who won't sleep with him unless he gives her a pair of stockings. Sergei then complains to Katerina about his ankle-cuffs. She, being happy that he's talking to her again, readily gives him her last pair of new stockings to ease his pain, which he then gives to Sonya for sexual favours.
Chapter 15
Katerina sees Sonya wearing her stockings, and spits in Sergei's eyes, and shoves him. He promises revenge, and later breaks into her cell with another man, giving her fifty lashes with a rope, while Katerina's cell-mate Sonya giggles in the background. Katerina, broken, lets Fiona console her, and realizes that she is no better than Fiona, which is her last straw: after that she is emotionless. On the road in the prison convoy, Sergei and Sonya together mock Katerina. Sonya offers her stockings to her for sale. Sergei reminisces about both their courtship and their murders in the same airy manner. Fiona and an old man in the convoy, Gordyushka, defend Katerina, but to no avail. The convoy arrives at a river and boards a ferry, and Katerina, repeating some phrases similar to Sergei's feigned nostalgia for their life at the estate, tackles Sonya overboard after seeing the faces of Boris, Zinovy, and Fyodor in the water. The two women appear briefly at the surface, still alive, but Katerina grabs Sonya, and they both drown.
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
of the Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n writer Nikolai Leskov
Nikolai Leskov
Nikolai Semyonovich Leskov was a Russian journalist, novelist and short story writer, who also wrote under the pseudonym M. Stebnitsky. Praised for his unique writing style and innovative experiments in form, held in high esteem by Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov and Maxim Gorky among others, Leskov is...
.
Among its themes are the subordinate role expected from women in 19th century Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
an society, adultery
Adultery
Adultery is sexual infidelity to one's spouse, and is a form of extramarital sex. It originally referred only to sex between a woman who was married and a person other than her spouse. Even in cases of separation from one's spouse, an extramarital affair is still considered adultery.Adultery is...
, provincial life (thus drawing comparison with Flaubert's Madame Bovary
Madame Bovary
Madame Bovary is Gustave Flaubert's first published novel and is considered his masterpiece. The story focuses on a doctor's wife, Emma Bovary, who has adulterous affairs and lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life...
) and the planning of murder
Murder
Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...
by a woman, hence the title inspired by the Shakespearean character Lady Macbeth
Lady Macbeth (Shakespeare)
Lady Macbeth is a fictional character in Shakespeare's Macbeth . She is the wife to the play's protagonist, Macbeth, a Scottish nobleman. After goading him into committing regicide, she becomes Queen of Scotland, but later suffers pangs of guilt for her part in the crime...
from his play
Play (theatre)
A play is a form of literature written by a playwright, usually consisting of scripted dialogue between characters, intended for theatrical performance rather than just reading. There are rare dramatists, notably George Bernard Shaw, who have had little preference whether their plays were performed...
Macbeth
Macbeth
The Tragedy of Macbeth is a play by William Shakespeare about a regicide and its aftermath. It is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy and is believed to have been written sometime between 1603 and 1607...
. The title also echoes the title of Turgenev's story Hamlet of the Shchigrovsky District (1859).
Leskov's story inspired an opera
Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (opera)
Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District is an opera in four acts by Dmitri Shostakovich, his Op.29. The libretto was written by Alexander Preis and the composer, and is based on the story Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District by Nikolai Leskov. The opera is sometimes referred to informally as Lady Macbeth...
of the same name by Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a Soviet Russian composer and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century....
, and the 1962 Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
by Andrzej Wajda
Andrzej Wajda
Andrzej Wajda is a Polish film director. Recipient of an honorary Oscar, he is possibly the most prominent member of the unofficial "Polish Film School"...
, Sibirska Ledi Magbet (Siberian Lady Macbeth
Siberian Lady Macbeth
Siberian Lady Macbeth , also translated as Fury Is a Woman, is a 1962 film directed by Andrzej Wajda, based on the novella Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District by Nikolai Leskov....
).
Plot summary
Although the operaLady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (opera)
Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District is an opera in four acts by Dmitri Shostakovich, his Op.29. The libretto was written by Alexander Preis and the composer, and is based on the story Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District by Nikolai Leskov. The opera is sometimes referred to informally as Lady Macbeth...
shares the basic characters and outline, it has a number of differences from the original story in terms of plot and emphasis. One example is in the convoy after Katerina gives Sergei her stockings: in the opera, all the women mock Katerina, whereas in the story, Sergei and Sonya mock her while Fiona and Gordyushka shame them in response to their cruelty toward her.
Chapter 1
The Ismailov family is introduced: Boris, the father of Zinovy, the husband of Katerina for the past five years. Boris and Zinovy are merchants, ruling an estate with many peasant-slaves. Katerina is bored in their empty home, and tired of Boris' constant orders and scolding of her for not producing any children. She would actually welcome a child, and Zinovy's previous wife of twenty years fared no better.
Chapter 2
A dam bursts at a mill owned by Boris, and Zinovy leaves town to oversee its repair. Aksinya, the female cook, and Sergei, a newly arrived farmhand, are introduced. Katerina flirts somewhat innocently with Sergei. Aksinya tells Katerina, who has become bored enough to venture out amongst the peasants, of Sergei's reputation as a womanizer.
Chapter 3
Sergei comes into Katerina's room, and after some dialogue about romance, moves to kiss her roughly. She protests at first, but then gives in; after an implied sexual encounter, she tells Sergei to leave because Boris will be coming by to lock her door. He stays, saying he can use the window instead.
Chapter 4
After a week of the continued affair, Boris catches Sergei and accused him of adultery. Sergei won't admit or deny it, so Boris whips him until his own arm hurts from the exertion, and locks Sergei in a cellar. Katerina seems to come alive from her boredom, but Boris threatens to beat her as well when she asks for Sergei's release.
Chapter 5
Katerina poisons Boris, and he's buried without his son and without suspicion. She then takes charge of the estate and begins to order people around, openly being around Sergei every day.
Chapter 6
Katerina has a strange dream about a cat. Some dialogue occurs with Sergei, which by its end reveals his worry over Zinovy's return and desire to marry her.
Chapter 7
Katerina again dreams of the cat, which this time has Boris' head rather than a cat's. Zinovy returns and takes some time getting around to confront Katerina with what he's heard about her affair. Finally she calls Sergei in, kisses him in front of her husband, some violence occurs, and the two of them are strangling Zinovy.
Chapter 8
Zinovy dies, and Sergei buries him deep in the walls of the cellar where he himself had been kept.
Chapter 9
Some convenient circumstances regarding Zinovy's return shroud his disappearance in mystery, and while there's an inquiry, nothing is found and no trouble comes to Sergei or Katerina. The latter becomes pregnant. Everything seems to be working out for them, until Boris' young nephew Fyodor shows up with his mother, preventing Katerina from inheriting the estate. She has no problem with this and actually makes an effort to be a good aunt, but Sergei complains repeatedly for a time about their misfortune.
Chapter 10
Fyodor falls ill, and Katerina, while tending to him, has a change of heart because of Sergei's earlier complaints.
Chapter 11
Katerina and Sergei suffocate the boy, but a crowd returning from church storms the house, one of its members having spied the act through the shutters of Fyodor's room. Sergei, hearing the windows clattering from the crowd's fists, thinks the ghosts of his murder victims have come back to haunt him, and breaks down.
Chapter 12
Sergei admits to the crime publicly and, in repentance, also tells of where Zinovy is buried and admits to that crime as well. Katerina indifferently admits that she helped with the murders, saying it was all for Sergei. The two are sent to exile in Siberia. During their journey there, Katerina gives birth in a prison hospital, and wants nothing to do with their child.
Chapter 13
The child is sent to be raised by Fyodor's mother and becomes heir to the Ismailov estate. Katerina continues to be obsessed with Sergei, who increasingly wants nothing to do with her. Fiona and "little Sonya," two members of the prison convoy with Katerina and Sergei, are introduced, the former being known for being sexually prolific, the latter the opposite.
Chapter 14
Sergei is caught by Katerina while being intimate with Fiona. Katerina is mortified, but seeing Fiona's indifference to the whole situation, reaches something approaching cordiality with Fiona by writing her off. Sergei then pursues little Sonya, who won't sleep with him unless he gives her a pair of stockings. Sergei then complains to Katerina about his ankle-cuffs. She, being happy that he's talking to her again, readily gives him her last pair of new stockings to ease his pain, which he then gives to Sonya for sexual favours.
Chapter 15
Katerina sees Sonya wearing her stockings, and spits in Sergei's eyes, and shoves him. He promises revenge, and later breaks into her cell with another man, giving her fifty lashes with a rope, while Katerina's cell-mate Sonya giggles in the background. Katerina, broken, lets Fiona console her, and realizes that she is no better than Fiona, which is her last straw: after that she is emotionless. On the road in the prison convoy, Sergei and Sonya together mock Katerina. Sonya offers her stockings to her for sale. Sergei reminisces about both their courtship and their murders in the same airy manner. Fiona and an old man in the convoy, Gordyushka, defend Katerina, but to no avail. The convoy arrives at a river and boards a ferry, and Katerina, repeating some phrases similar to Sergei's feigned nostalgia for their life at the estate, tackles Sonya overboard after seeing the faces of Boris, Zinovy, and Fyodor in the water. The two women appear briefly at the surface, still alive, but Katerina grabs Sonya, and they both drown.