Without a Dowry and Other Plays

by Alexander Ostrovsky

  Marvelous is earthly man!

  Striving all his lifelong span,

  Happiness to him is dear,

  Yet to him is not this clear:

  Fate his course doth surely steer.

  That’s how you have to get down to the bottom of things! That’s what a man has to remember! We are born with nothing, and that’s how we’ll go into the grave. What do we labor for? There’s room for philosophy! What is our mind? What can it comprehend?

  Vyshnevsky enters and silently passes into his study. Yusov gets up.

  MME VYSHNEVSKY. How he’s changed!

  YUSOV. You should send for a doctor. A little while ago at the office he started feeling bad. Such a blow… for a man of noble feelings… how can he bear it!

  MME VYSHNEVSKY (rings. The boyservant enters). Go for the doctor. Ask him to come as fast as he can.

  Vyshnevsky comes out and sits down in an armchair. Mme. Vyshnevsky goes toward him.

  I heard from Akim Akimych that you had a misfortune. Don’t take it too much to heart.

  Silence.

  You’ve changed completely. Do you feel bad? I sent for the doctor.

  VYSHNEVSKY. Such hypocrisy! Such lowdown lying! Such meanness!

  MME VYSHNEVSKY (proudly). I’m not lying at all! I’m just sorry for you, as I’d be sorry for anyone in misfortune, nothing more, nothing less. (She goes away and sits down.)

  VYSHNEVSKY. I don’t want your sympathy. Don’t be sorry for me! I’m dishonored, ruined! And why?

  MME VYSHNEVSKY. Ask your conscience.

  VYSHNEVSKY. You’re a fine one to talk about conscience! You have no right to talk about it… Yusov! Why have I been ruined?

  YUSOV. Life has its ups and downs… it’s fate, sir.

  VYSHNEVSKY. Nonsense, what fate! It’s powerful enemies, that’s why! That’s what ruined me! Damn them all! They envied me my good situation. And why shouldn’t they? In a few years a man rises to the top, gets rich, creates his own prosperity boldly, builds himself homes and summer cottages, buys up estate after estate, he’s head and shoulders over them. So why shouldn’t they be envious! A man goes to wealth and honors as easily as walking up the stairs. To overtake or at least catch up to him they need brains, they need genius. There’s nowhere for them to get the brains, so they trip him up. I’m choking with rage…

  YUSOV. Envy can move men to anything…

  VYSHNEVSKY. It’s not my downfall that makes me mad, no, but the triumph I’m giving them with my downfall. What talk there’ll be now, what joy! Damn it all, that’s what I won’t be able to bear! (He rings.)

  Anton enters.

  Water!…

  Anton gives him some water and leaves.

  Now I want to have a little talk with you.

  MME VYSHNEVSKY. What do you want?

  VYSHNEVSKY. I want to tell you that you are a depraved woman.

  MME VYSHNEVSKY. Aristarkh Vladimirych, we’re not alone.

  YUSOV. Would you like me to leave, sir?

  VYSHNEVSKY. Stay! I’d say the same things in front of all the servants.

  MME VYSHNEVSKY. Why are you humiliating me like this? You want someone to take out your spite on. It’s not right!

  VYSHNEVSKY. There’s the justification for my words.

  He throws an envelope and some letters. Yusov picks them up and hands them to Mme Vyshnevsky.

  MME VYSHNEVSKY. Thank you. (She looks them over convulsively and puts them away in her pocket.)

  VYSHNEVSKY. Yusov, what do they do with a woman who, despite all her husband’s good deeds, forgets her duty?

  YUSOV. Hmm…hmm…

  VYSHNEVSKY. I’ll tell you. They drive her out in shame! Yes, Yusov, I’m unfortunate, completely unfortunate, and I’m not alone. Don’t you abandon me at least. No matter how high a man is placed, when he’s in grief he still looks to his family for comfort. (With spite.) But what I find in my family is…

  MME VYSHNEVSKY. Don’t talk about your family! You never had one. You don’t even know what a family is! Let me tell you, Aristarkh Vladimirych, all I’ve had to endure, living with you.

  VYSHNEVSKY. For you there are no justifications.

  MME VYSHNEVSKY. I don’t want to justify myself, I don’t need to. For a momentary passion I have borne much grief and a lot of humiliation, but believe me, I haven’t complained against fate and cursed like you. I only want to tell you that if I’m guilty, it is towards myself alone and not towards you. You have no right to reproach me. If you had a heart, you would feel how you destroyed me.

  VYSHNEVSKY. Ha, ha! Accuse somebody else for your behavior, not me.

  MME VYSHNEVSKY. No, you. Did you really choose a wife? Remember how you courted me! I didn’t hear a word about family life. You acted like an old flirt trying to seduce a young woman with gifts, looked at me with voluptuous eyes. You saw my aversion to you, and yet, despite that, you bought me with money from my parents, the way they buy slaves in Turkey. So what do you want from me?

  VYSHNEVSKY. You’re my wife, don’t forget that! And I have the right to demand that you fulfill your duty.

  MME VYSHNEVSKY. Yes, and your purchase, you didn’t sanctify it with marriage, you concealed it with the mask of marriage. Otherwise it would have been impossible, my parents wouldn’t have consented. But for you it was all the same. And later too, when you were already my husband, you didn’t treat me as your wife; you tried to buy my caresses with money. If you saw I had any aversion to you, you came running with some expensive gift, and then you could come boldly, with a full right. So what could I do?… After all, you’re my husband; I submitted. Oh! One stops respecting oneself. How one despises oneself! That’s what you brought me to. But what happened to me later, when I found out that even the money you were giving me… wasn’t yours, that you had gotten it dishonestly…

  VYSHNEVSKY (gets up). Be quiet!

  MME VYSHNEVSKY. All right, I’ll be quiet about that, you’ve been punished enough for it, but I’ll keep on about myself.

  VYSHNEVSKY. You can say what you want, I don’t care. You won’t change my opinion of you.

  MME VYSHNEVSKY. Perhaps you’ll change your opinion of yourself after I’ve spoken. You remember how I avoided society, I was afraid of it. And with good reason. But you insisted, and I had to give in. So there I was, completely unprepared, with no advice, no guide, and you took me into your circle with its temptation and vice at every step. With nobody to warn me or support me! All the same, by myself I came to see all the pettiness and all the depravity of your acquaintances. I watched out for myself. That was when I met Lyubimov in society, you knew him. You remember his open face, his bright eyes, how intelligent and pure he was! How ardently he argued with you, how boldly he spoke out about any lie or wrong! He said what I was already feeling, even if vaguely. I waited for your reply. You had none, you simply slandered him, behind his back thought up vile gossip, and you tried to lower him in public opinion. How I would have liked to intercede for him, but I didn’t have the chance or enough cleverness. There was only one thing I could do… fall in love with him.

  VYSHNEVSKY. So that’s exactly what you did?

  MME VYSHNEVSKY. So that’s exactly what I did. I saw later how you destroyed him, how little by little you reached your goal. That is, not just you but everyone who found it useful. At first you armed society against him, saying that knowing him was dangerous for young people. Then you kept repeating that he was a freethinker, a harmful man, and you set his superiors against him. He was forced to leave the civil service, to leave his relatives, to leave here… and he died far away. (She covers her eyes with her handkerchief.) I saw all this, but I endured it. I saw how spite triumphed and how you still considered me the girl you had bought and who must be grateful and love you for your gifts. Out of my pure relations with him people made vile gossip, and ladies began to scandalize me openly, though secretly they were jealous of me. Young and old Don Juans started running after me without ceremony. That’s what you brought me to, a woman ab
le to understand the true meaning of life and to hate evil! That’s all I wanted to tell you. You’ll never hear any more reproach from me.

  VYSHNEVSKY. And that’s a mistake. I’m a poor man now, and poor men let their wives abuse them. They can do it. If I were Vyshnevsky as he was before today, I’d kick you out without another word, but now, thanks to our enemies, we’ve been cast out of the circle of decent people. In lower circles husbands quarrel with their wives, and sometimes they come to blows, and that doesn’t scandalize anybody.

  Zhadov enters with his wife.

  Why are you here?

  ZHADOV. Uncle, forgive me…

  PAULINE. Hello, Uncle! Hello, Uncle! (She whispers to Mme. Vyshnevsky.) He’s come to ask for a position. (She sits down next to Mme. Vyshnevsky.)

  MME VYSHNEVSKY. What! Really! (She looks at Zhadov with curiosity.)

  VYSHNEVSKY. You’ve come to laugh at your uncle!

  ZHADOV. Uncle, perhaps I offended you. Forgive me… it was the enthusiasm of youth, the ignorance of life… I didn’t have the right…you’re my relative.

  VYSHNEVSKY. So?

  ZHADOV. I’ve come to feel what it means to live without support… without someone’s helpful influence… I’m a married man.

  VYSHNEVSKY. What are you trying to say?

  ZHADOV. I live in a very poor way… For me there’d be enough, but for my wife, whom I love very much… Give me permission to work under you again… Uncle, take care of me! Give me a position where I… could… (quietly) acquire something.

  PAULINE (to Mme. Vyshnevsky). Some income.

  VYSHNEVSKY (bursts out laughing). Ha, ha, ha! Yusov! There they are, our heroes! The young man who shouted at every street corner about bribetakers, who talked about some sort of new generation, comes and asks us for a profitable position so he can take bribes! The wonderful new generation! Ha, ha, ha!

  ZHADOV (gets up). Oh! (He clutches his chest.)

  YUSOV. You were young! So how could you talk sense! It was all nothing but words… Which is what they’ll stay, just words. Life will tell. (He takes some snuff.) You’ll give up that philosophy. The only bad thing is, you should have listened to smart people before, instead of getting rude.

  VYSHNEVSKY (to Yusov). No, Yusov, you remember the tone he took! How self-assured he was! What indignation towards vice! (To Zhadov, becoming more and more excited.) Weren’t you the one who said that a new generation is growing up, educated and honest men, martyrs of the truth, men who would expose us and shower us with mud? Wasn’t that you? I’ll have to confess, I believed it. I hated you profoundly… I feared you. Yes, I’m not joking. And so how does it turn out! You are honest only until those lessons they drilled into you have lost their strength, honest only until you have your first encounter with need! So you’ve given me something to be happy about, I must say!… No, you’re not worth hating. I despise you!

  ZHADOV. Despise me, despise me. I despise myself.

  VYSHNEVSKY. Certain people have taken for themselves the privilege of judging what’s honorable! You and I’ve been put to shame because of them! They’ve put us on trial…

  ZHADOV. What did you say!

  YUSOV. People… are always people.

  ZHADOV. Uncle, I didn’t say our generation is more honest than others. There have always been and always will be honest people, honest citizens, honest officials; there have always been and always will be weak people. I myself am proof of that. All I said was that in our time (He starts quietly and gradually gets worked up.) society is little by little casting off its previous indifference to vice, you can hear strong cries against the evils of society… I said that an awareness of our defects is waking in us and that in this awareness there is hope for a better future. I said that public opinion is beginning to be formed… that among the youth a feeling of justice is growing, a feeling of duty, and it’s growing, is growing and will bear fruit. If you won’t live to see it, then we will, and we’ll thank God for it. There’s no reason for you to be happy about my weakness. I’m no hero; I’m just an ordinary, weak man. I have little strength of will, like almost all of us. Need, circumstances, lack of education in relatives, and corruption all around me can wear me down the way people wear down horses on the highway. But all I need is one lesson, even if it has to be like this… I’m grateful to you for it. I need just one meeting with a decent man to resurrect me, to help me stay firm. I can waver, but I won’t commit a crime; I can stumble, but I won’t fall. My heart has already been softened by education, it won’t become coarse in vice.

  Silence.

  I don’t know where to go from shame… Yes, I’m ashamed, ashamed that I’m here.

  VYSHNEVSKY (rising). Then get out!

  ZHADOV (meekly). I’ll go. Pauline, now you can go to Mama’s; I won’t hold you back. I won’t betray myself now. If fate leads me to nothing but black bread, I’ll eat nothing but black bread. No comforts will tempt me, no! I want to keep the precious right of looking all men straight in the eye, without shame, without secret pangs of conscience. I want to read and see satires and comedies about bribetakers where I can laugh freely and openly. If my whole life consists of toil and deprivation, I won’t complain…There’s just one consolation I’ll ask from God, one reward I’ll look forward to. Can you imagine what that is?

  A short silence.

  I’ll look forward to the time when bribetakers will fear the judgment of society more than that of the courts.

  VYSHNEVSKY (rises). I’ll strangle you with my bare hands. (He staggers.) Yusov, I feel bad. Take me to the study. (He goes with Yusov.)

  PAULINE (goes up to Zhadov). Did you think I really wanted to leave you? I did it all on purpose. They put me up to it.

  MME VYSHNEVSKY. Make it up, children.

  Zhadov and Pauline kiss.

  YUSOV (in the doorway). A doctor, a doctor!

  MME VYSHNEVSKY (rising in her armchair). What is it, what is it?

  YUSOV. Aristarkh Vladimirych has had a stroke!

  MME VYSHNEVSKY (crying out weakly). Oh! (She sinks down in the armchair.)

  Pauline, in horror, squeezes up to Zhadov. Zhadov leans with his hand on the table and lowers his head. Yusov stands in the doorway, completely bewildered.

  CURTAIN

  NOTES

  These notes and those for the other plays are based on those in A. N. Ostrovskij: Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, Moscow, 1973-1980.

  1. From a song (Vecherkom krasna devitsa…) very popular at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Words by N. M. Ibragimov.

  2. Collegiate assessor was a civil service rank bestowing the right of hereditary nobility. For contemporaries this would make comical Mme. Kukushkin’s claim in Act Four, “With us nobility is inborn.”

  3. Before 1837 government officials could wear a mustache and beard. They were prohibited from doing so by the decree of Nicholas I dated April 2, 1837.

  4. The decree of October 14, 1798 allowed their superiors to send office officials of nonnoble origin to the army for deviation from duty, negligence, or incompetence.

  5. Po ulitse mostovoi, a very popular Russian dance tune, which had many recordings.

  6. “Ne staia voronov sletalas’!” First line of Alexander Pushkin’s poem “Brat’ia razboiniki,” published in 1825.

  7. At that time a suburb of Moscow featuring various cheap amusements and outdoor festivals.

  8. “Luchina, luchinushka berezovaia!” An old Russian folk song.

  9. “Matushka, golubushka, solnyshko moe…” A very popular romance. Words by Nirokomsky (pseudonym) and music by A. L. Gurilev.

  10. This would have been the Petrovsko-Razumovsky Park, where the Moscow nobility (primarily) went riding.

  11. Obviously inspired by Cervantes’ Don Quixote, which was available in an incomplete translation from French in 1769 and a translation from the original Spanish by K. P. Masalsky in 1838 and 1848-49.

  12. Procurator’s song from the comedy “Slander” (labeda, 1796) by V. V. Kapnist.

&
nbsp; 13. The reference is to a cheap popular print of 1820-21 entitled “Vanity of Vanities.”

  AFTERWORD

  The basic background material for A Profitable Position (Dokhodnoe mesto) was provided by the experiences and impressions Ostrovsky gained during his seven-year service as a court clerk when he himself was in Zhadov’s unhappy position.1 Ostrovsky finished writing the play on December 20, 1856, and it was published in the No. 1 (March) 1857 issue of Russian Colloquy (Russkaia beseda.) Making a few cuts, the censor approved the play for performance, but he was officially overruled on the ground that the play accused government officials of being bribetakers and embezzlers. Before the play was officially banned, it was performed in some provincial theaters in 1857, but the first officially approved stage performance did not take place until September 27, 1863, in St. Petersburg, the Moscow premiere occurring on October 14, 1863.

  In order to appreciate the place of this play in terms of Ostrovsky’s playwriting development let us backtrack briefly. In his two early full-length plays It’s All in the Family (1850) and The Poor Bride (1852) Ostrovsky had emphasized the dark side of social reality with endings that lacked any compensating consolation. This is especially true of It’s All in the Family, which did not include a single morally positive main character. Though published in 1850 it could not be performed until 1861 and then only with a revised ending satisfactory to the censor. In the original ending the unscrupulous Podkhalyuzin had remained free and unpunished, but in the enforced revised ending he was arrested. The sorry business cost Ostrovsky his position in the civil service, and it certainly must have made him realize even more that to get his plays performed he would have to satisfy the censor.

  Probably trying to find his way out of this painful predicament, though other factors were involved, Ostrovsky next wrote three plays, the so-called Slavophile plays (Don’t Sit in Another’s Sleigh, Poverty’s No Vice, Don’t Live as You Please), in which he stressed the native goodness of basic Russian types while giving preference to indigenous traditions over foreign influences. Moreover, he made the endings morally respectable even though it necessitated sudden turnabouts of a deus ex machina nature. In his two-act play Trouble Caused by Another, published in 1856 just before A Profitable Position, Ostrovsky reached a compromise between the stark portrayal of a dark side of Russian reality and the idealized portrayal featured in the Slavophile plays. From then on, with the exception of primarily satirical plays, Ostrovsky’s plays about contemporary life would portray both the seamy side of reality and morally good individuals protesting and/or struggling against the social evil oppressing them.