Varvara Character Analysis

There are strange friendships: two friends almost want to devour each other, and they spend their entire lives living that way, but meanwhile they cannot part. There is not even a way they can part: the one who takes to acting up and breaks the tie will be the first to fall sick and perhaps die, if that should happen. I know for a fact that on several occasions, Stepan Trofimovich, sometimes even after the most intimate effusions to Varvara Petrovna in private, would suddenly jump up from the sofa as soon as she left and begin beating his fists against the wall.

When the baron gave positive confirmation of the reliability of the first rumours about the great reform that were just then beginning to spread, Stepan Trofimovich suddenly could not restrain himself and cried ‘Hurrah!’ and even made a gesture with his hand that signified his delight. His exclamation was not loud, and was even genteel; his delight was perhaps even premeditated, and his gesture purposely practised in front of the mirror half an hour before tea. But something must not have quite come off, since the baron permitted himself a faint smile, although he promptly put in an extraordinarily polite phrase about the appropriate swell of emotion in all Russian hearts in view of the great event.

‘Nikolay Vsevolodovich, Nikolay Vsevolodovich, this cannot be, perhaps you’ll give it some more thought, you won’t want to lay hands on… What will people say, what will the world say?’

‘Oh, I’m hardly afraid of your world. After all, I did marry your sister then, when I felt like it, after a drunken dinner, on a bet for wine, and now I’m going to proclaim it for all to hear — why not, if it amuses me now?’

‘Oh, Nikolay Vsevolodovich,’ he exclaimed, ‘what troubled me most of all was that this was completely against all civil laws, and primarily those of the fatherland! Suddenly they would print that people should go out with pitchforks, and remember that he who went out poor in the morning could return home rich in the evening. Just think of it, sir! I was shaking in my boots, but I was distributing them. Or suddenly there would be five or six lines addressed to all of Russia, for no good reason: “Lock the churches as soon as you can, destroy God, violate marriages, destroy the rights of inheritance, take up knives”, that’s all, and the Devil knows what else. That was the piece of paper, with the five lines, that I was almost caught with, but the officers of the regiment gave me a good beating and then, God bless them, let me go.’

There are strange friendships: two friends almost want to devour each other, and they spend their entire lives living that way, but meanwhile they cannot part. There is not even a way they can part: the one who takes to acting up and breaks the tie will be the first to fall sick and perhaps die, if that should happen. I know for a fact that on several occasions, Stepan Trofimovich, sometimes even after the most intimate effusions to Varvara Petrovna in private, would suddenly jump up from the sofa as soon as she left and begin beating his fists against the wall.

When the baron gave positive confirmation of the reliability of the first rumours about the great reform that were just then beginning to spread, Stepan Trofimovich suddenly could not restrain himself and cried ‘Hurrah!’ and even made a gesture with his hand that signified his delight. His exclamation was not loud, and was even genteel; his delight was perhaps even premeditated, and his gesture purposely practised in front of the mirror half an hour before tea. But something must not have quite come off, since the baron permitted himself a faint smile, although he promptly put in an extraordinarily polite phrase about the appropriate swell of emotion in all Russian hearts in view of the great event.

‘Nikolay Vsevolodovich, Nikolay Vsevolodovich, this cannot be, perhaps you’ll give it some more thought, you won’t want to lay hands on… What will people say, what will the world say?’

‘Oh, I’m hardly afraid of your world. After all, I did marry your sister then, when I felt like it, after a drunken dinner, on a bet for wine, and now I’m going to proclaim it for all to hear — why not, if it amuses me now?’

‘Oh, Nikolay Vsevolodovich,’ he exclaimed, ‘what troubled me most of all was that this was completely against all civil laws, and primarily those of the fatherland! Suddenly they would print that people should go out with pitchforks, and remember that he who went out poor in the morning could return home rich in the evening. Just think of it, sir! I was shaking in my boots, but I was distributing them. Or suddenly there would be five or six lines addressed to all of Russia, for no good reason: “Lock the churches as soon as you can, destroy God, violate marriages, destroy the rights of inheritance, take up knives”, that’s all, and the Devil knows what else. That was the piece of paper, with the five lines, that I was almost caught with, but the officers of the regiment gave me a good beating and then, God bless them, let me go.’