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Chapter 6
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Eugene Onegin, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Youth, Regrets, and the Passage of Time
Love, Courtship, and Marriage
Poetry vs. Reality
Russian Identity
Summary
Analysis
Springtime comes, and nature begins to renew itself. Still, the narrator can’t help but feel saddened this particular spring. Eugene has left the country home where he once lived. The only trace of him that remains is a simple gravestone for Lensky between two pine trees. Olga mourned Lensky, although not for as long as the narrator would’ve liked, and she now loves someone new, a lancer. When this new lancer gets called to battle, Olga marries him and heads off with him. Tatyana is too numb at this point to cry when Olga leaves.
Olga’s quick recovery from mourning Lensky reflects how fickle love can be. It further reinforces the reality that Lensky died for nothing, since his whole justification for the duel in the moments leading up to it was that he had to protect Olga from being “corrupted” by Eugene. Ultimately, Lensky’s youthful glorification of stories, his inflated self-importance, and his exaggerated passion led to his demise. Olga’s swift marriage to the lancer reveals the superficiality of her former love for Lensky, which was more performance than a reflection of her genuine feelings. Tatyana’s numbness, in contrast, reflects the sincerity of her love for Eugene, however misguided that love might have been.
Themes
One evening, Tatyana walks alone by the river. All of a sudden, she sees the light on near Eugene’s manor. She debates whether to approach and eventually does. But the light is just from a nearby servant’s house. Tatyana gets a key from a servant to look at Eugene’s empty house. She feels nostalgic, seeing items in the house that Eugene used to use, then finally she heads home because it’s dark.
The emptiness of Eugene’s home reflects how he himself has become empty after the death of Lensky. Eugene tried to find a purpose in life beyond his socializing in St. Petersburg, and his friendship with Lensky might have given him a path toward the genuine connection and meaning he was so sorely lacking in life. But by turning on Lensky and rejecting human connection, going through with the social ritual of the duel. Instead, Eugene has effectively doomed himself to a life of empty dissatisfaction, as Tatyana sees as she goes through his old house.
Themes
The next morning, Tatyana returns to Eugene’s empty house. Although Eugene had mostly given up on reading, he still kept a few books around. Tatyana opens them up and finds creases and writing on certain pages that show which parts Eugene reacted to. She hopes somewhere in these books, she’ll be able to solve the mystery of what type of person Eugene is—or if he’s an empty person who has just pieced himself together from scraps of things he’s read. Meanwhile, Dame Larin begins to plan on trying to marry Tatyana off. Tatyana has been so distracted lately that her mother wonders if she’s in love with someone. Tatyana has also been turning down marriage offers.
Books could have been something that brought Tatyana and Eugene together, but instead the romantic ideas they gleaned from books only drove them apart. This passage shows how as much as Eugene likes to think of himself as wiser and more experienced than Tatyana, his worldview—shaped by reading more than experience—has given him no advantage over Tatyana in terms of wisdom, despite his older age. Tatyana’s first visit to Eugene’s house was full of nostalgia, but during her second visit, she begins to see how she romanticized Eugene and failed to see him as he truly was. She let her passion lead her astray and blind her to the truth. Newly disillusioned, she resigns herself to listen to her mother’s advice and think about getting married, even if future marriage is one of convenience rather than love.
Themes
It’s summer now, and Dame Larin decides to have the family spend the winter in Moscow, where it will be easier to find someone for Tatyana to marry. Tatyana fears how people will judge her there for her simple country ways. She spends the rest of the summer saying goodbye to her beloved countryside until at last the day to depart for Moscow comes. Her family packs up everything in an old coach and heads off.
Tatyana’s journey from the country to the city is the opposite of Eugene’s. Although for Eugene the countryside ultimately bored him and had little to offer, Tatyana’s reluctant goodbye to the country shows how important nature is to her, as well as hinting how sheltered her life has been so far.
Themes
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The narrator looks forward to some day in the future when Russia’s roads are less decrepit. Now, they’re full of rotting bridges and resting stations full of fleas and bedbugs. Travel in the winter is slow, and it takes the Larins seven days to reach Moscow. The narrator takes pride in Moscow, which is an important city to every Russian and which never fell to Napoleon during the war.
The narrator’s remarks about the poor state of the roads in Russia reflect his conflicted feelings about the country itself. Clearly, the run-down roads disappoint the narrator and, in many ways, his view of his home country is negative, something that is also reflected in his commentary on the actions of characters like Eugene and Lensky. Still, the narrator has pride in Moscow, which represents a side of the country not yet under the influence of Western culture to the degree that St. Petersburg is. He dreams of a future when the roads are better—when Russia redirects its focus back toward its cultural roots. The implication here is that in its enthusiasm to embrace Western tradition, Russia has let its own culture deteriorate—and it will continue to rot unless the country reassesses its priorities.
Themes
Two old women who are cousins of Dame Larin greet the family in Moscow and are happy to see Tatyana. More older relatives, including great aunts and uncles, also live in Moscow, and they all comment on how big Tatyana has gotten since the last time they saw her. Her younger relatives, meanwhile, examine her quietly and seem to find her and her country ways strange. But eventually, they accept her as a friend.
This passage further explores generational difference. Whereas Tatyana’s older relatives see only her physical growth—she’s bigger than she was when she saw them last—her younger relatives sense a spiritual change in Tatyana, one brought about by her time in the country. The older generation’s observations emphasize the passage of time, and perhaps their own anxieties about aging. Meanwhile, the youth—for whom aging does not yet register as a concern—are more preoccupied with superficial aspects of Tatyana, like her mannerisms and lack of decorum.
Themes
Tatyana is in a daze and struggles to take part in the conversations and gossip happening around her at her new home in Moscow. One day, they take Tatyana to a Moscow club for nobles called the Grand Assembly, where music plays and where many women are searching for a husband. Although it’s a merry atmosphere, Tatyana begins to hate this new world that she is forced to take part in, feeling cramped without the freedom that comes with being out in the country.
Tatyana’s experience of being taken in by the splendor of big city social life, only to later begin to find it oppressive, reflects Eugene’s own experience of getting older in the city. Like Eugene, Tatyana feels that the celebratory social events are an obligation rather than something to enjoy. This reinforces the superficiality of social customs and material pleasures. For people like Tatyana, whose upbringing in the country has given her a richer spiritual life, life in the city is markedly vapid and meaningless.
Themes
Tatyana gets lost in her own thoughts at the noisy club. But then her aunts come over to her and point out a large man dressed as a general who seems to have taken an interest in Tatyana.
Olga’s sister married a military man (a lancer). The appearance of this general suggests that as the chapter ends, Tatyana faces a crucial decision point in her life: she can either settle down with a sensible husband like her sister did, or she can maintain her youthful idealism and try to search for real connection.
Themes
