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Chapter 19
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Fathers and Sons, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Tradition and Progress
Nature vs. Materialism
Love vs. Nihilism
Generational Conflict
Summary
Analysis
Bazarov’s father, Vassily Ivanych, is casually smoking his pipe, but he’s trembling with joy as he embraces Bazarov. Then his mother, Arina Vlassyevna, appears, calling for “my little Yevgeny”; he catches her as she stumbles toward him, sobbing. Vassily makes excuses to Arkady for his wife’s emotion, but he’s clearly overcome, too. Bazarov leads his parents into the house and introduces Arkady. Vassily has a glass of water brought for his weeping wife—they haven’t seen Bazarov for three years—and he invites the two young men into his study.
In this moving scene, the emotions of Vassily and Arina contrast markedly with their son’s apparent nonchalance. Bazarov’s lack of outward emotion—to say nothing of the fact that he hasn’t visited his parents’ home for years—shows that family ties are among those traditional institutions he rejects.
Themes
The small house consists of six rooms, and Vassily’s study contains littered papers, displayed weapons, maps, and various medical paraphernalia. Vassily runs off to see that Arkady’s guest room is ready and returns with a small boy who will serve as Arkady’s valet. When Vassily makes apologies for their humble home, Bazarov tells him to stop with the “poor-man stuff.” Vassily acknowledges that despite their rural life, he does his best to keep up with the times, and that “for a thinking man there is no such thing as a wilderness.”
Vassily is eagerly hospitable, and, like Arkady’s father, he evidently tries to stay current with emerging ideas, despite his advancing age and remote location. He classifies himself as “a thinking man.” It remains to be seen what Bazarov will think and how this father-son pair will compare to Nikolai and Arkady.
Themes
Vassily tells Arkady about the advances they’re knowledgeable of in these parts, such as phrenology, Schönlein, and Rademacher. Bazarov is surprised that people still believe in Rademacher around here. Vassily says that the young men “are here to take our places,” and of course they know better. Bazarov consoles his father that “nowadays we laugh at medicine in general, and worship no one.”
Vassily names some medical scientists whose work was thought ground-breaking in the earlier part of the 19th century. For example, phrenology was a “science” that predicted a person’s traits based on examination of bumps on the skull. Even by the mid-19th century, phrenology was already being discredited, signaling to the reader that Vassily isn’t as advanced as he thinks. But Vassily seems to take his outdatedness in stride and even to be proud of his son’s more advanced views.
Themes
Vassily tells Arkady that he’s a retired army doctor, having served in Arkady’s grandfather’s brigade, and has now taken up farming. As there is no doctor here, he tends to the peasants once or twice a week when they ask for advice. For the next hour, he tells the young men anecdotes about the peasants, but he is the only one who laughs; Bazarov just puffs at his pipe.
Bazarov and Arkady fit uneasily in Vassily’s rural world, and Vassily’s effusive, humorous personality contrasts with Bazarov’s aloofness.
Themes
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They have a sumptuous dinner. Arina sits sighing and gazing at her son, while Vassily paces up and down, happily holding forth on politics. As they say goodnight, Arina stealthily makes the sign of the cross behind her son’s back, and Vassily hopes to stay up chatting with him, but Bazarov sends him away, lying awake until morning. Bazarov isn’t inclined towards nostalgia for his childhood, and he’s still fixed on thoughts of Madame Odintsov.
Arina and Vassily are still overjoyed by Bazarov’s long-awaited presence and aren’t troubled by his reserve, though both seem to be aware that their way of life doesn’t suit him. Bazarov’s mood is mostly due to his distraction over Anna, though—romance still maintains an unwelcome grip on his outlook.
Themes
Arina Vlassyevna stays up giddily talking to her housemaid about her Yevgeny. Arina “was a true Russian gentlewoman of the old school.” She is devout, superstitious, devoted to her husband, and an expert housewife, although she seldom moves from her chair. She believes firmly in the division between gentry and “the common people whose duty it was to serve.” She loves and fears her son “to an inexpressible degree." Such women are rare in today’s Russia.
Arina is the archetypal Russian housewife, symbol of a way of life that’s passing away in Turgenev’s day. While she’s not without her faults, Arina’s complexities and inconsistencies show her to be a rounder character than the comparatively flat Bazarov. Using Arina as a symbol, Turgenev suggests that “old Russia,” though backward in many respects, had a richness that the radicals of his day lack.
Themes
