Aksyonov’s Wife Character Analysis

At the beginning of the story, Aksyonov’s wife has a vague premonition of the suffering that awaits Aksyonov when she has a nightmare in which her husband’s beautiful curly hair turns completely gray. She encourages Aksyonov to remain home rather than leave his family for the Fair at Nizhny. Later, Aksyonov’s wife reappears to visit her husband after he has been wrongly jailed for murdering his merchant friend. She informs Aksyonov that his appeals to state authorities have been exhausted and shocks him by expressing suspicion of his guilt. Following these two encounters, Aksyonov’s wife casts a long shadow over his thoughts during his incarceration in Siberia, as he is constantly pulled away from his strict spirituality back to worldly concerns by the painful image of her and their children back home in Vladimir. Aksyonov’s wife embodies the potent emotional pull of family and of home—perhaps the strongest forces keeping Aksyonov attached to social, earthly matters and restraining his journey to focus fully on spiritual development, atonement for his sins, and the goal of salvation in the afterlife.