Aglaya Ivanovna Epanchin Character Analysis

“I’m always kind, if you wish, and that is my only failing, because one should not always be kind. I’m often very angry, with these ones here, with Ivan Fyodorovich especially, but the trouble is that I’m kindest when I’m angry. Today, before you came, I was angry and pretended I didn’t and couldn’t understand anything. That happens to me—like a child.”

“It’s clear that it made no difference to this ‘poor knight’ who his lady was or what she might do. It was enough for him that he had chosen her and believed in her ‘pure beauty,’ and only then did he bow down to her forever; and the merit of it is that she might have turned out later to be a thief, but still he had to believe in her and wield the sword for her pure beauty. It seems the poet wanted to combine in one extraordinary image the whole immense conception of the medieval chivalrous platonic love of some pure and lofty knight; naturally, it’s all an ideal.”

“I want to be brave and not afraid of anything. I don’t want to go to their balls, I want to be useful. I wanted to leave long ago. They’ve kept me bottled up for twenty years, and they all want to get me married. When I was fourteen I already thought of running away, though I was a fool. Now I have it all worked out and was waiting for you, to ask you all about life abroad.”

How did she dare write to her, he asked, wandering alone in the evening (sometimes not even remembering himself where he was walking). How could she write about that, and how could such an insane dream have been born in her head?

“You are innocent, and all your perfection is in your innocence. Oh, remember only that! What do you care about my passion for you? You are mine now, I shall be near you all my life . . . I shall die soon.”

“I’m always kind, if you wish, and that is my only failing, because one should not always be kind. I’m often very angry, with these ones here, with Ivan Fyodorovich especially, but the trouble is that I’m kindest when I’m angry. Today, before you came, I was angry and pretended I didn’t and couldn’t understand anything. That happens to me—like a child.”

“It’s clear that it made no difference to this ‘poor knight’ who his lady was or what she might do. It was enough for him that he had chosen her and believed in her ‘pure beauty,’ and only then did he bow down to her forever; and the merit of it is that she might have turned out later to be a thief, but still he had to believe in her and wield the sword for her pure beauty. It seems the poet wanted to combine in one extraordinary image the whole immense conception of the medieval chivalrous platonic love of some pure and lofty knight; naturally, it’s all an ideal.”

“I want to be brave and not afraid of anything. I don’t want to go to their balls, I want to be useful. I wanted to leave long ago. They’ve kept me bottled up for twenty years, and they all want to get me married. When I was fourteen I already thought of running away, though I was a fool. Now I have it all worked out and was waiting for you, to ask you all about life abroad.”

How did she dare write to her, he asked, wandering alone in the evening (sometimes not even remembering himself where he was walking). How could she write about that, and how could such an insane dream have been born in her head?

“You are innocent, and all your perfection is in your innocence. Oh, remember only that! What do you care about my passion for you? You are mine now, I shall be near you all my life . . . I shall die soon.”