Without a Dowry (Bespridannitsa) was conceived in November, 1874 and finished some four years later on October 17, 1878. Though Ostrovsky wrote other plays during that time, it was Without a Dowry which he valued most, spending an unusually long time as well as meticulous care on it. It was passed almost immediately by the censor for performance, later published in the No. 1, 1879 issue of Fatherland Notes (Otechestvennye zapiski). The Moscow premiere occurred on November 10, 1878, then in St. Petersburg on November 22, 1878. Though some of Ostrovsky’s contemporaries volunteered that they considered the play Ostrovsky’s best, it was not really successful on the stage until 1896 when the great actress Vera Komissarzhevskaya played Larisa.
The play is remarkably unified, each scene directly or indirectly bearing on the fate of Larisa, whom all the male principals want to have at their disposal and whom her mother wants to dispose of. Seemingly free to make choices denied most of Ostrovsky’s earlier heroines, in actuality she is not, since she has no realizable options that would be both attractive and honorable. Like it or not, she has to perform in her mother’s entertainment center while being on display as a marketable commodity for potentially interested men.
Larisa has grown up in the artistic milieu of the gypsies where she, obviously talented to begin with, has received an excellent musical training. Her performance is appreciated by even the most mercenary-minded in the play. What Karandyshov disparagingly calls the “gypsy camp” is Larisa’s spiritual ally, and she, herself of gypsy lineage through her mother, is attracted to the fun-loving gypsies. On the other hand, in contrast to her amoral mother, Larisa has moral principles, and she longs for an honorable life elsewhere.1
It has been generalized that when Ostrovsky’s heroines are in love, that love becomes their whole world. This is certainly true for Larisa, who, once in love with Paratov, is ready at any given moment to trust, idealize, and forgive him. For Paratov love is like a good meal—to be enjoyed for the moment—but for Larisa it’s a full and lasting commitment of her very life which she makes without looking back or, for that matter, ahead.
Larisa is disgusted by her mother’s way of surviving through ingratiation and even trickery, but at this point her only honorable escape seems to be marriage, for which her prospects are limited. All she has to offer is herself, no dowry. After Larisa has given up hope that Paratov, following his first desertion, might return to her, Larisa settles for the faithful but dull and mediocre Karandyshov. She fantasizes that since she respects Karandyshov, even though she doesn’t love him (though one can easily wonder if this respect isn’t based on her strong need to believe in it), that they will be able to have a decent family life elsewhere, away from the insincere hurly-burly bazaar of her home, where she already senses, without being able to articulate it, that she is treated as a thing.
Like Larisa, Karandyshov is a pathetic victim of people and circumstances but at the same time a victim of his limitations, for which he tries to compensate by being spitefully envious of those with higher status. He even goes so far as to use his pending marriage with Larisa to get in some revenge, boasting that she has chosen him over the others. Compared to the other male principals he is a “good man” morally (as none of them are), but only in the sense of not doing conventionally bad things rather than in doing anything positively good. He can always be counted on to be honest, which is hardly a sure-fire asset in his case.
All the same, as most seem to agree, Karandyshov, along with his perverse possessiveness, does love Larisa for herself and has endured a good deal of abuse while waiting for her to come his way. He is sensitive enough to see through the other male principals, and it is he who finds the right word for Larisa: “thing.” True, he’s nasty to Larisa, but she has also been nasty to him and hasn’t made it easy for him to show her the affection and support she now feels the need of. Proud and envious, much in the manner of Dostoevsky’s underground man, Karandyshov oscillates between inevitable submission to humiliation and precipitous thrusts in society which make him look ridiculous, something Larisa finds impossible to forgive.
The little satire of the play is directed mostly against Knurov. In his setting Knurov is a giant whose every act is justified since money’s might makes right. However, Ostrovsky exposes him for what he is—a cynical, callous, self-righteous, pompously arrogant snob, whose cleverness backed by wealth helps him to maintain his prestige and bring him the pleasures he desires. When he makes his proposition to Larisa that she become his kept woman, he feels he has to mention the prejudice some might have about it, but he reassures her that there’s nothing at all to worry her pretty head inasmuch as the all-powerful whitewashing capacity of his money will make everything fine.
In Act Two Knurov demonstrates a skill which shows that while he is not interested in others for their own sake, he knows how to deal with them for his own ends. He bargains with Mme. Ogudalov for her sympathetic alliance, giving her three hundred rubles, a thinly disguised retainer fee for her potential lobbying services on his behalf relative to Larisa. He assumes (and maybe even finds it congenial) that Larisa will marry Karandyshov, but he has no trouble making the quick-minded Mme. Ogudalov realize that when the marriage inevitably goes downhill, then he, Knurov, will be ready, able, and only too willing to rescue poor Larisa from the tedium of everyday family humdrum.
Paratov has his demonic side, reminding some of Pechorin, the hero of Lermontov’s Hero of Our Times, and he’s close enough to the truth when he claims that for him nothing is sacred. When he causes Larisa grief, it bothers him a little, but not overly; after all, it’s a woman’s lot to weep! He cares for Larisa somewhat, almost certainly more than he has ever cared for another woman, but not to the point of losing anything by it. If it becomes necessary to sell his assets to pay for the pleasures of life he’s become accustomed to, then he’ll do it, even to the point of selling his matehood. But if Paratov were only a black villain as just described, we would be puzzled by Larisa’s attraction to him. So Ostrovsky makes Paratov charismatic. Paratov is charming, a bit sophisticated, self-assured, intelligent, imaginative, playful in speech, and appreciative of beauty, qualities contributing to Larisa’s enchantment. It’s easy enough to see how Larisa would prefer the dashing Paratov over the petty and lackluster Karandyshov.
Robinson as an outsider who knows the score, so to speak, from the ground up sees Knurov, Vozhevatov, and Paratov for what they are and says so but guardedly, for Robinson’s main interest is self-interest. While we won’t admire Robinson for his pliability, we can sympathize with him since he, paralleling Larisa, is treated as a thing.
The off-stage chorus of the gypsies at the end may be considered symbolically as a hymn in Larisa’s honor. Paratov wants the gypsies silenced, but Larisa says no, let them have their fun, that she doesn’t want to get in anyone’s way, that she loves everybody. Some may find this a bit histrionic, but it’s all consistent with her past life when all she asked for was true love and during which she hurt nobody except Karandyshov (that at least partly forgivable in the circumstances).
The play rushes with an intense pace, taking place within a represented time span of little more than twelve hours. The psychological compression is heightened by each succeeding act’s being shorter than the preceding one.
Some, including me, consider Without a Dowry to be Ostrovsky’s finest play. The Russian critic Yefim Kholodov has this to say:
But neither before nor after Without a Dowry did Ostrovsky rise to such dramatic heights, attain such artistic force, reach such psychological subtlety in the portrayal of characters. It may now be considered generally accepted that “opus 40” is the best play of the best Russian playwright of the past century.
1. VI. Filippov discussed Larisa’s mixed background as the daughter of a Russian nobleman (apparently long dead) and a gypsy mother, Mme. Ogudalov. He noted that Kharita was a name often given to gypsy women, and also that Ignat, from which the patronymic for Mme. Ogudalov would be derived, was often used as a nickname for gypsy men.
Filippov assumed that, as was not uncommon at the time, Larisa’s father married Mme. Ogudalov after ransoming her from a gypsy camp. At one point Vozhevatov makes a point of telling Knurov that Mme. Ogudalov is not Russian, and Filippov claimed that she uses a number of non-Russian phrases.
Filippov conjectured that what he considered to be contradictory traits in Larisa could be attributed to her mixed parentage. Larisa clearly has much of the gypsy in her, but in her moral values is hardly her mother’s daughter. Filippov’s remarks accompanied an anthology of Ostrovsky’s plays (A. N. Ostrovskii, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, Moscow, 1965, 404).