stolom,” her most radical critique of women’s position in society and lit-
erature.
Starting with Kadril’, Pavlova no longer focuses on women’s relation-ships with an unsympathetic God, but rather on their struggle with an
inimical society and with the literary models that limit and objectify
them.^47 In Kadril’four women gather in a countess’s house before going
to a ball. The countess opines that women cause their own sufferings be-
cause their weak characters lead them to make bad choices. The other
three protest that, unlike the rich and powerful countess, most women
have little freedom to make choices. To illustrate the social forces that con-
strain them, each woman then tells of her first painful love experience.
The scholar Susanne Fusso points out that each story deflates some as-
pect of the Romantic Russian hero (“Pavlova’s Quadrille,” 120 , 121 ). As
in “Jeanne d’Arc,” “Tri dushi,” and Dvoinaia zhizn’,these stories replace
androcentric images of women with women-centered narratives.
In the first story Nadina recounts how her mother, despite Nadina’sattraction to a “handsome Hungarian,” pressured her into marriage
with Andrei Il’ich, a “fat, stooped, bald and pockmarked” ( 316 ) but rich
landowner. Until the last moment Nadina resists the wedding, but when
a thief steals the costly jewels her fiancé has given her, she feels she has
no choice but to go through with the ceremony. In an ironic twist, Nad-
ina admits that five years later she finds herself very content with her
husband and her life. Fusso writes that Nadina’s story debunks the Karl
Moor prototype (“Pavlova’s Quadrille,” 121 ); Pavlova’s very Romantic-
looking thief remains completely unmoved by Nadina’s pleas that he not
condemn her to an unwelcome marriage by stealing the jewels. The
story also debunks Tat’iana’s tragic fate at the end of Evgenii Onegin:
married to a fat general, but still in love with Onegin, the Romantic hero.
In contrast to Tat’iana, Nadina at the story’s end has achieved peace of
mind. She has realized that Romantic heroes will not save her and are
not worth pining over; they are either indifferent to her, like the Hun-
garian, or thieves. On a still deeper level, Nadina realizes that the Ro-
mantic hero is not the antithesis of the undesired husband, but rather
an extension of him. The thief who steals her jewels does Andrei Il’ich’s
work for him in forcing Nadina to consent to the marriage. Pavlova un-
derlines the identity between Romantic hero and unromantic husband
in the dream Nadina has just before the caballero-thief enters: Andrei
Il’ich comes into her room dressed as a caballero complete with sword,
sombrero, and guitar. He throws the guitar at Nadina, shattering a mir-
ror, the mirror, one suspects, of her illusions.
Karolina Pavlova 159