Solzhenitsyn “Matryona’s yard” - the characteristics and fate of Matryona the Righteous. Essay on the topic: “The image of the righteous woman in the story “Matrenin’s Dvor”

A.I. Solzhenitsyn's story "Matryonin's Dvor" touches on such topics as the moral and spiritual life of the people, the struggle for survival, the contradiction between the individual and society, the relationship between government and man. "Matryonin's Dvor" is written entirely about a simple Russian woman. Despite many unrelated events, Matryona is the main actor. The plot of the story develops around her.

Solzhenitsyn focuses on a simple village woman, Matryona Vasilievna, who lives in poverty and has worked all her life on a state farm. Matryona got married even before the revolution and from the very first day began to take care of household chores. Our heroine is a lonely woman who lost her husband at the front and buried six children. Matryona lived alone in a huge house. “Everything was built long ago and soundly, for a large family, but now lived a lonely woman of about sixty.” The central theme in this work is the theme of home and hearth.

Matryona, despite all the hardships Everyday life, has not lost the ability to respond to someone else’s misfortune with soul and heart. She is the keeper of the hearth, but this is her only mission, which acquires scale and philosophical depth. Matryona is still not ideal, Soviet ideology penetrates into life, into the heroine’s house (signs of this ideology are a poster on the wall and an ever-incessant radio).

We meet a woman who has experienced a lot in life and was not even awarded a well-deserved pension: “There were a lot of injustices with Matryona: she was sick, but was not considered disabled; she worked for a quarter of a century on a collective farm, but because she was not at a factory, she was not supposed to she got a pension for herself, but she could have sought it for her husband, that is, for the loss of a breadwinner.” Such injustice reigned at that time in all corners of Russia. A person who does good for his country with his own hands is not valued in the state; he is trampled into the dirt. Matryona earned five such pensions throughout her working life. But they don’t give her a pension, because on the collective farm she received chopsticks, not money. And to achieve a pension for your husband, you need to spend a lot of time and effort. She collected papers for a very long time, spent time, but all in vain. Matryona was left without a pension. This absurdity of laws is more likely to drive a person into his grave than to ensure his financial situation.

The main character has no livestock other than a goat: “All her bellies were one dirty white goat.” She ate mostly just potatoes: “She walked around and cooked in three cast irons: one cast iron for me, one for herself, one for the goat. For the goat, she chose the best one from the underground.” small potatoes, for myself - small, and for me - with egg". A good life is not visible when people are sucked into the swamp of poverty. Life is very unfair to Matryona. The bureaucratic apparatus, which does not work for people, together with the state is not at all interested in how people like Matryona live. The slogan “Everything is for people” has been crossed out ". Wealth no longer belongs to the people, the people are serfs of the state. And, in my opinion, these are the problems that Solzhenitsyn touches on in his story.

The image of Matryona Vasilievna is the embodiment best features Russian peasant woman. She has a difficult time tragic fate. Her “children did not stand: each one died before they were three months old and without any illness.” Everyone in the village decided that there was damage in it. Matryona does not know happiness in personal life, but she is not all for herself, but for people. For ten years, working for free, the woman raised Kira as her own, instead of her children. Helping her in everything, refusing to help anyone, she is morally much higher than her selfish relatives. Life is not easy, “thick with worries,” Solzhenitsyn does not hide this in any detail.

I believe that Matryona is a victim of events and circumstances. Moral purity, selflessness, hard work are the traits that attract us to the image of a simple Russian woman who has lost everything in her life and has not become bitter. In old age, sick, she treats her mental and physical ailments. Work constitutes happiness, the goal for which she lives. And yet, if you look closely at Matryona’s lifestyle, you can see that Matryona is a slave of labor, and not a mistress. That is why her fellow villagers, and most of all her relatives, shamelessly exploited her, while she meekly bore her heavy cross. Matryona, according to the author's plan, is the ideal of a Russian woman, the fundamental principle of all existence. “All of us,” Solzhenitsyn concludes his story about Matryona’s life, “lived next to her and did not understand that she was the very righteous man without whom, according to the proverb, the village would not stand. Not the city. Not our whole land.”

The theme of the righteous in literature is not new, and yet in Solzhenitsyn’s story it is revealed especially truthfully. The main characters of “Matryonin Dvor” are simple peasants, whose lives are not like a fairy tale; the description of village life can shock modern reader. What is worth mentioning in the work is the picture of the division of property of a living and healthy woman: her relatives are rushing her to part with earthly goods, as if hinting that she has lingered in this world. The main character is a person of enormous spiritual strength: the death of children, a failed marriage, lonely old age - none of this broke the woman. Analysis of the story allows us to see a truthful picture of the life and worldview of simple village people, far from morality and beauty.

Characteristics of the characters “Matryonin Dvor”

Main characters

Minor characters

In the work “Matryonin’s Dvor” the heroes reveal their nature in full force precisely in crucial moment when misfortune happens. Even the narrator Ignatyich begins to truly understand Matrona only after her death. Solzhenitsyn's characterization of heroes consists of a mass small parts, actions and accidentally spoken words. This is the peculiarity of the writer, he is a skilled craftsman artistic word. In the list of the author’s works about the Russian soul, this story is perhaps the most piercing and vivid.

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You have probably met more than once such people who are ready to work with all their might for the benefit of others, but at the same time remain outcasts in society. No, they are not degraded either morally or mentally, but no matter how good their actions are, they are not appreciated. A. Solzhenitsyn tells us about one such character in the story “ Matrenin Dvor».

It's about about the main character of the story. The reader gets to know Matryona Vasilievna Grigoreva at an already advanced age - she was about 60 years old when we first see her on the pages of the story.

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Her house and yard are gradually falling into disrepair - “the wood chips have rotted, the logs of the log house and the gates, once mighty, have turned gray with age, and their cover has thinned out.”

Their owner is often sick and cannot get up for several days, but once upon a time everything was different: everything was built with a large family in mind, with high quality and soundness. The fact that now only a lonely woman lives here already sets the reader up to perceive tragedy life story heroines.

Matryona's youth

About childhood main character Solzhenitsyn does not tell the reader anything - the main emphasis of the story is on the period of her youth, when the main factors of her subsequent unhappy life were laid.

When Matryona was 19 years old, Thaddeus wooed her; at that time he was 23. The girl agreed, but the war prevented the wedding. There was no news about Thaddeus for a long time, Matryona was faithfully waiting for him, but she did not receive any news or the guy himself. Everyone decided that he had died. His younger brother, Efim, invited Matryona to marry him. Matryona did not love Efim, so she did not agree, and, perhaps, the hope of Thaddeus’s return did not completely leave her, but she was still persuaded: “the smart one comes out after the Intercession, and the fool comes out after Petrov. They didn't have enough hands. I'll go." And as it turned out, it was in vain - her lover returned to Pokrova - he was captured by the Hungarians and therefore there was no news about him.

The news about the marriage of his brother and Matryona came as a blow to him - he wanted to chop up the young people, but the concept that Efim was his brother stopped his intentions. Over time, he forgave them for such an act.

Yefim and Matryona remained to live in parental home. Matryona still lives in this yard; all the buildings here were made by her father-in-law.

Thaddeus did not marry for a long time, and then he found himself another Matryona - they have six children. Efim also had six children, but none of them survived - all died before the age of three months. Because of this, everyone in the village began to believe that Matryona had the evil eye, they even took her to the nun, but they could not achieve a positive result.

After the death of Matryona, Thaddeus talks about how his brother was ashamed of his wife. Efim preferred to “dress culturally, but she preferred to dress haphazardly, everything in a country style.” Once upon a time, the brothers had to work together in the city. Efim cheated on his wife there: he started a relationship, and didn’t want to return to Matryona

New grief came to Matryona - in 1941 Efim was taken to the front and he never returned from there. Whether Yefim died or found someone else is not known for sure.

So Matryona was left alone: ​​“misunderstood and abandoned even by her husband.”

Living alone

Matryona was kind and sociable. She maintained contact with her husband's relatives. Thaddeus’s wife also often came to her “to complain that her husband was beating her, and that her husband was stingy, pulling the veins out of her, and she cried here for a long time, and her voice was always in tears.”

Matryona felt sorry for her, her husband hit her only once - the woman walked away as a protest - after this it never happened again.

The teacher, who lives in an apartment with a woman, believes that it is likely that Efim’s wife was luckier than Thaddeus’s wife. The elder brother's wife was always severely beaten.

Matryona didn’t want to live without children and her husband, she decides to ask “that second downtrodden Matryona - the womb of her snatches (or Thaddeus’ little blood?) - for their youngest girl, Kira. For ten years she raised her here as her own, instead of her own who failed.” At the time of the story, the girl lives with her husband in a neighboring village.

Matryona worked diligently on the collective farm “not for money - for sticks”, in total she worked for 25 years, and then, despite the hassle, she managed to get a pension for herself.

Matryona worked hard - she had to prepare peat for the winter and gather lingonberries (on good days, she “brought six bags” per day).

lingonberries. We also had to prepare hay for the goats. “In the morning she took a bag and a sickle and left (...) Having filled the bag with fresh heavy grass, she dragged it home and laid it out in a layer in her yard. A bag of grass made dried hay - a fork.” In addition, she also managed to help others. By her nature, she could not refuse help to anyone. It often happened that one of the relatives or just acquaintances asked her to help dig up potatoes - the woman “left her line of work and went to help.” After harvesting, she, along with other women, harnessed themselves to a plow instead of a horse and plowed the gardens. She didn’t take money for her work: “you’ll have to hide it for her.”

Once every month and a half she had troubles - she had to prepare dinner for the shepherds. On such days, Matryona went shopping: “I bought canned fish, and bought sugar and butter, which I did not eat myself.” Such was the order here - it was necessary to feed her as best as possible, otherwise she would be made a laughing stock.

After receiving a pension and receiving money for renting out housing, Matryona’s life becomes much easier - the woman “ordered new felt boots for herself. I bought a new padded jacket. And she straightened her coat.” She even managed to save 200 rubles “for her funeral,” which, by the way, didn’t have to wait long. Matryona takes an active part in moving the room from her plot to her relatives. At a railway crossing, she rushes to help pull out a stuck sleigh - an oncoming train hits her and her nephew to death. They took off the bag to wash it. Everything was a mess - no legs, no half of the torso, no left arm. One woman crossed herself and said:

“The Lord left her her right hand.” There will be a prayer to God.

After the woman’s death, everyone quickly forgot her kindness and began, literally on the day of the funeral, to divide her property and condemn Matryona’s life: “and she was unclean; and she didn’t chase after the plant, stupid, she helped strangers for free (and the very reason to remember Matryona came - there was no one to call the garden to plow with a plow).”

Thus, Matryona’s life was full of troubles and tragedies: she lost both her husband and children. For everyone, she was strange and abnormal, because she did not try to live like everyone else, but retained a cheerful and kind disposition until the end of her days.

The life of Matryona in the story “Matryona’s Dvor” by A. Solzhenitsyn in quotes

A lot of hardships, labors and worries fell on the shoulders of the heroine of A.I. Solzhenitsyn’s story Matryona [see. full text, summary and analysis of the story “Matryonin’s Dvor”]. Her life in youth and old age was a continuous toil. “Year after year, for many years, Matryona Vasilyevna did not earn a ruble from anywhere. Because she was not paid a pension. Her family didn't help her much. And on the collective farm she did not work for money - for sticks. For sticks of workdays in the accountant’s dirty book.”

Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Matrenin Dvor. Read by the author

But, unlike her fellow villagers, Matryona kept living soul, remained forever unselfish, kind, delicate, and preserved her former girlish love until old age.

Not rich in words, her story about her love for Thaddeus is full of poetry, reminiscent of ancient songs and laments. After all, this is a kind of lament for the past, for failed happiness. “For three years I hid, waited. And not a word, not a bone..."; “Oh, oh, oh, poor little head!..” she laments.

The narrator seems to echo her. In his speech, the intonations of folk poetry begin to sound: “And the years passed as the water floated...” In his imagination, folklore images: “I imagined them side by side: a resin hero with a scythe across his back; her, rosy, hugging the sheaf. And - a song, a song under the sky, which the village has long since stopped singing, and you can’t sing with the machinery.”

Mourning his heroine, he calls her “tulleless,” unconsciously repeating the lament of Irina Fedosova:

There is no one to take refuge with,
There is no one to lurch to in victory...

Matryona's fate is truly tragic. But not only because she lost a loved one, lived with an unloved one, buried six children in infancy; not because she is tormented by a black illness, that she struggles in poverty, that she is destined to die under a train. Her immense loneliness is tragic. No one understood, loved, or pitied her, because among the black crows she remained white.

She lived her whole life in her native village, “misunderstood and abandoned,” “stranger,” “funny.” The neighbors condemn her for what the author seems to be especially valuable about her. They speak about Matryona’s cordiality and simplicity “with contemptuous regret.” They reproach her for being “not careful.” “I didn’t chase after acquisitions... I didn’t struggle to buy things and then cherish them more than my life.” And the author reflects: "...good The language strangely calls our property ours, the people's or mine. And losing it is considered shameful and stupid in front of people.” But Solzhenitsyn’s heroine did not take care of good, but kindness. And she was incredibly rich. But no one noticed or appreciated the spiritual values ​​that she possessed.

The description of Matryona’s hut takes on a deep meaning in the story. Lonely among people, she is surrounded at home by close “creatures”. It is they who make up the special poetic world, in tune with her soul. She is deeply attached to this world, and he lives his independent, simple and mysterious life.

So, about ficuses it is said: “They filled the loneliness of the housewife with a silent but living crowd.” Ficus trees are compared to a forest and seem to constitute a certain part of the natural world. Even insects are spoken of in the spirit of contrasting them with everything that is outside the hut: “Besides Matryona and me, they also lived in the hut: a cat, mice and cockroaches /... / At night, when Matryona was already asleep, and I was studying at the table , - the rare, rapid rustling of mice under the wallpaper was covered by the continuous, unified, continuous, like the distant sound of the ocean, rustling of cockroaches behind the partition. But I got used to him, because there was nothing evil in him, there was no lie in him. Their rustling was their life.”

For a long time it was believed that the Russian land rests on the righteous. Real righteous people lived without money, selflessly helped other people and did not envy anyone. Fully fits this description Matryona from Solzhenitsyn's story "Matrenin's Dvor".

Matrena Vasilievna is a righteous and pure woman who lived in a small village near a railway crossing. In his youth, Fadey wooed her, but he was taken to war. Matryona was waiting for his return, but three years later Efim wooed her, brother Fadeya. Fadey unexpectedly returned from captivity - and was worried for a long time. He said that he would have killed his fiancée if she had not been his brother's wife.

Matryona lived well, but she was unlucky with her children. Her children died one after another - and not one of the babies survived. In 1941, her husband was drafted into the active army - and he never returned home. At first Matryona waited for her husband, and then accepted his death. To brighten up her loneliness, Matryona Vasilyevna took in Fadey’s youngest daughter, Kira, to raise her. She selflessly looked after the girl. When Kira grew up, she married her off to neighboring village for the train driver.

After the pupil’s departure, Matryona’s house became empty and sad, and only ficus trees brightened up the poor woman’s loneliness. She selflessly loved these plants - and even during a fire she saved not the hut, but the ficuses. Matryona, out of pity, sheltered the lanky cat that lived with her long years.

Notable was the fact that Matryona worked her whole life on the collective farm for the ticks that the foreman put on the report card. Because of this, she did not receive a labor pension. Only after much work Matryona managed to secure a pension for herself. As soon as she had money, it turned out that Matryona Vasilievna had three sisters.

After some time, Fadey arrived and asked for a room for Kira. Matryona donated her upper room for construction - and also diligently helped remove the logs.

When, due to the greed of the tractor driver and Fadey, the second cart got stuck at the crossing, Matryona rushed to the rescue. She always helped others unselfishly, so she could not accumulate much good. Those around her and relatives considered Matryona sloppy and mismanagement. And, unfortunately, no one appreciated the honesty, kindness and sacrifice of this righteous woman.

Matryona is a symbol of kindness and sacrifice, which is very rare in modern people. In our world, business acumen and the ability to make money are valued, but such good-natured people die with a smile on their sweet face. They know true price life, so for them material goods do not play any role. Our land rests on the righteous, but we do not appreciate this.