Matryona's house is a description of the image of Grigoryeva Matryona Vasilievna. The image of Matryona in the story "Matryona's Dvor" by A. I. Solzhenitsyn

Matryona Vasilievna Grigorieva - central character story by A.I. Solzhenitsyn “ Matrenin Dvor" We learn her story from the perspective of the narrator, Ignatyich, who, after 10 years in the camps, accidentally came to the small village of Talnovo and became Matryona’s guest.

Poor hut and good-natured elderly woman, although plagued by illnesses, her owner immediately took a liking to Ignatyich.

Matryona is a typical Russian peasant woman who lived difficult life. She is about 60 years old, she is lonely and lives very modestly, having worked hard all her life, she has never accumulated any goods. And although her hut was large and built for a large family, it was very poor - for 25 years of work on the collective farm, she was not even entitled to a pension, because she worked not for money, but for “sticks” of workdays. During her life, the old woman earned enough to earn five such pensions, but due to bureaucratic confusion she remained completely destitute.

And for last years the woman began to suffer from some kind of illness, which completely deprived her of strength. Sick and tired, Ignatyich sees her for the first time:

“...the roundish face of the hostess seemed yellow and sick to me. And from her clouded eyes one could see that the illness had exhausted her...”

Regularly suffering from attacks, Matryona still does not go to the paramedic - some kind of innate delicacy and shyness does not allow her to complain and be a burden, even for the village doctor.

But neither illness, nor great need, nor loneliness made her callous. Amazing all-forgiving kindness and humanity are reflected even in her appearance:

“...Those people always have good faces, who are at peace with their conscience...” the simple-minded face was kind and bright, and the smile was lively.

In her native village, Matryona was treated with misunderstanding and even disdain. How can you understand a person who rushes to help everyone around him, but doesn’t take a penny for it?! But such was Matryona’s soul. Selfless help became a meaning for her, and work became a way to forget all the hardships, a cure for adversity that always put her on her feet.

"...But her forehead did not remain darkened for long. I noticed: she had a sure way to regain her good mood - work. Immediately she either grabbed a shovel and dug the chard. Or, with a bag under her arm, she went for peat. Otherwise, with a wicker body - up to the berries in the distant forest...".

Having learned about her unfortunate fate, Ignatyich was more amazed not at her childish kindness and bright naivety, but at the callousness and disgust of those around her. The wretchedness of her housing and inability to earn money irritated them, but, nevertheless, no one neglected her selflessness and constant desire to be useful.

The unhappy woman knew neither love, nor family, nor simple female happiness. Having married, as fate would have it, an unloved man, she ultimately realized that he had never loved her either. She gave birth to and buried six children who were not even three months old. And after the war I was left completely alone. But nothing could break her, and she remained pure and generous. But do people really need this? The world rests on the righteous, but the world refuses them.

So, wanting to do a good deed, Matryona sacrifices part of her own house, which was dismantled, in order to build a home for a stranger, which ultimately leads her to an absurd death, but not to the understanding and compassion of those around her. So true beauty her soul, her greatness kind heart remain noticeable only to her modest guest Ignatyich.

"...We all lived next to her and did not understand that she was the same righteous man, without whom, according to the proverb, the village would not stand. Not the city. Not our whole land..."

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 Vasilievna 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”. They make up a 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, there were also living 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.”

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 in the work of the picture of the division of property living and healthy woman: her relatives are hurrying her to part with her earthly goods, as if hinting that she has stayed too long 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 characters reveal their nature in full force exactly at 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.

Work test

In 1963, one of the stories of the Russian thinker and humanist Alexander Solzhenitsyn was published. It is based on events from the author’s biography. The publication of his books has always caused a huge resonance not only in the Russian-speaking society, but also among Western readers. But the image of Matryona in the story “Matryona’s Dvor” is unique. Nothing like this before village prose did not have. And therefore this work took a special place in Russian literature.

Plot

The story is told from the author's perspective. A certain teacher and former camp inmate goes in the summer of 1956 at random, wherever his eyes look. His goal is to get lost somewhere in the dense Russian outback. Despite the ten years he spent in the camp, the hero of the story still hopes to find a job and teach. He succeeds. He settles in the village of Talnovo.

The image of Matryona in the story “Matryona’s Dvor” begins to take shape even before her appearance. A random acquaintance helps the main character find shelter. After a long and unsuccessful search, he offers to go to Matryona, warning that “she lives in a desolate place and is sick.” They are heading towards her.

Matryona's Domain

The house is old and rotten. It had been built many years ago for a large family, but now it was inhabited only by one woman of about sixty. Without a description of the poor life of the village, the story “Matrenin’s Dvor” would not be so insightful. The image of Matryona - the heroine of the story - fully corresponds to the atmosphere of desolation that reigned in the hut. Yellow, sickly face, tired eyes...

The house is full of mice. Among its inhabitants, in addition to the owner herself, are cockroaches and a lanky cat.

The image of Matryona in the story “Matryona’s Dvor” is the basis of the story. Starting from it, the author reveals his peace of mind and depicts character traits other characters.

From main character the narrator learns about her difficult fate. She lost her husband at the front. She lived her entire life alone. Later, her guest finds out that for many years she has not received a penny: she works not for money, but for sticks.

She was not happy with the tenant and tried to persuade him for some time to find a cleaner and more comfortable house. But the guest’s desire to find a quieter place determined the choice: he stayed with Matryona.

While the teacher was staying with her, the old woman got up before dark and prepared a simple breakfast. And it seemed that some meaning appeared in Matryona’s life.

Peasant image

The image of Matryona in the story “Matryona's Dvor” is an amazingly rare combination of selflessness and hard work. This woman has been working for half a century, not to make a living, but out of habit. Because he cannot imagine any other existence.

It should be said that the fate of the peasantry always attracted Solzhenitsyn, since his ancestors belonged to this class. And he believed that it was precisely the hard work, sincerity and generosity that distinguished the representatives of this social stratum. This is confirmed by the sincere, truthful image of Matryona in the story “Matryona’s Dvor”.

Fate

In intimate conversations in the evenings, the landlady tells the tenant the story of her life. Efim’s husband died in the war, but first his brother wooed her. She agreed and was listed as his fiancée, but during World War II he went missing and she did not wait for him. She married Efim. But Thaddeus returned.

Not a single child of Matryona survived. And then she became a widow.

Its end is tragic. She dies due to her naivety and kindness. This event ends the story “Matrenin’s Dvor”. The image of the righteous Matryona is sadder because, despite all her good qualities, she remains misunderstood by her fellow villagers.

Loneliness

Matryona lived in big house all her life alone, except for the short-lived female happiness that was destroyed by the war. And also those years during which she raised Thaddeus’s daughter. He married her namesake and they had six children. Matryona asked him to raise a girl, which he did not refuse. But also stepdaughter left her.

The image of Matryona in A. I. Solzhenitsyn’s story “Matryona’s Dvor” is amazing. Neither eternal poverty, nor insults, nor all kinds of oppression destroy it. The best way It was a job for the woman to regain her good spirits. And after the work, she became satisfied, enlightened, with a kind smile.

The last righteous woman

She knew how to rejoice in someone else's happiness. Having not accumulated goodness throughout her life, she did not become bitter, and retained the ability to sympathize. Not a single hard work in the village could be done without her participation. Despite her illness, she helped other women, harnessed herself to the plow, forgetting about her advanced age and the illness that had tormented her for more than twenty years.

This woman never refused anything to her relatives, and her inability to preserve her own “goods” led to the fact that she lost her upper room - her only property, not counting the old rotten house. The image of Matryona in the story by A. I. Solzhenitsyn personifies selflessness and virtue, which for some reason did not evoke either respect or response from others.

Thaddeus

Righteous female character contrasted with her failed husband Thaddeus, without whom there would be incomplete system images "Matrenin's Dvor" is a story in which, in addition to the main character, there are other persons. But Thaddeus is a clear contrast to the main character. Returning from the front alive, he did not forgive his fiancee for betrayal. Although, it should be said that she did not love his brother, but only pitied him. Understanding that it is difficult for his family without a mistress. The death of Matryona at the end of the story is a consequence of the stinginess of Thaddeus and his relatives. Avoiding unnecessary expenses, they decided to transport the room faster, but did not have time, as a result of which Matryona was hit by a train. Only one remains intact right hand. But even after terrible events Thaddeus looks at her dead body indifferently, indifferently.

There are also many sorrows and disappointments in the fate of Thaddeus, but the difference between the two characters is that Matryona was able to save her soul, but he was not. After her death, the only thing he cares about is Matrenino’s meager property, which he immediately drags into his house. Thaddeus does not come to the wake.

The image of Holy Rus', which poets so often sang, dissipates with her departure. A village cannot stand without a righteous man. The image of Matryona, the heroine in Solzhenitsyn’s story “Matryona’s Dvor,” is a remnant of the Russian pure soul, which is still alive, but already on its last legs. Because righteousness and kindness are valued less and less in Russia.

The story, as already said, is based on real events. The only difference is in the name settlement and some little things. The heroine's name was actually Matryona. She lived in one of the villages of the Vladimir region, where the author spent 1956-1957. It was planned to turn her house into a museum in 2011. But Matrenin's yard burned down. In 2013, the house-museum was restored.

The work was first published in literary magazine « New world" Solzhenitsyn's previous story caused a positive reaction. The story of the righteous woman gave rise to many disputes and discussions. And yet, critics had to admit that the story was created by a great and truthful artist, capable of returning it to the people native language and continue the traditions of Russian classical literature.

To the number best works A. I. Solzhenitsyn undoubtedly refers to the story “Matrenin’s Dvor” about a simple Russian woman with a difficult fate. Many trials befell her, but until the end of her days the heroine retained in her soul a love of life, boundless kindness, and a willingness to sacrifice herself for the well-being of others. The article offers the reader a description of the image of Matryona.

“Matrenin’s Dvor”: the real basis of the work

He wrote his own in 1959 and at first called it “A village is not worth it without a righteous man” (for censorship reasons the title was later changed). The prototype of the main character was Matryona Timofeevna Zakharova, a resident of the village of Miltsevo, located in the Vladimir region. The writer lived with her during his teaching years after returning from the camps. Therefore, the feelings and thoughts of the narrator largely reflect the views of the author himself, from the first day, as he admitted, he felt something dear and close to his heart in the house of a woman he did not know. Why this became possible can be explained by Matryona's characteristics.

“Matrenin Dvor”: first acquaintance with the heroine

The narrator was brought to Grigorieva’s house when all options for apartments for settlement had already been considered. The fact is that Matryona Vasilievna lived alone in an old house. All her property consisted of a bed, a table, benches and her favorite ficus trees. Moreover, a lanky cat, which a woman picked up on the street out of pity, and a goat. She did not receive a pension, since on the collective farm she was given sticks instead of workdays. I could no longer work due to health reasons. Then, however, with great difficulty I received a pension for the loss of my husband. At the same time, she always silently came to the aid of everyone who turned to her, and did not take anything for her work. This is the first characteristic of Matryona in the story “Matryona’s Dvor”. To this we can add that the peasant woman also did not know how to cook, although the tenant was not picky and did not complain. And a couple of times a month she was attacked by severe illness, when the woman could not even stand up. But even at these moments she did not complain, and even tried not to moan, so as not to disturb the tenant. The author especially emphasizes Blue eyes and a radiant smile - a symbol of openness and kindness.

The difficult fate of the heroine

Life history helps to better understand a person. Without her, the characterization of Matryona in the story “Matryona’s Court” will be incomplete.

The peasant woman did not have her own children: all six died in infancy. She did not marry for love: she waited for the groom from the front for several years, and then agreed to become the wife of his younger brother - the time was difficult, and there were not enough hands in the family. Soon after the wedding of the newlyweds, Thaddeus returned, who never forgave Efim and Matryona. It was believed that he placed a curse on them, and later the heroine’s husband would die in World War II. And the woman will take Kira into her upbringing, youngest daughter Thaddeus, and will give her love and care. The narrator learned about all this from the hostess, and she suddenly appeared before him in a new appearance. Even then, the narrator realized how far his first characterization of Matryona was from reality.

Meanwhile, Matryona's court began to attract the attention of Thaddeus, who wanted to take the dowry assigned to Kira by her adoptive mother. This part of the upper room will be the cause of the heroine’s death.

Live for others

Matryona Vasilievna had long foreseen trouble. The author describes her suffering when it turned out that during her baptism someone had taken her pot of holy water. Then suddenly, before the room was dismantled, the hostess didn’t seem like herself at all. The collapse of the roof meant the end of her life. Such little things made up the heroine’s whole life, which she lived not for herself, but for the sake of others. And when Matryona Vasilyevna went with everyone else, she also wanted to help. Sincere, open, not embittered by the injustices of life. She accepted everything as destined by fate and never complained. Matryona's characterization leads to this conclusion.

“Matrenin’s Dvor” ends with a description of the heroine’s funeral scene. She plays an important role in understanding how different this peasant woman was from the people who surrounded her. The narrator notes with pain that the sisters and Thaddeus immediately began to divide the mistress’s meager property. And even my friend, as if she was sincerely experiencing the loss, managed to grab a blouse for herself. Against the backdrop of everything that was happening, the narrator suddenly remembered the living Matryona, so unlike everyone else. And I realized: she is the righteous man without whom not a single village can stand. What a village there is - the whole land is ours. This is proven by the life and characteristics of Matryona.

“Matryona’s Dvor” contains the author’s regret that during his lifetime he (as well as others) could not fully understand the greatness of this woman. Therefore, one can perceive Solzhenitsyn’s work as a kind of repentance to the heroine for one’s own and others’ spiritual blindness.

One more point is indicative. On the heroine’s mutilated body, her bright face and right hand remained intact. “He will pray for us in the next world,” said one of the women in the story “Matrenin’s Dvor.” The characterization of Matryona, therefore, makes us think about the fact that there are people living nearby who are capable of preserving human dignity, kindness, humility. And partly thanks to them, such concepts as empathy, compassion, and mutual assistance still exist in our world, filled with cruelty.