In Katerina’s worldview, Slavic pagan antiquity, rooted in prehistoric times, harmoniously merges with the democratic trends of Christian culture. Katerina’s religiosity includes sunrises and sunsets, dewy grass in flowering meadows, birds flying, butterflies fluttering from flower to flower. Along with it is the beauty of a rural church, and the expanse of the Volga, and the Trans-Volga meadow expanse. And as the heroine prays, “what an angelic smile she has on her face, and her face seems to glow.”
Ostrovsky’s earthly heroine, emitting spiritual light, is far from the harsh asceticism of Domostroevsky morality. According to the rules of Domostroy, during church prayer one had to listen to divine singing with unflagging attention, and “keep your eyes down.” he directs his eyes upward. And what does she see, what does she hear during church prayer? These angelic choirs in the pillar sunlight, pouring from the dome, this church singing, picked up by the singing of birds, this spirituality of the earthly elements - the elements of heaven: “Actually, it happened that I would go in, and I don’t see anyone, and I don’t remember the time, and I don’t hear when the service is over.”
Katerina experiences the joy of life in the temple. She bows to the sun in her garden, among the trees, herbs, flowers, and the morning freshness of awakening nature. “Or early in the morning I’ll go to the garden, the sun is just rising, I’ll fall on my knees, pray and cry:”
In a difficult moment of her life, Katerina will complain: “If only I had died as a little girl, it would have been better. I would look from heaven to earth and rejoice at everything. Otherwise she would fly invisibly wherever she wanted. She would fly out into the field and fly from cornflower to cornflower in the wind, like a butterfly.” " Why do people they don’t fly!.. I say: why don’t people fly like birds? You know, sometimes I feel like I'm a bird. When you stand on a mountain, you feel the urge to fly. That’s how I would run up, raise my hands and fly.”
Katerina’s freedom-loving impulses, even in her childhood memories, are not spontaneous: “I was born so hot! I was still six years old, no more, so I did it! They offended me with something at home, and it was late in the evening, it was already dark, I ran out to the Volga, got into the boat and pushed it away from the shore.” After all, this act of Katerina is completely consistent with her people's soul. In Russian fairy tales, the hero is always hiding from his pursuers.
Since ancient times, they worshiped rivers and believed that they all flow to the end of the white world, to where the sun rises from the sea - to the land of truth and goodness. Along the Volga, in a dugout boat, the Kostroma residents sailed the sun god Yarila and escorted him to the promised land of warm waters. They threw shavings from the coffin into running water. They floated obsolete icons along the river. So, little Katerina’s impulse to seek protection from the Volga is a departure from untruth and evil to the land of light and goodness, this is a rejection of “wrong lies” with early childhood and readiness to leave the world if everything in it “gets sick of her.”
Without feeling the pristine freshness of Katerina’s inner world, you will not understand the vitality and power of her character, the figurative mystery of the folk language. “How frisky I was! - Katerina turns to Varvara, but then, wilting, she adds: “I’ve completely withered with you.” Katerina’s soul, blossoming at the same time as nature, really fades in the hostile world of wild boars and wild boars.
In the early fifties, significant changes occurred in Ostrovsky’s work. A look at merchant life in the first comedy “Our People - We Will Be Numbered!” seems to the playwright “young and too tough.” “: It is better for a Russian person to rejoice when he sees himself on stage than to be sad. Correctors will be found even without us. In order to have the right to correct the people without offending them, you need to show them that you know the good in them; This is what I’m doing now, combining the sublime with the comic.” In the plays of the first half of the fifties, “Don’t get into your own sleigh,” “Poverty is not a vice,” and “Don’t live as you want,” Ostrovsky portrays mainly the bright, poetic sides. The same traditions are preserved in the drama “The Thunderstorm”. The poetics of Ostrovsky’s works still captivates the hearts of readers and viewers.
“A public garden on the high bank of the Volga; beyond the Volga there is a rural view,” - with such a remark Ostrovsky opens “The Thunderstorm.” The action of the Russian tragedy rises above the Volga expanse, opens up to the all-Russian expanse, it is immediately given poetic inspiration: “The city cannot hide, standing at the top of the mountain."
In Kuligin’s mouth sounds the song “Among the Flat Valley” - the epigraph and poetic grain of “Thunderstorms”. This is a song about the tragedy of goodness and beauty: the richer spiritually and more moral person, the fewer supports he has, the more dramatic his existence. This song already anticipates the fate of the heroine with her human restlessness, her inability to find support and support, her inability to adapt to circumstances.
And here before us is Katerina, who alone is given in “The Thunderstorm” to retain the fullness of viable principles folk culture. Where do Katerina’s vital sources of this integrity come from? In order to understand this, we must turn to the cultural soil that nourishes it. Without her, Katerina's character fades like mown grass.
Katerina’s worldview harmoniously combines Slavic pagan antiquity with Christian culture, spiritualizing and morally enlightening old pagan beliefs. Katerina’s religiosity is unthinkable without sunrises and sunsets, dewy grasses in flowering meadows, birds flying, butterflies fluttering from flower to flower. In the heroine’s monologues, familiar Russian motifs come to life folk songs. In Katerina’s worldview, the spring of primordially Russian song culture beats and acquires new life Christian beliefs.
Let's see how Katerina prays, “what an angelic smile she has on her face, and her face seems to glow.” There is something iconographic in this face, from which a bright radiance emanates. But the earthly heroine of A. N. Ostrovsky, emitting spiritual light, is far from the asceticism of official Christian morality. Her prayer is a bright holiday of the spirit, a feast of the imagination: “Sure, it happened that I would enter heaven, and I didn’t see anyone, and I didn’t remember the time, and I didn’t hear when the service was over.” Katerina’s life-loving religiosity has gone far from the norms of the old patriarchal morality.
She experiences the joy of life in the temple, bows to the sun in the garden, among the trees, herbs, flowers, morning freshness, awakening nature: “Or early in the morning I’ll go to the garden, the sun is just rising, I’ll fall on my knees, I pray and cry, and I don’t know what I’m praying for and why I’m crying; that’s how they’ll find me.”
In the dreams of young Katerina there are echoes of Christian legends about paradise, the divine garden of Eden. It is obvious that the legend of paradise includes all the beauty of earthly life: prayers to the rising sun, morning visits to key students, bright images of angels and birds. In the vein of these dreams is another serious desire - to fly: “Why don’t people fly!.. That’s how I would run up, raise my hands and fly.”
Where do these fantastic dreams come from for Katerina? Are they not the fruit of a morbid imagination, or a whim of a refined nature? No. In the consciousness of Katerina, those who entered the flesh and blood of the Russian awaken folk character ancient pagan myths, deep layers are revealed Slavic culture.
Freedom-loving impulses in childhood memories are also not spontaneous. They also bear the influence of folk culture. “I was born so hot! I was only six years old, no more, so I did it! They offended me with something at home, and it was towards evening, it was already dark, I ran out to the Volga, got into the boat, and pushed her away from shore. The next morning they found it, about ten miles away! After all, this act is consistent with the folk tale about truth. IN folk tales the girl turns to the river with a request to save her, and the river hides the girl in its banks. So little Katerina’s impulse to seek protection from the Volga is quite fabulous and completely social: here is a departure from untruth and evil to the land of truth and goodness, here is the rejection of wrongdoing from childhood and a decisive readiness to leave this world if everything in it disgusts her.
And so, in the Kabanovs’ house, Katerina finds herself in the “dark kingdom” of spiritual unfreedom. “Everything here seems to be from under captivity,” a stern religious spirit has settled here, democracy has evaporated here, the cheerful generosity of the people’s worldview has disappeared.
During the course of the action, Katerina does not hear Feklushi, but it is generally accepted that she has seen and heard many of these wanderers in her short life. The heroine's monologue, which plays a key role in the tragedy, refutes such a view. Even the wanderers in Kabanikha’s house are different, from among those bigots who “due to their weakness did not walk far, but heard a lot.” And they talk about the “end times”, about the coming end of the world. These wanderers are alien to Katerina’s pure world, they are in the service of Kabanikha, and that means they can have nothing in common with Katerina.
The monologues of the play's heroine embody the people's cherished aspirations and hopes. Tenderness and daring, dreaminess and earthly passion are combined in Katerina’s character; The main thing in it is not the mystical impulse away from the earth, but the moral force that spiritualizes earthly existence.
In Katerina, the love of life of the Russian people triumphs, who sought in religion not the negation of life, but its affirmation. The soul of Ostrovsky's heroine is one of those selected Russian souls who are alien to compromise, who thirst for universal truth and do not agree to anything less.
In Katerina’s worldview, Slavic pagan antiquity, rooted in prehistoric times, harmoniously merges with the democratic trends of Christian culture. Katerina’s religiosity includes sunrises and sunsets, dewy grass in flowering meadows, birds flying, butterflies fluttering from flower to flower. Along with it is the beauty of a rural church, and the expanse of the Volga, and the Trans-Volga meadow expanse. And as the heroine prays, “what an angelic smile she has on her face, and her face seems to glow.”
Ostrovsky's earthly heroine, emitting spiritual light, is far from the harsh asceticism of Domostroevsky morality. According to the rules of Domostroy, during church prayer one had to listen to divine singing with unflagging attention, and “keep your eyes down.” Katerina directs her eyes upward. And what does she see, what does she hear during church prayer? These angelic choirs in the pillar of sunlight pouring from the dome, this church singing, picked up by the singing of birds, this spirituality of the earthly elements - the elements of heaven... “Sure, it happened that I would enter heaven, and I don’t see anyone, and I don’t remember the time, and I don’t I hear when the service is over.”
Katerina experiences the joy of life in the temple. She bows to the sun in her garden, among the trees, herbs, flowers, and the morning freshness of awakening nature. “Or early in the morning I’ll go to the garden, the sun is still just rising, I’ll fall on my knees, pray and cry...”
In a difficult moment of her life, Katerina will complain: “If only I had died as a little girl, it would have been better. I would look from heaven to earth and rejoice at everything. Otherwise she would fly invisibly wherever she wanted. I would fly out into the field and fly from cornflower to cornflower in the wind, like a butterfly.” “Why don’t people fly!.. I say: why don’t people fly like birds? You know, sometimes I feel like I'm a bird. When you stand on a mountain, you feel the urge to fly. That’s how I would run up, raise my hands and fly.”
Katerina’s freedom-loving impulses, even in her childhood memories, are not spontaneous: “I was born so hot! I was still six years old, no more, so I did it! They offended me with something at home, and it was late in the evening, it was already dark, I ran out to the Volga, got into the boat and pushed it away from the shore.” After all, this act of Katerina is completely consistent with her people's soul. In Russian fairy tales, the hero is always hiding from his pursuers.
Since ancient times, the Slavs worshiped rivers and believed that they all flow to the end of the white world, to where the sun rises from the sea - to the land of truth and goodness. Along the Volga, in a dugout boat, the Kostroma residents sailed the sun god Yarila and escorted him to the promised land of warm waters. They threw shavings from the coffin into running water. They floated obsolete icons along the river. So little Katerina’s impulse to seek protection from the Volga is a departure from untruth and evil to the land of light and goodness, this is a rejection of “vain lies” from early childhood and a readiness to leave the world if everything in it “gets fed up” with her.
Without feeling the pristine freshness of Katerina’s inner world, you will not understand the vitality and power of her character, the figurative mystery of the folk language. “How frisky I was! - Katerina turns to Varvara, but then, wilting, she adds: “I’ve completely withered with you.” Katerina’s soul, blossoming at the same time as nature, really fades in the hostile world of wild boars and wild boars.
In the early fifties, significant changes occurred in Ostrovsky’s work. A look at merchant life in the first comedy “Our People - Let's Be Numbered!” seems to the playwright “young and too tough.” “...It is better for a Russian person to rejoice when he sees himself on stage than to be sad. Correctors will be found even without us. In order to have the right to correct the people without offending them, you need to show them that you know the good in them; This is what I’m doing now, combining the sublime with the comic.” In the plays of the first half of the fifties, “Don’t Get in Your Own Sleigh,” “Poverty is Not a Vice,” and “Don’t Live the Way You Want,” Ostrovsky depicts mainly the bright, poetic sides of Russian life. The same traditions are preserved in the drama “The Thunderstorm”. The poetics of Ostrovsky’s works still captivates the hearts of readers and viewers.
The image of Matryona Timofeevna in the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'”... Part called "Peasant Woman". In general, this image occupies a special place in all of Nekrasov’s poetry. The Russian woman has always been the main thing for Nekrasov...
Summary of an integrated drawing lesson in the senior group: “Trees”, World of Preschoolers... Summary of an integrated drawing lesson in the senior group: “Trees” Continue to introduce children to non-traditional drawing techniques. Pin...
Katerina’s worldview harmoniously combines Slavic pagan antiquity, rooted in prehistoric times, with the democratic trends of Christian culture, spiritualizing and morally enlightening old pagan beliefs. Katerina’s religiosity is unthinkable without sunrises and sunsets, dewy grasses in flowering meadows, birds flying, butterflies fluttering from flower to flower. Along with it is the beauty of a rural church, and the expanse of the Volga, and the Trans-Volga meadow expanse. In Katerina’s monologues, familiar motifs of Russian folk songs come to life:
Somehow young, Somewhat young, I’ve been there
Early in the morning,
I got up early in the morning...
Oh, yes, I lived with my mother, like a flower bloomed,
Like a flower blooming, Oh, yes, I lived with my father, like weaving a wreath,
Like weaving a wreath.
In Katerina’s worldview, the spring of primordially Russian song culture beats and Christian beliefs take on new life.
As Katerina prays, “what an angelic smile she has on her face, and her face seems to glow.” There is something iconographic in this face, from which a bright radiance emanates - the image of the hagiographic plan is akin to the “solar-transparent” Catherine, the heroine of the lives of saints revered by the people. But Ostrovsky’s earthly heroine, emitting spiritual light, is far from the asceticism of official Christian morality. According to the rules of “Domostroy,” during church prayer one had to listen with tension and unflagging attention to divine singing and reading, and “keep your physical eyes down.” Katerina directs her bodily eyes to “grief.” Her prayer is a bright holiday of the spirit, a feast of the imagination: these angelic choirs in the pillar of sunlight pouring from the dome, echoing the singing of wanderers, the chirping of birds, the general inspiration of the earthly and heavenly elements. “Sure, it happened that I would enter heaven, and I didn’t see anyone, and I didn’t remember the time, and I didn’t hear when the service was over.” But Domostroy taught to pray “with fear and trembling, with sighs and tears.” Katerina’s life-loving religiosity has gone far from the obsolete norms of the old patriarchal morality.
Katerina experiences the joy of life in the church; she bows to the sun in the garden, among the trees, herbs, flowers, the morning freshness of awakening nature: “Or early in the morning I’ll go to the garden, the sun is just rising, I’ll fall on my knees, I pray and cry, and I don’t know what I’m praying for and why I’m crying; That’s how they’ll find me.”
In the dreams of young Katerina there is an echo of the Christian legend about paradise, the divine garden of Eden, which the firstborn people were bequeathed to cultivate. They lived like birds of the air, and their work was the work of free and free people. They were immortal, like gods, and time had no destructive power over them:
“I lived, didn’t worry about anything, like a bird in the wild. Mama doted on me, dressed me up like a doll, and didn’t force me to work; I used to do whatever I want... I used to get up early; If it’s summer, I’ll go to the spring, wash myself, bring some water with me and that’s it, I’ll water all the flowers in the house. I had many, many flowers.” It is obvious that Katerina’s legend of paradise embraces all the beauty of earthly life: prayers to the rising sun, morning visits to student keys, bright images of angels and birds. Later, in a difficult moment of life, Katerina will complain:
“If I had died as a little girl, it would have been better. I would look from heaven to earth and rejoice at everything. Otherwise she would fly invisibly wherever she wanted. I would fly out into the field and fly from cornflower to cornflower in the wind, like a butterfly.” In the vein of these dreams, Katerina also has another serious desire - to fly: “Why don’t people fly!.. I say: why don’t people fly like birds? You know, sometimes I feel like I'm a bird. When you stand on a mountain, you feel the urge to fly. That's how she would run up, raise her hands and fly. Something to try now? (He wants to run.)"
Where do these fantastic dreams come from for Katerina? Are they not the fruit of a morbid imagination, or a whim of a refined nature? No. In Katerina’s consciousness, ancient pagan myths that have become part of the flesh and blood of the Russian folk character awaken, and deep layers of Slavic culture are revealed. Katerina prays to the morning sun, since from time immemorial the Slavs considered the East a country of almighty fruitful forces. Long before Christianity came to Rus', they imagined paradise as a wonderful garden, unfading, located in the domain of the god of light, where all righteous souls fly away, turning into light-winged birds after death. This paradise was located near the heavenly spring, over which birds sang joyfully, and flowers bloomed nearby, berries grew, apples and all kinds of vegetables ripened. Springs were held in special esteem by the Slavs; healing and fruitful powers were attributed to them. Chapels were built at the springs; in the morning, before sowing, our peasant ancestors went out to the students, drew spring water, sprinkled the seeds with it or washed themselves, and treated themselves for ailments.
The Slavs even concluded marriages near the water. Isn’t this where Ostrovsky’s poetic nights on the Volga come from, full of pagan power and passion?
The freedom-loving impulses in Katerina’s childhood memories are not spontaneous. They also show the influence of folk culture. “I was born so hot! I was still six years old, no more, so I did it! They offended me with something at home, and it was late in the evening, it was already dark, I ran out to the Volga, got into the boat, and pushed it away from the shore. The next morning they found it, about ten miles away! After all, this act of Katerina is consistent with the folk fairy-tale dream of truth. In folk tales, a girl turns to the river with a request to save her, and the river shelters the girl in its banks. P. I. Yakushkin in “Travel Letters” conveys the legend about how the robber Kudeyar wanted to kidnap a village beauty: “He began to break down the door. The girl grabbed the icon of the Most Holy Lady Theotokos that stood in the front corner, jumped out the window and ran to the Desna River: “Mother, most pure Mother of God! Mother, Desna River! It’s not my fault, I’m disappearing from evil man! - She said those words and rushed into the Desna River; and the Desna River immediately dried up in that place and went to the side, gave onions, so that the girl stood on one bank, and Kudeyar the robber found himself on the other! So Kudeyar did no harm; and others say that as soon as the Desna rushed to the side, a wave captured Kudeyar himself and drowned him.”
The people's consciousness was a vast world of all kinds of poetic personifications: rivers, forests, stones, herbs, flowers, birds, animals, trees were organs of living, spiritualized unity. A poetic description from the folk “Flower Garden”: “The grass is Ulik, and it itself is red-cherry, its head is like jugs, and its mouth blooms like yellow silk, and its leaves are paws.”
Katerina Ostrovsky refers to wild winds, herbs, and flowers according to the folk style, as spiritual beings. Without feeling this pristine freshness of her inner world, you will not understand the vitality and power of her character, the figurative beauty of her language. “How frisky I was! I’ve completely withered away from you.” The metaphor in the context of Katerina’s monologues loses its connotation and plastically comes to life: the heroine’s soul, blooming along with nature, really fades in the world of the Wild and Kabanovs.
Katerina loved to fantasize before, it seemed that in the Kabanovs’ house these fantasies should disappear, but the “hunt to build aerial visions” not only did not disappear, but, on the contrary, intensified in the family. Otherwise, where would the heroine’s famous exclamation come from: “Why don’t people fly!” And of course, in the Kabanovs’ house, Katerina encounters not the same thing, but decisive changes. “Everything here seems to be from under captivity,” a stern religious spirit has settled here, democracy has evaporated here, the cheerful generosity of the people’s worldview has disappeared.
During the course of the action, Katerina does not see or hear Feklushi, but it is generally accepted that it was precisely these kind of wanderers that Katerina saw and heard again and again in her short life. Katerina's monologue, which plays a key role in the tragedy, refutes such a view. Even the pilgrims in Kabanikha’s house are different, from among those hypocrites who “due to their weakness did not walk far, but heard a lot.” And they talk about the “end times”, about the coming end of the world. Here reigns a religiosity distrustful of life, which plays into the hands of the pillars of society, the despotic Kabanikhs, who greet with evil distrust the broken dams and the rushing forward of the people's life.
In prophetic dreams, Katerina doesn’t see “ last times”, and “promised lands”: “Either golden temples, or some extraordinary gardens, and invisible voices are singing, and there is a smell of cypress, and the mountains and trees seem not to be the same as usual, but as if they are painted in images. And it’s as if I’m flying, and I’m flying through the air." And in dreams - dreams of harmonic happy life: the garden at my mother’s house turns into a Garden of Eden, the singing of wanderers is picked up by invisible voices, spiritual inspiration turns into free flight. “Heavenly” in Katerina’s dreams is organically connected with the everyday, earthly. In folk beliefs, dreams were given a special role.
Katerina’s monologues embody the people’s cherished aspirations and hopes. Ostrovsky is not alone here. In Turgenev’s Kasyan, a religious wanderer and truth-seeker, the Christian ideal of paradise is also brought down from heaven to earth: “Otherwise the steppes will follow Kursk... And they go, people say, to the warmest seas, where the sweet-voiced bird Gamayun lives, and from the trees the leaf does not fall either in winter or in autumn, and golden apples grow on silver branches, and every person lives in contentment and justice.”
In Katerina, the love of life of the Russian people triumphs, who sought in religion not the negation of life, but its affirmation. Here, the popular protest against the ascetic, Domostroevsky form of religious culture, a protest devoid of the nihilistic self-will of such heroes of “The Thunderstorm” as Varvara and Kudryash, had a particularly strong impact here. The soul of Ostrovsky's heroine is one of those chosen Russian souls who are alien to compromise, who thirst for universal truth and will not settle for anything less.
In the drama “The Thunderstorm,” Ostrovsky created a very psychologically complex image - the image of Katerina Kabanova. This young woman charms the viewer with her huge, pure soul, childish sincerity and kindness. But she lives in the musty atmosphere of the “dark kingdom” of merchant morals. Ostrovsky managed to create a bright and poetic image of a Russian woman from the people. Main storyline plays are tragic conflict the living, feeling soul of Katerina and the dead way of life of the “dark kingdom”. Honest and touching Katerina turned out to be a powerless victim of the cruel orders of the merchant environment. No wonder Dobrolyubov called Katerina “a ray of light in dark kingdom" Katerina did not accept despotism and tyranny; Driven to despair, she challenges the “dark kingdom” and dies. This is the only way she can save her inner world. According to critics, for Katerina “it is not death that is desirable, but life that is unbearable. Living for her means being yourself. Not being herself means not living for her.”
The image of Katerina is built on a folk-poetic basis. Her pure soul is fused with nature. She presents herself as a bird, the image of which in folklore is closely connected with the concept of will. “I lived, didn’t worry about anything, like a bird in the wild.” Katerina, who ended up in Kabanova’s house as if in a terrible prison, often remembers her parents’ home, where she was treated with love and understanding. Talking to Varvara, the heroine asks: “...Why don’t people fly like birds? You know, sometimes I feel like I’m a bird.” Katerina breaks free from the cage, where she is forced to remain until the end of her days.
High feelings, religion aroused a surge of joy and reverence in her. The beauty and fullness of the heroine’s soul were expressed in prayers to God. “On a sunny day, such a light column goes down from the dome, and smoke moves in this column, like clouds, and I see it as if angels are flying and singing in this column. And then, it happened... at night I would get up... and somewhere in the corner and pray until the morning. Or I’ll go into the garden early in the morning, when the sun is still rising, I’ll fall on my knees, pray and cry.”
Katerina expresses her thoughts and feelings poetically vernacular. The heroine's melodious speech is colored by love for the world, the use of many diminutive forms characterizes her soul. She says “sunshine”, “voditsa”, “grave”, often resorts to repetitions, as in songs: “on a good three”, “and people are disgusting to me, and the house is disgusting to me, and the walls are disgusting.” Trying to throw out the feelings boiling in her, Katerina exclaims: “Violent winds, bear with him my sadness and melancholy!”
Katerina's tragedy is that she does not know how and does not want to lie. And in the “dark kingdom” lies are the basis of life and relationships. Boris tells her: “No one will know about our love...”, to which Katerina replies: “Let everyone know, let everyone see what I do!” These words reveal the courageous, integral nature of this woman, who risks challenging ordinary morality and confronting society alone.
But, having fallen in love with Boris, Katerina enters into a struggle with herself, with her beliefs. She, a married woman, feels like a great sinner. Her faith in God is not the hypocrisy of Kabanikha, who covers up her anger and misanthropy with God. Awareness of her own sinfulness and pangs of conscience haunt Katerina. She complains to Varya: “Oh, Varya, sin is on my mind! How much I, poor thing, cried, what I didn’t do to myself! I can't escape this sin. Can't go anywhere. After all, this is not good, this is a terrible sin, Varenka, why do I love someone else?” Katerina does not think about the fact that she was violated by marrying someone she didn’t love. Her husband, Tikhon, is glad to leave home and does not want to protect his wife from her mother-in-law. Her heart tells her that her love is the greatest happiness, in which there is nothing bad, but the morality of society and the church does not forgive the free expression of feelings. Katerina struggles among unsolvable questions.
The tension in the play increases, Katerina is afraid of a thunderstorm, hears terrible prophecies of a crazy lady, sees a picture on the wall depicting doomsday. In a darkened state of mind, she repents of her sin. Repentance from the heart according to religious laws necessarily requires forgiveness. But people have forgotten the kind, forgiving and loving God; they are left with a punishing and punishing God. Katerina does not receive forgiveness. She doesn’t want to live and suffer, she has nowhere to go, her loved one turned out to be as weak and dependent as her husband. Everyone betrayed her. The church believes suicide terrible sin, but for Katerina this is an act of despair. It is better to end up in hell than to live in the “dark kingdom.” The heroine cannot harm anyone, so she decides to die herself. Throwing herself off a cliff into the Volga, at the last moment Katerina thinks not about her sin, but about love, which illuminated her life with great happiness. Katerina’s last words are addressed to Boris: “My friend! My joy! Goodbye!" One can only hope that God will be more merciful to Katerina than people.
