Alexander Ostrovsky

• Born: April 12, 1823
• Birthplace: Moscow, Russia
• Died: June 14, 1886
• Place of death: Shchelykovo, Russia

Other Literary Forms

Alexander Ostrovsky’s only nondramatic writings are the semifictional “Zapiski zamoskvoretskogo zhitelya” (notes of a beyond-the-river resident) and occasional critical articles for various literary journals.

Achievements

Alexander Ostrovsky was the founder of the modern Russian theater. Though his predecessors Alexander Pushkin and Nikolai Gogol wrote several memorable plays, their primary genres were poetry and prose, respectively, and they did not contribute significantly to the development of drama. Ostrovsky devoted his entire creative life not only to writing plays but also to producing them. In addition, he took a leading part in bringing variety to the stage by breaking the monopoly of the Imperial theaters. His prolific output of forty-seven original plays, supplemented by collaborative efforts and translations, gave Russia its first solid repertoire. In choice of subject matter, he also broke new ground. His plays for the first time presented the rising Russian merchant class to the audience. This social contingent, barely one generation away from humbler country origin, had not been deemed worthy of artistic portrayal previously, and its highly visible presence in many of Ostrovsky’s plays aroused immediate interest and controversy. The playwright further used his work to emphasize the unjust and utterly dependent position of young women without a dowry, the regressive marriage practices of the time, and the abuses perpetrated by Russia’s growing merchant class. For illuminating this “realm of darkness,” as the prominent critic Nikolay Dobrolyubov called it, and because of his many confrontations with czarist censors, Ostrovsky was considered an important social reformer.

As producer or coproducer of nearly eighty plays, half of them his own, Ostrovsky dominated Russian drama of the nineteenth century. The Maly Theater in Moscow, where most of his plays were performed, came to be known as The Ostrovsky House. The playwright worked hard at creating a more positive image for actors, who were largely treated as vagabonds and prostitutes before he formed guilds for their protection. Two of his plays, The Forest and Artists and Admirers, depict the high moral qualities of actors.

Ostrovsky’s work is difficult to translate because his dramatic language faithfully reproduces the dialects of various social classes and abounds in proverbs and wordplay. As a result, he is not widely staged abroad. His best-known translated piece is The Storm. At home, however, he remains the most extensively read and performed playwright. His simple plots and satiric approaches continue to appeal to mass audiences. After the revolution, he was hailed as an exposer of capitalist vices in czarist Russia, which added to his popularity. In the post-Stalin period, as a less restrictive censorship opened the way for more modern and sophisticated drama, Ostrovsky’s dominance diminished. His major plays, however, are still regularly performed, especially in the provinces, and new productions draw sizable urban audiences. His place in the development of Russian drama is firmly established.

Biography

Alexander Nikolayevich Ostrovsky was born April 12, 1823, in that part of Moscow in which disreputable lawyers, shopkeepers, and matchmakers plied their trade. He had ample opportunity to chronicle the customs and ethics of such figures, for his father, a government clerk at civil court, performed legal services in the area. His first plays faithfully reproduce the vices observed on “the other side of the river,” and most of his later works reflect some phase of the merchant mentality. The elder Ostrovsky eventually achieved the rank of collegiate assessor, which gave him the privileges of petty nobility. After being widowed, he married a baroness with property. These benefits procured a good education for his son. After private tutoring by seminarians, Ostrovsky entered the Moscow Gymnasium in 1835; he was graduated five years later with honors. He then ceded to his father’s wishes and enrolled at Moscow University Law School, where he soon slighted the dry legal documents for literature. Forced to repeat his entire second year, he dropped out altogether in the third year. His disappointed father, still insisting on a juridical career for his son, placed Ostrovsky as clerk first in the court of conscience and later, in 1845, in the court of commerce in Moscow. Ostrovsky used these years primarily to gather material for his plays, chronicling the petty intrigues, deceits, and questionable transactions that were brought to light in the courts. He entered the literary world by contributing occasional critical articles to the journal Moskvityanin (the Moscovite).

In 1847, Ostrovsky’s first work, a comic one-act play, “Kartina semeinogo schastya” (a picture of family happiness), was read to teachers and students of Moscow University in a professor’s apartment. The lavish praise of this private audience led to its publication a month later in the liberal newspaper Moskovsky gorodskoy listok (Moscow city notes), which presented the piece in the form of a dramatized chronicle from “across the river.” When Ostrovsky asked for permission to stage it, the censors refused, dissatisfied with the devastatingly negative portrayal of Moscow merchants. By 1849, the budding author had completed his first full-length play, It’s a Family Affair, initially entitled “Bankrot” (bankrupt).

Here again, Ostrovsky presented the avaricious lifestyle of tradespeople. The play was first read in various literary circles and was widely discussed. The editor of Moskvityanin used his connections to gain printing approval, and the piece appeared in the journal early in 1850. Ostrovsky immediately received critical acclaim and began production preparations. The censors, however, once more denied permission, citing the outrage of merchants and conservatives at being depicted in such unflattering terms. Following a special appeal, Nicholas I himself viewed the work and fully supported his censors. Further discussion in print was prohibited, Ostrovsky was placed under surveillance, and shortly thereafter (1851), he was forced to resign his civil service post. Although this placed him in financial difficulties, he welcomed the chance to devote himself entirely to dramatic work.

His next few pieces were of questionable artistic merit, but in 1852 Ostrovsky recaptured public attention with The Poor Bride, which received staging approval after some delay and editing, and met with great success. For a short time, Ostrovsky, eager to get his work past the censors and before the viewing public, adopted a slightly less critical tone toward social vices, supplementing his plots with positive depictions of traditional songs, customs, and behavior. After the death of Nicholas I (1855), however, when the less repressive reign of Alexander II encouraged writers to be more daring, Ostrovsky returned to his earlier critical stance, especially after 1856, when he was no longer under police surveillance. Nevertheless, difficulties with censorship continued to delay productions. Dokhodnoe mesto (a profitable position) was briefly allowed staging in the provinces but was later denied all performance, even though Ostrovsky made changes. Similarly, A Protégé of the Mistress (also known as The Ward) failed to receive approval in 1859 and was staged three years later only after considerable haggling. The still prohibited It’s a Family Affair saw its first performance in 1861 after the playwright had completely changed the ending to satisfy the government’s ethical pretensions. Undaunted by these delays, Ostrovsky continued to turn out plays, producing at least one, often more than one, per year. As progressive voices became louder, access to the public became easier, and Ostrovsky in the end managed to bring all his works to the stage.

In 1862, Ostrovsky went abroad to Germany, Austria, Italy, France, and England. His impressions did not visibly influence his subsequent work, but he widened his range to include other Russian social classes, notably the petty gentry, government clerks, and actors. In 1874, he established the Dramatic Actor Society, and he served as its president until his death. He fought vigorously for social recognition and better remuneration for actors, especially in the provincial theaters, where their standing was low. Ostrovsky’s wife, Maria Vasileva, was a leading actress of the Maly Theater, which staged most of his plays. Although Ostrovsky never became rich, his successes permitted him to purchase a country estate in 1867, where he spent many of his summers. In January, 1886, he was appointed artistic director of the Moscow government theaters, finally receiving official recognition after decades of censorial strife with the regime. His health, however, had deteriorated by then, barely permitting him to complete the season. He left for his estate in Kostroma province late in May and died shortly after his arrival, June 14, 1886.

Analysis

Alexander Ostrovsky dominated the nineteenth century Russian stage. He provided audiences with more plays than all previous Russian playwrights combined, and he closely supervised production of his work or directed the staging himself. All his writings satirize the shortcomings of certain social classes, prominent among them the still rather coarse merchant class, which lacked the graces and idealism of the educated elite.

Before Ostrovsky, Russian writers had largely ignored this rising commercial world. Ostrovsky’s portrayal of shopkeepers and petty manufacturers is without exception negative. As they appear in his plays, such characters are rapacious, dishonest, and devoid of any measure of goodwill. Still strangers to the city, they band together in ancient clannish patterns. Overwhelmingly preoccupied with enrichment by any means whatsoever, they frequently arrange marriages of offspring, especially daughters, to profit their business ventures. The unchallenged and dictatorially exercised authority of Ostrovsky’s patriarchs moves the vulnerable position of women into the foreground of the plays. The office of matchmaker, still powerful among the merchants, is presented as a particularly destructive institution, an unwelcome vestige of the past. Ostrovsky gradually expanded his subject matter to include hypocritical nobles and bribe-taking lawyers and government clerks, as well as unsympathetic matriarchs and well-meaning but weak-willed, ineffectual idealists.

This exposé of Russia’s misfits forced Ostrovsky occasionally to alter a character or theme in order to get his work staged. During the early 1850’s, as noted above, Ostrovsky modified his critical approach, producing plays in which tradition assumes a somewhat sentimentally idyllic shading: Ne v svoi sani ne sadis (do not sit in another’s sleigh), Poverty Is No Crime, and You Can’t Live Just as You Please. Similarly, in the 1860’s, Ostrovsky briefly turned his attention to noncontroversial historical subjects. The most notable plays of this group are Kozma Zakharich Minin, Sukhoruk; Voevoda, made into an unsuccessful opera by Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky; and Dmitry Samozvanets i Vasily Shuysky. The bulk of Ostrovsky’s work, however, deals with topical, ethical problems. By presenting much of his criticism in comic form, he avoided didactic excesses, never losing sight of the necessity to entertain the public. Twenty-four of his plays carry the comedy label, despite the presence of dramatic conflicts. Another nineteen works are designated as scenes or pictures from life, and this designation best describes Ostrovsky’s drama, for most of his plays feature a mixture of dramatic, tragic, and comic elements.

Ostrovsky’s mode of presentation is strictly realistic. His plots are transparent, sometimes trivial, and he eschewed overdramatization. Although Ostrovsky’s realism often provoked criticism, the playwright insisted on reproducing his characters and conversations in as lifelike a manner as possible so that the audience would at once recognize and judge the topic. Ostrovsky was enough of a craftsperson to avoid a simple copying of reality, but his figures and conflicts do lack psychological complexity, making them less appealing to twentieth century Western audiences. The author’s skill in bringing the vernacular to the stage, however, continues to be appreciated by Russian viewers. Ostrovsky’s characters express themselves in a style peculiar to their social standing, so that a single drama may contain a blend of shopkeeper and servant lingo, government jargon, the nobility’s foreign-laced language, the traditional Church Slavonic of conservatives, and the poetic romanticism of young women, all generously sprinkled with proverbs and sayings. These features, added to the frequent wordplay and mispronunciations of uneducated social climbers, cannot be adequately translated and result in a dearth of foreign publications and stagings. Similarly, non-Russian audiences will miss the connotations of characters’ names, such as those of the tyrants in The Storm, Dikoy (Barbarian) and Kabanova (Hatchet). With the aid of such naming and other devices such as proverbial titles—for example, Stary drug luchshe novykh dvukh (an old friend is better than two new ones) and Sin and Sorrow Are Common to All—Ostrovsky imparted a folkloric dimension to his material, evoking a native atmosphere. He even produced a fantastic drama, Snegurochka (the snow maiden), set to music by Tchaikovsky and turned into an opera by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. These homespun touches served to make Ostrovsky’s revelations of injustice and corruption more palatable.

It’s a Family Affair

It’s a Family Affair, Ostrovsky’s first full-length work, demonstrates many of the concerns that preoccupied him throughout his career. In this play, for the first time, Moscow’s merchant world appeared on the stage. Dominating the action is a tyrannical patriarch, the rich tradesman Bolshov (Bigman), who decides to enrich himself by cheating his creditors through phony bankruptcy. He temporarily transfers his goods to a trusted clerk, Podkhalyuzin (Sneaky), to whom he also gives his daughter, so that the fortune will remain “in the family.” The clerk and daughter, possessed of the same moral failings, refuse to return the money and cause the merchant’s imprisonment. The play has no redeeming characters at all; it seeks to show that avarice destroys human relationships at every level. The dishonesty of the daughter and the employee emerges as the inevitable result of the older generation’s corruption. This condemnation is embedded in and somewhat tempered by the faithful reproduction of traditional mores and the shopkeeper milieu. Neither comic nor tragic angles are exaggerated, so that the overall image is an accurate one. The censors objected to the ending, which permits the cheating clerk to go unpunished. After eleven years of appeal for staging approval, Ostrovsky had to give in and alter the outcome. In the changed version, Podkhalyuzin is arrested. Since 1881, the play has been performed in its original version to record audiences. Its popularity suffered a decline in the post-World War II decades, but new productions are still periodically mounted in the Soviet Union.

The Poor Bride

In The Poor Bride, his second major work, Ostrovsky deals with the exploitation of women. A widowed mother in financial straits automatically assumes, as does everyone else, that her daughter will welcome an arranged marriage to an old drunkard to save the situation. The proud young woman desperately seeks a more companionable mate—at that time, most women were barred from respectable gainful employment—but Ostrovsky’s survey of eligibles reveals that the unfortunate Marya has no options. Poor suitors cannot support a dowerless bride. Younger men with positions shop for more substantial wives to secure their future, and rich young men marry within their own class. This leaves only coarse or aged prospects, who do not conceal the fact that they are purchasing youth and comeliness. Matchmakers play a despicable but seemingly indispensable role in the negotiations, and Ostrovsky also adds unwholesome government clerks to his gallery of ethical offenders: Marya’s prospective husband is a bribe-taking official, ironically named Benevolensky (Benefactor), who has reached high position and wealth by thoroughly dishonest means. Mindful of censorial objections, the playwright developed the piece in such a way that Marya herself comes to recognize the necessity of the arrangement and enters it with some hope of reforming the erring spouse. This seemingly upbeat conclusion does not alter the basic impression of Marya’s desperation and defenselessness. Even as the bride tearfully tells herself that she will be happy and thanks her mother for arranging the union, spectators conclude the play by emphasizing the young woman’s pitiful appearance and questionable future.

Although reviewers welcomed discussion of the female topic, they criticized Ostrovsky’s casual artistry. The play’s theatrical effectiveness suffers because of repetitious dialogue, as each suitor parades before the hapless bride with his story. Marya’s reaction to the suitors also exhibits a certain sameness and lacks vitality. In defense of the play, progressive critics, placing content over art, praised the production for bringing a vital social issue before the public in easily understandable form. Nevertheless, before Ostrovsky included the play in a collected edition, he improved it by individualizing some characters and by excising several slow-moving scenes. The Poor Bride, like It’s a Family Affair, is called a comedy, its light touches achieved by imitating official pomposity, middle-class vulgarity, and young people’s foolish fancies. The play never achieved the popularity of Ostrovsky’s other major pieces, partly because it was banned in the popular playhouses, being limited to infrequent production at the Imperial theaters. The importance of the forced marriage theme, however, had been raised and subsequently found wide, artistically superior expression in Ostrovsky’s work. In Soviet times, as female emancipation once more received a high profile, the number of productions increased.

Poverty Is No Crime

Ostrovsky also treated forced marriage in his politically milder comedy Poverty Is No Crime. Here again, a positively depicted daughter is ordered by her heartless merchant father to take an aging, lecherous manufacturer to husband, even though she loves a penniless business clerk. The tone and development of this potentially tragic conflict differ markedly from those of previous and later plays. The bumbling, dissolute brother of the family despot saves his niece by exposing the vices of the rich bridegroom. He tricks the egotistic patriarch into permitting the lovers to marry and even regenerates fatherly feelings in him. At the time of this writing, Ostrovsky had fallen briefly under the influence of conservative Slavophils, who urged him not to destroy Russia’s cultural heritage through overexposure of social problems. To mollify them, and to gain a reprieve from the censors, he softened his social criticism by including a merchant with a soul in the person of the brother, and numerous songs, rituals, and customs, all presented in a cordial, heartwarming manner. The preponderance of comic elements in the play further mutes its message. Soon, however, during Alexander II’s more tolerant reign, the playwright once more concentrated on writing critical exposé.

The Storm

The Storm, Ostrovsky’s most controversial and best-known play, encompasses all his major concerns: merchant greed, patriarchal tyranny, exploitation of young women, the dangers of regressive tradition, religious orthodoxy, budding rebellion, and society-serving idealism. It is atypical of Ostrovsky in that it has a truly disastrous ending and is one of his few pieces designated simply as drama, devoid of the usual satire and comic effusiveness. By transferring the locale to a provincial town, the author stressed that the vices depicted previously in urban settings were deeply ingrained in the Russian psyche. Production restrictions had been liberalized by 1860—the emancipation of serfs was not far away—and permission for staging was given immediately, possibly because casual censorial reading perceived the content to be the love story of a repentant adulteress. The Storm is in fact Ostrovsky’s most hard-hitting play.

The merchant villains not only terrorize their households but also prohibit all efforts at education and reform in the town. Dikoy represents the greedy miser, whose every waking moment is planned to extort money dishonestly. When confronted by logic, he uses brute force and outmoded irrational arguments to maintain his position. The equally vile matriarch, Kabanikha, defends medieval practices, among them absolute submission by her family. The young men of these respective homes have been mentally emasculated, unable to assert themselves, though they privately recognize the injustice. The feebleness of these latter two figures contributes to the misery and eventual demise of Katerina, Kabanikha’s gentle daughter-in-law. Katerina’s husband, Tikhon, passively assents to her mistreatment, too fearful of his mother to defend his wife. Katerina’s lover, Boris, is similarly weak-willed and sacrifices her to Dikoy’s cruel dictates.

The typical Ostrovsky plot line is skillfully supplemented by the carefully developed portrait of Katerina. She is torn between rejecting the strictures of the old and remaining loyal to religious tradition. This agonizing conflict eventually results in her death, and Ostrovsky’s depiction of her struggle clearly relates her individual fate to larger issues. Katerina has docilely married Tikhon at the insistence of her mother, only to find that she cannot reconcile her romantic expectations with Kabanikha’s cruelty. Driven by her longings to seek relief in an illicit affair, she quickly comes in conflict with deep-seated religious scruples. An approaching thunderstorm symbolizes the upheaval within her. Tradition decrees that lightning is God’s punishment for sinners, and Katerina is certain that the flashes are meant for her. Crazed with fear, she confesses, thus submitting to the rage of the vicious mother-in-law. As the latter devises a miserable future for her, Katerina, unable to provoke husband or lover into defensive action, ends her life in the river.

On one level, the play implies that strength of religious tradition has won out over adulterous transgression. A closer inspection, however, reveals other nuances. Although Katerina is unable to live with her sin, she is also unwilling to accept punishment in the form of Kabanikha’s savagery. Instead, she commits the cardinal sin of suicide in the hope that a merciful God will overrule earthly ecclesiastical doctrine. This powerful statement is accompanied by downgrading of provincial religious practice. The selfish holy woman, Feklyusha, is counterpointed to the social reformer Kuligin, who gives his labor free to the town, in obvious contrast to the fawning, gossipy pilgrim. Kabanikha’s patriarchal rule, meant to preserve traditional family, actually destroys it. Her own daughter rebelliously elopes with a clerk, while her son, in a belated show of courage, accuses her of murder. Ostrovsky thus mirrors the cautious social changes of the era. Young people question and rebel even as traditional patriarchy makes its last malicious stand.

In terms of composition, the play is among Ostrovsky’s best. Artful plot development, strong characterization, and forceful if rather heavy-handed symbolism combine to move the action deftly forward. The Storm is also one of his most popular pieces at home and abroad. It had close to 3,600 performances before the revolution, and its success continued into Soviet times. Famous directors, among them Vsevolod Meyerhold and Vladimir Ivanovich Nemirovich-Danchenko, have given it innovative productions, and it has been transferred to the screen. Outstanding actresses have vied for the role of Katerina, and productions abroad extended the play’s fame. It is likely to remain in the repertoire for many years to come.

The Scoundrel

Although The Storm represents the high point of Ostrovsky’s career, his literary output continued undiminished for twenty-six more years. Among his best later productions are The Scoundrel and The Forest. The former is noteworthy for its treatment of lower nobility, to which Ostrovsky now shifted his attention. The Scoundrel was possibly inspired by Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The School for Scandal (pr. 1777), with which it shares the themes of intrigue, vapid amusements, and social relation rituals. The hero of the title, searching for a comfortable position and a rich wife, ingratiates himself with various important figures and then plays them off against one another for maximum gain. When unmasked, he brazenly reminds them that they need a scoundrel like him to organize their petty schemes. The ending suggests that he will be restored to everyone’s favor. The play has been performed abroad, and in the 1920’s Sergei Eisenstein revived Soviet interest with an innovative staging featuring experimental sets.

The Forest

The Forest has the distinction of being Ostrovsky’s most frequently performed drama. It pays homage to the superior moral qualities of actors by contrasting them favorably to a group of scheming, empty-headed landowners. The plot is typical of Ostrovsky: The poor ward of a pretentious rich widow is manipulated into an unwanted marriage but rescued in time by a traveling actor, who facilitates her wedding to her true love, an abused merchant’s son. The comedy is understandably a favorite of performers, and this accounts for much of its success. It had more than five thousand performances before 1917, some of them abroad, and continues to be a perennial favorite in the Soviet Union.

Bibliography

Hoover, Marjorie L. Alexander Ostrovsky. Boston: Twayne, 1981. A basic biography of Ostrovsky that covers his life and works. Bibliography and index.

Lyons, Donald. “Chekov and His Forebear.” Review of The Cherry Orchard, by Anton Chekhov, and The Forest, by Alexander Ostrovsky. Wall Street Journal, November 5, 1997, p. A20. Lyons compares and contrasts the two Russian plays, which were being performed in New York in 1997.

Rahman, Kate Sealey. Ostrovsky: Reality and Illusion. Birmingham, England: University of Birmingham, 1999. A study of Ostrovsky that focuses on his efforts at realism and his idealism. Bibliography and index.