figure
Sofya Pavlovna Knigina
Sofya Pavlovna
also: Sonya, Соня, Dudochka's Sonya, Книгина
The plump, charming young widow (or unmarried woman of independent means) who rents the narrator a room at her dacha in Pererva; their brief summer romance ends with the narrator receiving a wildly inflated bill for board he never itemized, revealing her practical exploitation beneath the sentimental affair.
Reading notes
- From the Memoirs of an Idealist §20 my "beloved"
"Предмет" (predmet, literally "object" or "subject"): a period colloquialism for a romantic interest or sweetheart, used here with gentle self-mockery by the narrator.
- From the Memoirs of an Idealist §24 Dudochka
A diminutive pet name (roughly "little pipe" or "little flute," from дудка/dudochka) that Sofya Pavlovna uses for the narrator once their affair has begun -- its sudden, cloying intimacy in the story's final scenes underscores how thoroughly he has been managed.