person
Agnia (Agnyushka)
Agnia
also: Агния, Агнюшка, Agnyushka
Miguyev's former housemaid, seduced and abandoned by him; a week before the story opens she confronts him on the street, threatens exposure and a lawsuit unless he pays her, and -- as the title's "lawlessness" -- leaves their infant on his porch step.
Reading notes
- An Act of Lawlessness §1 his former housemaid Agnia had caught up with him and said with spite
The story's premise, kept off-page and revealed only through Miguyev's guilty recollection: as her employer, Miguyev seduced and abandoned his housemaid Agnia, leaving her pregnant and without recourse -- an abuse of the plain power imbalance between a master and a live-in servant that Chekhov trusts the reader to recognize without spelling out. The story's satire is aimed squarely at Miguyev's cowardice and self-pity in the aftermath, not at Agnia, whose anger the text treats as entirely justified.