person
The shackled convict and his daughter
the convict's daughter
A convict in leg-irons, convicted of killing his wife, who traveled with Chekhov on the Amur steamer to Sakhalin, accompanied by his young orphaned daughter, a girl of about six; Chekhov observed her following him under guard even to the water-closet and sleeping at night in a heap together with the convicts and soldiers. Neither is otherwise identified from the surviving text.
Reading notes
- To A. F. Koni, 26 January 1891. Petersburg. §20 SENSITIVITY FLAG -- a child in the custody of a convict-murderer
Chekhov's observed vignette of a shackled wife-murderer's six-year-old orphaned daughter following him everywhere under armed guard, including to the water-closet, and sleeping at night in a heap with convicts and soldiers, is reported without comment as one instance among several illustrating the exposure of Sakhalin's children to the penal-colony environment; translated plainly, matching the source's unadorned present-tense observational register.