Masha (the red-haired Masha)

Anna Akimovna's personal maid, a red-haired young woman in her twenty-first year who wakes her mistress for Christmas services and helps her dress. She has loved the footman Mishenka hopelessly for three years despite Anna Akimovna's repeated attempts to arrange the match and offer of a dowry; Mishenka's growing disgust after seeing her embraced by a poor student ends any real hope of the marriage. She is explicitly distinguished in the source from the household's other maid, "the lower Masha", who serves in the downstairs half of the house. At the story's end, after Anna Akimovna's daydream about Pimenov collapses in shame, the red-haired Masha weeps together with her mistress, understanding without words why it is so bitter for her too.