person
the grandmother
also: бабушка, the old woman
Putokhin's unnamed mother, the one member of the household who does not lose heart after the family's collapse: she takes up washing floors for pawnbrokers on Fridays, laundry for merchants on Saturdays, and begging on Sundays to keep the grandchildren fed, absorbing her son's drunken blows along with Vasya's when he does not cry loudly enough to provoke them.
Reading notes
- The Old House (A Landlord's Story) §20 silently, staring fixedly at one point
The grandmother's wordless mirroring of Vasya's suppressed distress -- tearing off her kerchief and moving her limbs the same way he does, without sound -- is the story's starkest image of shared, internalized trauma: two generations of the same household have independently learned that visible grief only invites more violence, so both perform their anguish silently rather than risk provoking Putokhin further.
Mentioned in 6 works (45 mentions)
The Old House (A Landlord's Story)
To Al. P. Chekhov, 1888. Moscow.
From Siberia
Notebooks. Diaries
Мужики
The Bride
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