person
Kvashin's mother-in-law
the mother-in-law
also: теща, старуха, the old woman, the mother-in-law
Nadezhda Filippovna's unnamed mother, a self-satisfied old woman of merchant stock who dotes on her son-in-law Kvashin, tells fortunes with a deck of cards through the rainy days of his absence, and is quickest of all to forgive him once he reappears with an excuse.
Reading notes
- Bad Weather §36 of merchant rank
"Купеческого звания" places the mother-in-law's family in the merchant estate (купечество), a distinct legal and social class below the hereditary nobility in Imperial Russia; her insistence that money and legal standing ("you are his lawful wife... I gave twenty thousand for you") should protect her daughter from mistreatment reflects a merchant family's characteristic reliance on property and dowry as guarantees, in a society where gentry status alone still carried more social prestige.
Mentioned in 0 works (0 mentions)
No recorded mentions yet.