"is the most vibrant and complex female character. Getting to know her as a young, only developing girl, the reader sees her gradual maturation and revelation as a woman, mother, and independent person. At the same time, a complete description of Olga’s image in the novel “Oblomov” is possible only when working with quotes from the novel that most succinctly convey the appearance and personality of the heroine:
“If she were turned into a statue, she would be a statue of grace and harmony. The size of the head strictly corresponded to a somewhat tall stature; the size of the head corresponded to the oval and size of the face; all this, in turn, was in harmony with the shoulders, and the shoulders with the body...”
When meeting Olga, people always stopped for a moment “before this so strictly and thoughtfully, artistically created creature.”
Olga received a good upbringing and education, understands science and art, reads a lot and is in constant development, learning, achieving new and new goals.
These features of hers were reflected in the girl’s appearance: “The lips are thin and mostly compressed: a sign of a thought constantly directed at something. The same presence of a speaking thought shone in the vigilant, always cheerful, unmissing gaze of dark, gray-blue eyes,” and unevenly spaced thin eyebrows created a small fold on the forehead “in which something seemed to say, as if a thought rested there.” Everything about her spoke of her own dignity, inner strength and beauty: “Olga walked with her head tilted slightly forward, resting so slenderly and nobly on her thin, proud neck; she moved her whole body evenly, walking lightly, almost imperceptibly.”
Love for Oblomov
The image of Olga Ilyinskaya in “Oblomov” appears at the beginning of the novel as a still very young, little-knowing girl, looking at the world around her with wide open eyes and trying to understand it in all its manifestations. The turning point, which became for Olga a transition from childhood shyness and a certain embarrassment (as was the case when communicating with Stolz), was her love for Oblomov. The wonderful, strong, inspiring feeling that flared up between the lovers with lightning speed was doomed to parting, since Olga and Oblomov did not want to accept each other as they really are, cultivating in themselves a feeling for semi-ideal prototypes of real heroes.
For Ilyinskaya, love for Oblomov was not associated with those feminine tenderness, softness, acceptance and care that Oblomov expected from her, but with duty, the need to change the inner world of her lover, to make him a completely different person:
“She dreamed of how she would “order him to read the books” that Stolz left, then read newspapers every day and tell her the news, write letters to the village, complete a plan for organizing the estate, get ready to go abroad - in a word, he would not fall asleep with her; she will show him a goal, make him love again everything that he has stopped loving.”
“And she will do all this miracle, so timid, silent, whom no one has listened to until now, who has not yet begun to live!”
Olga's love for Oblomov was based on the heroine's selfishness and ambitions. Moreover, her feelings for Ilya Ilyich can hardly be called true love - it was a fleeting love, a state of inspiration and ascent before the new peak that she wanted to achieve. For Ilyinskaya, Oblomov’s feelings were not really important; she wanted to make him her ideal, so that she could then be proud of the fruits of her labors and, perhaps, remind him later that he owed everything he had to Olga.
Who is the positive hero of I. A. Goncharov’s novel “Oblomov”?
I. Introduction
A positive hero is a character who evokes the author’s sympathy and, to one degree or another, embodies the author’s ideal. (For more details, see Glossary, Art. Hero.)
II. Main part
1. Obviously, the positive hero of Goncharov’s novel can be either Oblomov, or Stolz, or Olga Ilyinskaya:
a) Oblomov’s character is the most complex, and the author’s attitude towards him is contradictory. On the one hand, Oblomov has such attractive character traits as kindness, intelligence, the ability to feel deeply, and a gentle soul. All this distinguishes him favorably from St. Petersburg officials of various ranks. The author shows that his hero is capable of becoming energetic, lively, and active for some time. However, the second side of Oblomov is laziness, impracticality, the desire for peace, which gives rise to moral and mental stagnation. This is how we see the hero in the first chapters of the novel, this is how he appears at the end of it - neither love for Olga Ilyinskaya, nor the influence of Stolz, nor his own plans for activity - nothing can radically change Oblomov’s nature, which is closely connected with the life of the landowner, patriarchal, idle, devoid of an effective and living principle (“Oblomov’s Dream”). Despite all his good qualities, Oblomov cannot be called a positive hero;
b) the image of Stolz was conceived by Goncharov as an antithesis to the image of Oblomov. Stolz is, first of all, active; idleness and laziness are completely alien to him. He also knows how to feel, although his feelings are always subject to rational control. Stolz has a positive effect on Oblomov. Finally, it is he who successfully passes the “test of love” and it is with him that the picture of the updated Oblomovka is associated. However, critics and writers (Dobrolyubov, Chekhov, etc.) rightly noted the unconvincing image of Stolz: it is unclear what kind of activity he is engaged in, to a certain extent his practicality and limitations are repulsive, and finally, his very German surname and the corresponding character make this type not quite Russian. Therefore, we can say that in the image of Stolz, Goncharov made an attempt to create the image of a positive hero, but the attempt was not entirely successful;
c) Olga Ilyinskaya can most justifiably be called the positive heroine of the novel. She combines a sensitive soul, the ability to love, sincerity with such character traits as the desire for activity, independence, and will. It is thanks to her that Oblomov is temporarily revived to life, and it is she who becomes Stolz’s wife. In the image of Olga, Goncharov followed the traditions of Russian literature: very often it was women who became positive heroines, while male heroes lacked much for this (“Eugene Onegin” by Pushkin, Turgenev’s novels, etc.).
III. Conclusion
All the main characters of Goncharov’s novel are not without positive traits, but the solution to the problem of a positive hero can only be associated with Olga Ilyinskaya. Goncharov still failed to create a positive male type.
Searched here:
- Is Olga Ilinskaya a positive heroine?
Introduction
Olga Ilyinskaya in Goncharov’s novel “Oblomov” is the most striking and complex female character. Getting to know her as a young, only developing girl, the reader sees her gradual maturation and revelation as a woman, mother, and independent person. At the same time, a complete description of Olga’s image in the novel “Oblomov” is possible only when working with quotes from the novel that most succinctly convey the appearance and personality of the heroine:
“If she were turned into a statue, she would be a statue of grace and harmony. The size of the head strictly corresponded to a somewhat tall stature; the size of the head corresponded to the oval and size of the face; all this, in turn, was in harmony with the shoulders, and the shoulders with the body...”
When meeting Olga, people always stopped for a moment “before this so strictly and thoughtfully, artistically created creature.”
Olga received a good upbringing and education, understands science and art, reads a lot and is in constant development, learning, achieving new and new goals. These features of hers were reflected in the girl’s appearance: “The lips are thin and mostly compressed: a sign of a thought constantly directed at something. The same presence of a speaking thought shone in the vigilant, always cheerful, unmissing gaze of dark, gray-blue eyes,” and unevenly spaced thin eyebrows created a small fold on the forehead “in which something seemed to say, as if a thought rested there.”
Everything about her spoke of her own dignity, inner strength and beauty: “Olga walked with her head tilted slightly forward, resting so slenderly and nobly on her thin, proud neck; she moved her whole body evenly, walking lightly, almost imperceptibly.”
Love for Oblomov
The image of Olga Ilyinskaya in “Oblomov” appears at the beginning of the novel as a still very young, little-knowing girl, looking at the world around her with wide open eyes and trying to understand it in all its manifestations. The turning point, which became for Olga a transition from childhood shyness and a certain embarrassment (as was the case when communicating with Stolz), was her love for Oblomov. The wonderful, strong, inspiring feeling that flared up between the lovers with lightning speed was doomed to parting, since Olga and Oblomov did not want to accept each other as they really are, cultivating in themselves a feeling for semi-ideal prototypes of real heroes.
For Ilyinskaya, love for Oblomov was not associated with those feminine tenderness, softness, acceptance and care that Oblomov expected from her, but with duty, the need to change the inner world of her lover, to make him a completely different person:
“She dreamed of how she would “order him to read the books” that Stolz left, then read newspapers every day and tell her the news, write letters to the village, complete a plan for organizing the estate, get ready to go abroad - in a word, he would not fall asleep with her; she will show him a goal, make him love again everything that he has stopped loving.”
“And she will do all this miracle, so timid, silent, whom no one has listened to until now, who has not yet begun to live!”
Olga's love for Oblomov was based on the heroine's selfishness and ambitions. Moreover, her feelings for Ilya Ilyich can hardly be called true love - it was a fleeting love, a state of inspiration and ascent before the new peak that she wanted to achieve. For Ilyinskaya, Oblomov’s feelings were not really important; she wanted to make him her ideal, so that she could then be proud of the fruits of her labors and, perhaps, remind him later that he owed everything he had to Olga.
Olga and Stolz
The relationship between Olga and Stolz developed from a tender, reverent friendship, when Andrei Ivanovich was for the girl a teacher, mentor, an inspiring figure, distant and inaccessible in his own way: “When a question or bewilderment arose in her mind, she did not suddenly decide to believe him: he was too far ahead of her, too taller than her, so that her pride sometimes suffered from this immaturity, from the distance in their minds and years.”
The marriage to Stolz, who helped her recover after breaking up with Ilya Ilyich, was logical, since the characters are very similar in character, life guidelines and goals. Olga saw quiet, calm, endless happiness in her life together with Stolz:
“She experienced happiness and could not determine where the boundaries were, what it was.”
“She, too, walked alone, along an imperceptible path, and he also met her at a crossroads, gave her his hand and led her out not into the brilliance of dazzling rays, but as if onto the flood of a wide river, to spacious fields and friendly smiling hills.”
Having lived together for several years in cloudless, endless happiness, seeing in each other those ideals that they had always dreamed of and those people who appeared in their dreams, the heroes began to seem to move away from each other. It became difficult for Stolz to reach out for the inquisitive Olga, constantly striving forward, and the woman “began to strictly notice herself and realized that she was embarrassed by this silence of life, its stopping at moments of happiness,” asking questions: “Is it really still necessary and possible to desire something?” ? Where should we go? Nowhere! There is no further road... Really, really, have you completed the circle of life? Is it really all here... everything....” The heroine begins to become disillusioned with family life, with a woman’s destiny and with the fate that was destined for her from birth, but continues to believe in her doubting husband and that their love will keep them together even in the most difficult hour:
“That unfading and undying love lay powerfully, like the force of life, on their faces - in a time of friendly sorrow, it shone in the slowly and silently exchanged glance of collective suffering, was heard in endless mutual patience against life’s torture, in restrained tears and muffled sobs.”
And although Goncharov does not describe in the novel how the further relationship between Olga and Stolz developed, one can briefly assume that after some time the woman either left her husband or lived the rest of her life unhappy, increasingly plunging into disappointment from the unattainability of those lofty goals about which I dreamed of in my youth.
Conclusion
The image of Olga Ilyinskaya in the novel “Oblomov” by Goncharov is a new, to some extent feminist type of Russian woman who does not want to close herself off from the world, limiting herself to the household and family. A brief description of Olga in the novel is a woman seeker, a woman innovator, for whom “routine” family happiness and “Oblomovism” were truly the most terrifying and frightening things that could lead to degradation and stagnation of her forward-oriented, cognitive personality. For the heroine, love was something secondary, stemming from friendship or inspiration, but not an original, leading feeling, and certainly not the meaning of life, like Agafya Pshenitsyna.
The tragedy of Olga’s image lies in the fact that the society of the 19th century was not yet ready for the emergence of strong female personalities capable of changing the world on an equal basis with men, so she would still have been awaited by the same soporific, monotonous family happiness that the girl so feared.
Work test
The characterization of Olga Ilyinskaya in Goncharov’s novel “Oblomov” allows us to better know and understand this character. This is the main female image that plays a significant role in the work.
Roman Goncharova
The characterization of Olga Ilyinskaya is necessary to better understand the essence of this work.
It is worth noting that Ivan Goncharov worked on the novel for 12 years - from 1847 to 1859. It was included in his famous trilogy, along with “The Precipice” and “An Ordinary Story.”
In many ways, Goncharov took so long to write “Oblomov” because his work constantly had to be interrupted. Including because of the trip around the world, which the writer went on on this trip, he devoted travel essays; only after publishing them did he return to writing “Oblomov”. A significant breakthrough occurred in the summer of 1857 at the resort of Marienbad. There, in a few weeks, Goncharov completed most of the work.
Plot of the novel
The novel tells about the fate of the Russian landowner Ilya Ilyich Oblomov. He lives in St. Petersburg with his servant named Zakhar. He spends many days lying on the sofa, sometimes without getting up from it at all. He doesn’t do anything, doesn’t go out into the world, but only dreams of a comfortable life on his estate. It seems that no troubles can move him from his place. Neither the decline into which his economy is falling, nor the threat of eviction from his St. Petersburg apartment.
His childhood friend named Andrei Stolts is trying to stir up Oblomov. He is a representative of the Russified Germans and is the complete opposite of Oblomov. Always very active and energetic. He forces Oblomov to go out into the world for a while, where the landowner meets Olga Ilyinskaya, whose characterization is in this article. This is a modern and progressive-minded woman. After much thought, Oblomov makes up his mind and proposes to her.
Oblomov's move
Ilyinskaya is not indifferent to Oblomov, but he himself ruins everything when he succumbs to Tarantiev’s intrigues and moves to the Vyborg side. At that time it was actually the rural outskirts of the city.
Oblomov ends up in the house of Agafya Pshenitsyna, who eventually takes over his entire household. Ilya Ilyich himself is gradually fading away into complete inactivity and lack of will. Meanwhile, rumors are already circulating around the city about the upcoming wedding of the heroes. But when Ilyinskaya comes to his house, she is convinced that nothing will ever be able to awaken him. Their relationship ends after that.
In addition, Oblomov finds himself under the influence of Pshenitsyna’s brother Ivan Mukhoyarov, who entangles the protagonist in his machinations. Upset, Ilya Ilyich becomes seriously ill, and only Stolz saves him from complete ruin.
Oblomov's wife
Having parted with Ilyinskaya, Oblomov married Pshenitsyna a year later. They have a son, who is named Andrei in honor of Stolz.
Disappointed in her first love, Ilyinskaya eventually marries Stolz. At the very end of the novel, he comes to visit Oblomov and finds his friend sick and completely broken. Due to his inactivity at an early age, he suffered a stroke. Ilya Ilyich foresees his imminent death and asks Stolz not to abandon his son.
Two years later, the main character dies in his sleep. His son is taken in by Stolz and Ilyinskaya. Oblomov's faithful servant Zakhar, who outlived his master, although he was much older than him, out of grief begins to drink and beg.
Image of Ilyinskaya
The characterization of Olga Ilyinskaya must begin with the fact that this is a bright and complex image. At the very beginning, the reader gets to know her as a young girl who is just beginning to develop. Throughout the novel, we can watch how she grows up, reveals herself as a woman and mother, and becomes an independent person.
As a child, Ilyinskaya receives a quality education. She reads a lot, understands things. She is constantly developing, striving to achieve new goals. Everything about her speaks of her own dignity, beauty and inner strength.
Relations with Oblomov
In the novel "Oblomov" Olga Ilyinskaya, whose characterization is given in this article, appears before us as a very young girl. She explores the world around her, tries to figure out how everything works around her.
The key moment for her is her love for Oblomov. Olga Ilyinskaya, the character description you are reading now, is overcome by a strong and inspiring feeling. But it was doomed because the young people did not want to accept each other for who they really were. Instead, they created some ephemeral, semi-ideal images that they fell in love with.
Why can’t they decide to make fundamental changes in themselves so that their likely joint relationship becomes a reality? For Olga herself, love for Oblomov becomes a duty; she believes that she is obliged to change the inner world of her lover, re-educate him, turning him into a completely different person.
It is worth recognizing that, first of all, her love was based on selfishness and personal ambitions. More important than her feelings for Oblomov was the opportunity to revel in her achievements. She was interested in this relationship in the opportunity to change a person, to help him rise above himself, to turn into an active and energetic husband. This is exactly the fate Ilyinskaya dreamed of.
In the novel "Oblomov" the comparative characteristics in the table of Olga Ilyinskaya and Pshenitsyna immediately make it clear how different these heroines are.
Married to Stolz
As we know, nothing came of the relationship with Oblomov. Ilyinskaya married Stolz. Their romance developed slowly and began with sincere friendship. Initially, Olga herself perceived Stolz more as a mentor, who was an inspiring figure for her, inaccessible in his own way.
In the characterization of Olga Ilyinskaya, a quote can be cited to better understand her relationship with Andrei. “He was too far ahead of her, too taller than her, so her pride sometimes suffered from this immaturity, from the distance in their minds and years,” - this is how Goncharov writes about her attitude towards Stolz.
This marriage helped her recover from her breakup with Oblomov. Their joint relationship looked logical, since the heroes were similar in nature - both active and purposeful, this can be seen in the novel "Oblomov". A comparative description of Olga Ilyinskaya and Agafya Pshenitsyna is given in this article below. It helps to better understand the actions of these characters.
Over time, everything changed. Stolz could no longer keep up with Olga, who was constantly striving forward. And Ilyinskaya began to become disillusioned with family life, with the very fate that was originally destined for her. At the same time, she finds herself as a mother for her son Oblomov, whom she and Stolz take in to be raised after the death of Ilya Ilyich.
Comparison with Agafya Pshenitsyna
When describing Olga Ilyinskaya and Agafya Pshenitsyna, it should be noted that the second woman who fell in love with Oblomov was the widow of a minor official. She is an ideal housewife who cannot sit idle and constantly takes care of the cleanliness and order in the house.
At the same time, a comparative description of Agafya Pshenitsyna and Olga Ilyinskaya will be in favor of the latter. After all, Agafya is a poorly educated, uncultured person. When Oblomov asks her about what she is reading, she just looks at him blankly, without answering. But she still attracted Oblomov. Most likely, because it fully corresponded to his usual way of life. She provided the most comfortable conditions for him - silence, tasty and plentiful food and peace. She becomes a tender and caring nanny for him. At the same time, with her care and love, she finally killed the human feelings that had awakened in him, which Olga Ilyinskaya tried so hard to awaken. The characteristics of these two heroines in the table make it possible to better understand them.
Comparison with Tatyana Larina
It is interesting that many researchers give a comparative description of Olga Ilyinskaya and Tatyana Larina. Indeed, without going into details, at first glance these heroines are very similar to each other. The reader is captivated by their simplicity, naturalness, and indifference to social life.
It is in Olga Ilyinskaya that those traits that traditionally attracted Russian writers in any woman are manifested. This is the absence of artificiality, living beauty. Ilyinskaya differs from women of her time in that she lacks the usual female domestic happiness.
One can feel the hidden strength of character in her; she always has her own opinion, which she is ready to defend in any situation. Ilyinskaya continues the gallery of beautiful female images in Russian literature, which was opened by Pushkin’s Tatyana Larina. These are morally impeccable women who are faithful to duty and agree only to a compassionate life.
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