What Is To Be Done Analysis

Despite Russia being unstable during the 1860s due to political conflicts, class conflicts, and various revolutionary ideologies shaking up traditional customs, women were still constantly trapped in their own state of oppression. Women were faced with inequality everywhere - from their community, to even their own family. Compared to men, they were subordinated legally at every social level and weren’t allowed to participate in occupations outside of their domestic work. In What is to Be Done?, Nikolai Chernyshevsky implements much of the intelligentsia’s ideas for transforming the subordination of women. The novel centers on Vera Pavlovna, a woman who escapes a suffocating lifestyle and forced marriage, becomes an entrepreneur, and finds her own true love with the help of her new found independence. Chernyshevsky uses Vera’s journey as an example of how a woman is oppressed and how she is able to be liberated from that oppression. Immediately, the story sets off with Vera living under the rule of an autocratic mother who wants to have her marry the son of their tenement block owner. Although Vera has aspirations of her own, she is bound to a lifelong servitude to her family and a loveless marriage to which she does not want to commit. This shows how not only men contributed to women’s subordination in Russia, but the women had a social role in this as well. Vera’s mother wants her to marry rich in hopes of gaining money, power, and status. All of these motives show how Vera’s mother thinks in her own best interest before her daughter’s happiness, and even hints at how desperate not only women, but people of lower class were to escape their social stigma. However, arranged marriage and lifelong servitude is not unique in only... ... middle of paper ... ... and Lopukhov had to receive permission from one another in order to be able to enter each other’s room. They further established a “neutral” room where they were able to talk and drink tea together. Chernyshevsky purposely paints these characters the way they are to exemplify how men and women are able to have a respectful, egalitarian life together. The equal relationship between sexes could also suggest a relationship of equality between social classes. Vera displayed independence and broke out of her oppression on every level - domestic, economic, and political. She breaks out of her domestic subordination and potential life long servitude to her family through marriage. Using the marriage to her advantage, she cleverly creates a production cooperative and further defies the common notion that women cannot have occupations outside of their home. Furthermore,