Chichikov’s horses

Chichikov’s horses—the bay, the Assessor, and the skewbald—are more than equipment for the britchka: their changing pace, feed, and responses to other animals make the journey’s material conditions visible. Their appearances range from a weary team struggling through the road to a comic participant in a collision, and finally to a quiet reminder of the labor and care on which travel and country life depend.

The Team and Its Work

The three horses draw Chichikov’s britchka under the direction of Selifan. Their work is shaped by the road and by their driver: during a violent storm, Selifan urges them onward after turning onto a road whose direction he has chosen without knowing where it leads. The horses have grown so sluggish during his extended talk that they scarcely put one leg in front of the other. Their fatigue is thus presented not as an abstract condition but as something that directly affects the speed and uncertainty of the journey.

Later, sodden ground cakes the wheels with mire, adding weight to the vehicle and slowing its passage through the neighboring parishes. Selifan depends on a girl’s directions to find the main road among routes that branch away in every direction. The horses’ labor is bound to these ordinary obstacles: mud, confusing roads, and the weight of the coach determine how far the team can travel and how quickly its passengers can reach their destination.

Feed and Treatment at Nozdrev’s

After the visit to Nozdrev, Selifan condemns the treatment of the horses, insisting that a horse should not be denied oats. His complaint distinguishes their needs from those of a human servant: even if a man must find his own meal, the horses should receive the feed that is proper for them. The reproach gives the team a concrete stake in the visit’s aftermath and makes Selifan’s judgment of Nozdrev’s hospitality rest partly on how the animals were kept.

The skewbald’s ordinary feed at home is not especially good. Selifan calls him a villain and gives him poorer oats than the other horses receive, but the skewbald at least gets oats rather than hay. He can also put his nose into his companions’ troughs when Selifan is away and sample their better provender. At Nozdrev’s, by contrast, all three are given only hay. The narrative briefly follows the horses’ dissatisfaction as a judgment of their own: the bay and the Assessor are dispirited, and the skewbald shares their discontent. Their preferences are presented through familiar routines of feeding, comparison, and access to the stable troughs.

Collision and Comic Agency

On the road, the team collides with a vehicle drawn by six horses. Selifan has been careless, though he refuses to accept blame in front of strangers and argues instead that the other driver caused the accident. The harnesses become so entangled that backing the britchka away does not free the vehicles. The horses are caught in the practical consequences of their drivers’ quarrel, while peasants gather to help disentangle the teams.

The skewbald responds to the unexpected company with an individuality the other animals do not receive in quite the same way. As the teams stand tangled together, he sniffs at the new horses and appears reluctant to leave them. He lays his muzzle on one horse’s neck, a gesture the narration treats as affectionate, and the companion shakes its ears. Even after the traces are separated, the strange team refuses to move; the villagers’ increasingly elaborate efforts to shift the horses do not work. The two uncles who climb onto horses to help prove ineffective, and the team eventually moves off after being allowed to rest. The episode turns a traffic mishap into a comic scene of human bustle and animal resistance, with the skewbald’s interest in his new companions momentarily disrupting the intended journey.

Travel, Prosperity, and the Narrative

The horses also carry the contrast between Chichikov’s material fortunes and the labor required to sustain travel. After the profitable dealings at Plushkin’s, Chichikov rides away in high spirits, whistling and singing, while Selifan praises his voice. The windfall consists of dead souls and runaway serfs; the team’s steady onward movement carries him away from the transactions without sharing in their financial meaning. Its presence keeps the scene grounded in the actual vehicle and labor that make his mobility possible.

The novel’s broader road imagery gives the horses a place in a landscape of inns, villages, road menders, fields, and long stretches of open country. During the drive, the britchka passes these features in succession, linking the team’s movement to the varied infrastructure and agricultural life of the countryside. The horses are not simply a decorative emblem of speed: mud slows them, bad feeding affects their spirits, and rest enables movement when effort and flogging have failed.

This material emphasis is echoed in Kostanzhoglo’s account of estate work. His annual cycle begins with preparing seed and assigning workers, continues through ploughing, sowing, and planting, and proceeds to reaping, storage, threshing, and inspection of mills and estate workshops. The account values attention to land and labor as a source of both production and personal purpose. Although it does not single out Chichikov’s horses, it places the team’s recurring work within the same larger economy of animals, human management, roads, and productive estates. Through their appearances, the horses expose a plain condition of the novel’s world: journeys and prosperity alike depend on living creatures whose needs cannot be erased by the ambitions of their owners.