Korobotchka

Korobotchka is an elderly landowner who sells Chichikov the names of dead serfs and then becomes an unwitting source of the rumors that convulse the provincial town. Her encounter with him joins the novel’s fictitious transactions to their human consequences: what Chichikov treats as a calculated purchase becomes, in her retelling, a terrifying nocturnal assault, and the confusion spreads far beyond her village.

Encounter and Sale

The wider scheme rests on the revision-list system: landowners remain liable for taxes on serfs recorded in the last census, even after those serfs have died, while the registered names can also be used to obtain credit. Chichikov’s plan is to buy those names cheaply and present the fictitious population as collateral. Korobotchka’s part in this scheme is concrete and local: she agrees to sell him dead souls, and later tells others that he paid fifteen roubles for each one.

The narrative’s account of her sale reaches the town indirectly, through the wife of Father Cyril, the Archpriest’s wife. That woman reports that Korobotchka arrived at the Archpriest’s house pale and trembling, after a dreadful knocking at night and a threat to break down the gates. In her account, Chichikov came armed from head to foot and demanded that Korobotchka sell souls who had recently died. When she objected that the dead could not be sold, he insisted that they were still alive and that he knew the truth. Her version turns the transaction’s fraudulent premise into a frightening confrontation witnessed, she says, by the whole village.

A Retelling That Becomes Rumor

Korobotchka’s account adds a second grievance to the dispute over whether the dead can be sold. She says Chichikov threw her fifteen roubles and forced her to sign a worthless paper, presenting herself as an inexperienced and defenceless widow who knew nothing of business. The reported coercion makes her appear not as a willing seller in a speculative deal but as a victim of a threatening stranger. Her distress is conveyed through the Archpriest’s wife, who describes her own alarm and says that she hurried to tell her friend Anna Grigorievna.

That chain of telling carries the story into the town’s social network. The two women inform the Public Prosecutor, giving details both of the dead-soul purchase and of a supposed plan to abduct the Governor’s daughter; they then scatter in different directions to spread the news. Within half an hour, the town is agitated. The men’s discussion centres on the dead souls, while the women focus on the alleged abduction, elaborating competing versions of Chichikov’s supposed courtship and intentions. Korobotchka does not originate the abduction rumor in the evidence presented here, but her story is part of the disclosure that gives the town’s speculation fresh momentum.

Questioned by the Officials

When officials investigate Chichikov’s identity, they question Korobotchka among the landowners from whom he bought souls. Her testimony gives them little clarity: she reports the price, mentions that he also bought feathers, and says he promised to purchase other goods in the future. She further recalls his claim to have a Treasury contract for lard. The officials treat this jumble of transactions as evidence of a rogue’s habits and conclude that Korobotchka is a garrulous, foolish old woman; her account does not explain the purpose of the purchases or establish who Chichikov is.

Her testimony is one fragment in a broader failure of inquiry. Manilov offers an affectionate eulogy of Chichikov without explaining the transaction, and Sobakevitch insists that the souls he sold had been alive, while disclaiming responsibility for what might happen later. The officials also question the servants, but learn almost nothing beyond Petrushka’s living-room smell and Selifan’s report that his master had served in government and at Customs. Despite collecting these statements, they remain unable to identify Chichikov or decide whether he is dangerous to them or they to him.

Significance

Korobotchka’s role is not that of an architect of Chichikov’s scheme but of a seller caught between an unfamiliar legal fiction and the fear it produces. The transaction depends on the state’s continued registration of dead people as taxable souls; her reported protest that the dead have departed this world collides with a system in which names retain monetary value. The novel makes the absurdity legible through the gap between the official category and ordinary understanding.

Her story also shows how information changes as it moves. A sale becomes a forced signature, a demand for dead souls becomes an armed nocturnal visitation, and the retelling joins a separate rumor about the Governor’s daughter. Later, when authorities uncover evidence of Chichikov’s dead-soul dealings and his Customs-service contraband connections, the investigation expands beyond the town’s initial gossip to his hidden past. Korobotchka’s testimony neither solves the mystery nor controls its consequences; it is one vivid, distorted account in the wider circulation of suspicion.