Mary Pavlovna Schetinina
Mary Pavlovna Schetinina is a political prisoner whose selfless dedication to serving others, complete rejection of coquetry and romantic love, and willingness to sacrifice her own freedom for the sake of her comrades make her one of the most morally exemplary figures in the novel and a decisive influence on Katerina Maslova's spiritual transformation.
Identity and Background
Mary Pavlovna is the daughter of a rich general, and she can speak three languages fluently. Despite her privileged upbringing, she felt a deep aversion to the life of the well-to-do from childhood and loved the life of the common people. She was always being scolded for spending her time in the servants' hall, the kitchen, or the stables instead of the drawing-room. She found it amusing to be with cooks and coachmen, and dull with the ladies and gentlemen of her own class. When she came to understand things, she saw that the life of her class was altogether wrong. She had no mother and did not care for her father, so at the age of nineteen she left home and went with a girl friend to work as a factory hand. After leaving the factory she lived in the country, then returned to town and lived in a lodging where a secret printing press was kept. She was arrested and sentenced to hard labor. Mary Pavlovna never spoke about the circumstances of her arrest herself, but Katusha learned from others that she was sentenced because when the police searched the lodging and one of the revolutionists fired a shot in the dark, she pleaded guilty to having fired the shot, though she had never held a revolver in her hands and would not have hurt a fly. She kept to this story and was condemned to penal servitude in Siberia.
Appearance and Character
Mary Pavlovna is a tall, erect girl with a beautiful face, prominent hazel eyes, and a firm nose and lips. Her chief charm lies in her kind, truthful eyes. She has large, white hands and a firm, almost manly step. She gives away all that her rich brother sends her and lives like the simplest working girl, dressing not only simply but poorly, paying no heed to her appearance. This complete absence of coquetry is particularly striking and attractive to Maslova. Mary Pavlovna knows she is handsome and is even pleased to know it, yet the effect her appearance has on men is not at all pleasing to her; she is even afraid of it and feels an absolute disgust toward all love affairs. Her male companions know this, and if they feel attracted to her they never permit themselves to show it, treating her as they would a man. With strangers who often molest her, the great physical strength on which she prides herself stands her in good stead. She once told Katusha that a man followed her in the street and would not leave her on any account, so she gave him such a shaking that he was frightened and ran away.
Role Among the Political Prisoners
Mary Pavlovna is one of the political prisoners who march with the criminal convicts on the journey to Siberia. She walks because she gave her place on the cart to a criminal woman who was expecting to be confined. She is constantly occupied with serving others, and one of her companions, Novodvoroff, says of her that she devotes herself to philanthropic amusements. This is true: the interest of her whole life lies in the search for opportunities of serving others. This kind of amusement has become the habit, the business of her life, and she does it all so naturally that those who know her no longer value it but simply expect it of her. When the convoy officer orders a convict to be manacled and his little girl taken away from him, Mary Pavlovna steps out from the crowd and asks the officer to allow her to carry the child. The officer, struck by her handsome face and prominent eyes, gives his permission. She tries to coax the child to come to her, but the little girl screams and will not go. It is Maslova who finally succeeds by offering a rusk. Mary Pavlovna later takes the child into the political prisoners' room, combs her hair, and cares for her. When Anatole Kryltzoff falls seriously ill and it becomes clear he may have to be left behind in the next town, Mary Pavlovna writes to Nekhludoff asking him to arrange for one of them to remain with him. She declares that if in order to get the permission to stay she should be obliged to marry Kryltzoff, she is of course ready to do so. She sits by Kryltzoff on the edge of the cart as he lies on a heap of hay, and she exchanges significant glances with Nekhludoff expressing her anxiety about Kryltzoff's state.
Relationship with Maslova
When Maslova first comes among the political prisoners, Mary Pavlovna feels repulsed and disgusted by her. Katusha notices this, but she also notices that Mary Pavlovna, having made an effort to overcome these feelings, becomes particularly tender and kind to her. The tenderness and kindness of so uncommon a being touches Maslova so much that she gives her whole heart to Mary Pavlovna and, unconsciously accepting her views, cannot help imitating her in everything. This devoted love of Katusha touches Mary Pavlovna in turn, and she learns to love Katusha. The two women are also united by the repulsion they both feel toward sexual love. The one loathes that kind of love, having experienced all its horrors; the other, never having experienced it, looks on it as something incomprehensible and at the same time as something repugnant and offensive to human dignity. Mary Pavlovna is the one who tells Nekhludoff that Maslova loves him well and is happy to be able to do him the negative good of not letting him get entangled with her, and that marriage with him would be a terrible fall for her, worse than all that is past. She advises Nekhludoff to have a talk with Maslova and offers to call her, saying it is always best that everything should be clear.
Narrative Role and Thematic Significance
Mary Pavlovna embodies the ideal of self-sacrificing service that the novel holds up as the highest form of human life. She is one of the "wonderful" people Maslova says she never could have imagined existed, and her influence is crucial in Maslova's transformation from a cynical prostitute into a woman capable of moral aspiration. Mary Pavlovna's complete rejection of romantic love and her view of herself as a "phacocyte" whose function is to help the weak and sickly elements of the social organism represent an extreme form of the altruism that the novel celebrates. Her willingness to marry Kryltzoff solely to be allowed to nurse him, and her readiness to sacrifice her own freedom for others, make her a living refutation of the selfishness that Nekhludoff sees as the root of social evil. She is, in the novel's moral economy, one of the few characters who has already achieved the spiritual resurrection that Nekhludoff is still struggling to attain.
