Mary Vasilievna

Mary Vasilievna is the unprincipled wife of the Marechal de Noblesse of a district where Nekhludoff was present at an election; she draws him into an intimate liaison that he finds increasingly distasteful, and her refusal to release him from the entanglement becomes a major obstacle to his moral awakening and his freedom to marry Princess Mary Korchagin.

Identity and Introduction

Mary Vasilievna is introduced as the wife of the Marechal de Noblesse, a liberal official engrossed in political fights concerning schools and roads, who does not even notice the misfortune that has befallen him. Nekhludoff's shyness with women awakened in her the desire to vanquish him, and she succeeded in drawing him into an intimacy that entangled him more and more while daily becoming more distasteful to him. Having succumbed to the temptation, Nekhludoff felt guilty and lacked the courage to break the tie without her consent. This entanglement is the very reason he does not feel at liberty to propose to Princess Mary Korchagin, even if he wished to do so.

The Liaison and Its Consequences

The relationship is marked by Nekhludoff's internal torment. He remembers dreadful moments: once when he thought the husband had found him out and was going to challenge him, and he was making up his mind to fire into the air; also the terrible scene he had with her when she ran out into the park, and in her excitement tried to drown herself in the pond. The Marechal's letter to Nekhludoff, concerning a special meeting, is written without any awareness of the affair, and Nekhludoff's excitement upon seeing the husband's handwriting passes at once, as his energies awaken when facing any kind of danger. The liaison is a source of constant anxiety and a chain that binds him to a life of deception.

The Attempt to Break Free

A week before the trial, Nekhludoff writes her a decisive letter in which he acknowledges his guilt and his readiness to atone for it, but at the same time pronounces their relations to be at an end, for her own good, as he expresses it. To this letter he has as yet received no answer. He interprets this silence as a good sign, for if she did not agree to break off their relations, she would have written at once, or even come herself, as she had done before. He has also heard that there is some officer who is paying her marked attention, and this torments him by awakening jealousy, while at the same time encouraging him with the hope of escape from the deception that is oppressing him.

The Resolution and Nekhludoff's Moral Awakening

On the morning after the trial, Nekhludoff receives the long-expected letter from Mary Vasilievna. She gives him full freedom and wishes him happiness in his intended marriage. This letter arrives by a strange coincidence on the very morning he awakens conscious that something important and good has happened to him. He now repeats her word "Marriage!" with irony, realizing how far he is from all that at present. He remembers his plans to tell the husband everything, to make a clean breast of it, and express his readiness to give him any kind of satisfaction, but this morning this does not seem so easy as the day before. He decides that if the husband comes and asks, he will tell him all, but to go purposely and tell—no, that is unnecessary. The receipt of this letter, granting him freedom, is a crucial step in his moral awakening, clearing the way for his new resolve to confront his sin against Katusha Maslova.

Thematic Significance

Mary Vasilievna represents the corrupting, deceptive, and ultimately empty world of aristocratic liaisons that Nekhludoff must renounce in order to achieve spiritual rebirth. Her character embodies the "animal man" in Nekhludoff's life—the selfish, pleasure-seeking, and morally compromised existence that he must overcome. The affair with her is a key component of the "shameful and horrid" life he condemns himself for leading, and her eventual release of him is a necessary precondition for his journey toward redemption. She is a figure of the old life that must be left behind, and her letter of freedom is a gift that allows him to turn his full attention to the suffering he has caused Maslova and to the larger injustices of the world.