The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe StormThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: The StormAuthor: Aleksandr Nikolaevich OstrovskyTranslator: Constance GarnettRelease date: April 1, 2005 [eBook #7991]Most recently updated: May 12, 2013Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Eric Eldred, S.R.Ellison and the DP Proofreading Team*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STORM ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: The StormAuthor: Aleksandr Nikolaevich OstrovskyTranslator: Constance GarnettRelease date: April 1, 2005 [eBook #7991]Most recently updated: May 12, 2013Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Eric Eldred, S.R.Ellison and the DP Proofreading Team
Title: The Storm
Author: Aleksandr Nikolaevich OstrovskyTranslator: Constance Garnett
Author: Aleksandr Nikolaevich Ostrovsky
Translator: Constance Garnett
Release date: April 1, 2005 [eBook #7991]Most recently updated: May 12, 2013
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Eric Eldred, S.R.Ellison and the DP Proofreading Team
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STORM ***
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
THE STORM
ACT I
SCENE I
SCENE II.
SCENE III
SCENE IV
SCENE V
SCENE VI
SCENE VII
SCENE VIII
SCENE IX
ACT II
SCENE I
SCENE II
SCENE III
SCENE IV
SCENE V
SCENE VI
SCENE VII
SCENE VIII
SCENE IX
SCENE X
ACT III
SCENE I
SCENE II
SCENE III
SCENE IV
SCENE V
SCENE VI
SCENE VII
SCENE VIII
SCENE IX
ACT IV
SCENE I
SCENE II
SCENE III
SCENE IV
SCENE V
SCENE VI
ACT V
SCENE I
SCENE II
SCENE III
SCENE IV
SCENE V
SCENE VI
SCENE VII
Up to the years of the Crimean War Russia was always a strange, uncouth riddle to the European consciousness. It would be an interesting study to trace back through the last three centuries the evidence of the historical documents that our forefathers have left us when they were brought face to face, through missions, embassies, travel, and commerce, with the fantastic life, as it seemed to them, led by the Muscovite. But in any chance record we may pick up, from the reports of a seventeenth century embassy down to the narrative of an early nineteenth century traveller, the note always insisted on is that of all the outlandish civilisations, queer manners and customs of Europeans, the Russian's were the queerest and those standing furthest removed from the other nations'. And this sentiment has prevailed to-day, side by side with the better understanding we have gained of Russia. Nor can this conception, generally held among us, which is a half truth, be removed by personal contact or mere objective study; for example, of the innumerable memoirs published on the Crimean war, it is rare to find one that gives us any real insight into the nature of the Russian. And the conception itself can only be amended and enlarged by the study of the Russian mind as it expresses itself in its own literature. The mind of the great artist, of whatever race he springs, cannot lie. From the works of Thackeray and George Eliot in England and Turgenev and Tolstoi in Russia, a critic penetrates into the secret places of the national life, where all the clever objective pictures of foreign critics must lead him astray. Ostrovsky's drama, "The Storm," here translated for the English reader, is a good instance of this truth. It is a revelation of the old-fashioned Muscovite lifefrom the inside, and Ostrovsky thereby brings us in closer relation to that primitive life than was in the power of Tolstoi or Goncharov, or even Gogol to bring us. These great writers have given us admirable pictures of the people's life as it appeared to them at the angle of the educated Westernised Russian mind; but here in "The Storm" is the atmosphere of the little Russian town, with its primitive inhabitants, merchants, and workpeople, an atmosphere untouched, unadulterated by theideasof any outside European influence. It is the Russia of Peter the Great and Catherine's time, the Russian patriarchal family life that has existed for hundreds of years through all the towns and villages of Great Russia, that lingers indeed to-day in out-of-the-way corners of the Empire, though now invaded and much broken up by modern influences. It is, in fact, the very Muscovite life that so puzzled our forefathers, and that no doubt will seem strange to many English readers. But the special triumph of "The Storm" is that although it is a realistic picture of old-fashioned Russian patriarchal life, it is one of the deepest and simplest psychological analyses of the Russian soul ever made. It is a very deep though a very narrow analysis. Katerina, the heroine, to the English will seem weak, and crushed through her weakness; but to a Russian she typifies revolt, freedom, a refusal to be bound by the cruelty of life. And her attitude, despairing though it seems to us, is indeed the revolt of the spirit in a land where Tolstoi's doctrine of non-resistance is the logical outcome of centuries of serfdom in a people's history. The merchant Dikoy, the bully, the soft characterless lover Boris, the idealistic religious Katerina, Kuligin the artisan, and Madame Kabanova, the tyrannical mother, all these are true national types, true Russians of the changing ages, and the counterparts of these people may be met to-day, if the reader takes up Tehehov's tales. English people no doubt will find it difficult to believe that Madame Kabanova could so have crushed Katerina's life, as Ostrovsky depicts. Nothing indeed is so antagonistic to English individualism and independence as is the passivity of some of the characters in "The Storm." But the English reader's very difficulty in this respect should give him a clue to much that has puzzled Europeans, should help him to penetrate into the strangeness of Russian political life, the strangeness of her love of despotism. Only in the country that produces such types of weakness and tyranny is possible the fettering of freedom of thought and act that we have in Russia to-day. Ostrovsky's striking analysis of this fatalism in the Russian soul will help the reader to understand the unending struggle in Russia between the enlightened Europeanised intelligence of the few, and the apathy of the vast majority of Russians who are disinclined to rebel against the crystallised conditions of their lives. Whatever may be strange and puzzling in "The Storm" to the English mind, there is no doubt that the Russians hail the picture as essentially true. The violence of such characters as Madame Kabanova and Dikoy may be weakened to-day everywhere by the gradual undermining of the patriarchal family system now in progress throughout Russia, but the picture is in essentials a criticism of the national life. On this point the Russian critic Dobroliubov, criticising "The Storm," says: "The need for justice, for respect for personal rights, this is the cry ... that rises up to the ear of every attentive reader. Well, can we deny the wide application of this need in Russia? Can we fail to recognise that such a dramatic background corresponds with the true condition of Russian society? Take history, think of our life, look about you, everywhere you will find justification of our words. This is not the place to launch out into historical investigation; it is enough to point out that our history up to the most recent times has not fostered among us the development of a respect for equity, has not created any solid guarantees for personal rights, and has left a wide field to arbitrary tyranny and caprice." This criticism of Dobroliubov's was written in 1860, the date of the play; but we have only to look back at the internal history of Russia for the last thirty years to see that it too "has not created any solid guarantees for personal rights, and has left a wide field to arbitrary tyranny and caprice." And here is Ostrovsky's peculiar merit, that he has in his various dramas penetrated deeper than any other of the great Russian authors into one of the most fundamental qualities of the Russian nature—its innate tendency to arbitrary power, oppression, despotism. Nobody has drawn so powerfully, so truly, so incisively as he, the type of the 'samodour' or 'bully,' a type that plays a leading part in every strata of Russian life. From Turgenev we learn more of the reverse side of the Russian character, its lack of will, tendency to weakness, dreaminess and passivity: and it is this aspect that the English find it so hard to understand, when they compare the characters in the great Russian novels with their own idea of Russia's formidable power. The people and the nation do not seem to correspond. But the riddle may be read in the coexistence of Russia's internal weakness and misery along with her huge force, and the immense rôle she fills as a civilising power. In "The Storm" we have all the contradictory elements: a life strongly organised, yet weak within; strength and passivity, despotism and fatalism side by side.
The author of "The Storm," Alexander Ostrovsky (born in Moscow 1823, died 1886), is acknowledged to be the greatest of the Russian dramatists. He has been called "a specialist in the natural history of the Russian merchant," and his birth, upbringing, family connections and vocations gave him exceptional facilities for penetrating into the life of that class which he was the first to put into Russian literature. His best period was from 1850 to 1860, but all his work received prompt and universal recognition from his countrymen. In 1859 Dobroliubov's famous article, "The Realm of Darkness," appeared, analysing the contents of all Ostrovsky's dramas, and on the publication of "The Storm" in 1860, it was followed by another article from the same critic, "A Ray of Light in the Realm of Darkness." These articles were practically a brief for the case of the Liberals, or party of Progress, against the official and Slavophil party. Ostrovsky's dramas in general are marked by intense sombreness, biting humour and merciless realism. "The Storm" is the most poetical of his works, but all his leading plays still hold the stage.
"The Storm" will repay a minute examination by all who recognise that in England to-day we have a stage without art, truth to life, or national significance. There is not a superfluous line in the play: all is drama, natural, simple, deep. There is nofalsity, no forced situations, no sensational effects, none of the shallow or flashy caricatures of daily life that our heterogeneous public demands. All the reproach that lives for us in the wordtheatricalis worlds removed from "The Storm." The people who like 'farcical comedy' and social melodrama, and 'musical sketches' will find "The Storm" deep, forbidding and gloomy. The critic will find it an abiding analysis of a people's temperament. The reader will find it literature.
E. G.November, 1898.
SAVIL PROKOFIEVITCH DIKOY,a merchant, and personage of importance in the town.
BORIS GRIGORIEVITCH,his nephew, a young man of good education.
MARFA IGNATIEVNA KABANOVA,a rich merchant's widow.
TIHON IVANITCH KABANOV,her son.
KATERINA,his wife.
VARVARA,sister of Tihon.
KULIGIN,a man of artisan class, a self-taught watchmaker, engaged in trying to discover the secret of perpetual motion.
VANIA KUDRIASH,a young man, clerk to Dikoy.
SHAPKIN,an artisan.
FEKLUSHA,a pilgrim woman.
GLASHA,a maid servant in the Kabanovs' house.
AN OLD LADYof seventy, half mad, withTWO FOOTMEN.
TOWNSPEOPLEof both sexes.
The action takes place in the town of Kalinov, on the banks of the Volga, in summertime. There is an interval of ten days between the 3rd and 4th acts. All the characters except Boris are dressed in old Russian national dress.
A public garden on the steep bank of the Volga; beyond the Volga, a view of the country. On the stage two benches and a few bushes.
KULIGIN (sitting on a bench, looking towards the river).
KUDRIASH and SHAPKIN (walking up and down).
KULIGIN (singing). "Amidst the level dales, upon a sloping hillside,"... (ceases singing) Wonderful, one really must say it's wonderful! Kudriash! Do you know, I've looked upon the Volga every day these fifty years and I can never get tired of looking upon it.
KUDRIASH. How's that?
KULIGIN. It's a marvellous view! Lovely! It sets my heart rejoicing.
KUDRIASH. It's not bad.
KULIGIN. It's exquisite! And you say "not bad"! You are tired of it, or you don't feel the beauty there is in nature.
KUDRIASH. Come, there's no use talking to you! You're a genuine antique, we all know, a chemical genius.
KULIGIN. Mechanical, a self-taught mechanician.
KUDRIASH. It's all one.
[Silence.
KULIGIN (pointing away). Look, Kudriash, who's that waving his arms about over there?
KUDRIASH. There? Oh, that's Dikoy pitching into his nephew.
KULIGIN. A queer place to do it!
KUDRIASH. All places are alike to him. He's not afraid of any one! Boris Grigoritch is in his clutches now, so he is always bullying him.
SHAPKIN. Yes, you wouldn't find another bully like our worthy Saviol Prokofitch in a hurry! He pulls a man up for nothing at all.
KUDRIASH. He is a stiff customer.
SHAPKIN. Old Dame Kabanova's a good hand at that too!
KUDRIASH. Yes, but she at least does it all under pretence of morality; he's like a wild beast broken loose!
SHAPKIN. There's no one to bring him to his senses, so he rages about as he likes!
KUDRIASH. There are too few lads of my stamp or we'd have broken him of it.
SHAPKIN. Why, what would you have done?
KUDRIASH. We'd have given him a good scare.
SHAPKIN. How'd you do that?
KUDRIASH. Why, four or five of us would have had a few words with him, face to face, in some back street, and he'd soon have been as soft as silk. And he'd never have let on to a soul about the lesson we'd given him; he'd just have walked off and taken care to look behind him.
SHAPKIN. I see he'd some reason for wanting to get you sent for a soldier.
KUDRIASH. He wanted to, right enough, but he didn't do it. No, he won't get rid of me; he's an inkling that I'd make him pay too dear for it. You're afraid of him, but I know how to talk to him.
SHAPKIN. Oh, I daresay!
KUDRIASH. What do you mean by that? I am reckoned a tough one to deal with. Why do you suppose he keeps me on? Because he can't do without me, to be sure. Well, then, I've no need to be afraid of him; let him be afraid of me.
SHAPKIN. Why, doesn't he swear at you?
KUDRIASH. Swear at me! Of course; he can't breathe without that. But I don't give way to him: if he says one word, I say ten; he curses and goes off. No, I'm not going to lick the dust for him.
KULIGIN. What, follow his example! You'd do better to bear it in patience.
KUDRIASH. Come, I say, if you're so wise, teach him good manners first and then we'll learn! It's a pity his daughters are all children, there's not one grown-up girl among them.
SHAPKIN. What if there were?
KUDRIASH. I should treat him as he deserves if there were. I'm a devil of a fellow among the girls!
[Dikoy and Boris advance. Kuligin takes off his hat.
SHAPKIN (to Kudriash). Let us move off; he'll pick a quarrel with us, very likely.
[They move off a little.
DIKOY. Did you come here to loaf about in idleness? eh? Lazy good for nothing fellow, confound you!
BORIS. It's a holiday; what could I be doing at home?
DIKOY. You'd find work to do if you wanted to. I've said it once, and I've said it twice, "don't dare to let me come across you"; you're incorrigible! Isn't there room enough for you? Go where one will, there you are! Damn you! Why do you stand there like a post? Do you hear what's said to you?
BORIS. I'm listening,—what more am I to do?
DIKOY (looking at Boris). Get away with you! I won't talk to a Jesuit like you. (Going) To come forcing himself on me here!
[Spits and exit.
KULIGIN, BORIS, KUDRIASH, and SHAPKIN.
KULIGIN. What have you to do with him, sir? We can't make it out. What can induce you to live with him and put up with his abuse?
BORIS. A poor inducement, Kuligin! I'm not free.
KULIGIN. But how are you not free, allow me to ask you. If you can tell us, sir, do.
BORIS. Why not? You knew our grandmother, Anfisa Mihalovna?
KULIGIN. To be sure I did!
KUDRIASH. I should think we did!
BORIS. She quarrelled with my father you know because he married into a noble family. It was owing to that that my father and mother lived in Moscow. My mother used to tell me that she could hardly endure life for three days together with my father's relations, it all seemed so rough and coarse to her.
KULIGIN. Well it might! you have to be used to it from the first, sir, to be able to bear it.
BORIS. Our parents brought us up well in Moscow, they spared no expense. They sent me to the Commercial Academy, and my sister to a boarding school, but they both died suddenly of cholera. We were left orphans, my sister and I. Then we heard that our grandmother was dead here, and had left a will that our uncle was to pay us a fair share of her fortune, when we came of age, only upon one condition.
KULIGIN. And what was that, sir?
BORIS. If we showed a proper respect for his authority.
KULIGIN. Then there's no doubt, sir, you'll never see your fortune.
BORIS. No, but that's not all, Kuligin! First he finds fault with us to his heart's content, and ends none the less with giving us nothing, or some tiny dole. And then he'll go making out that it's a great favour, and that he ought not to have done even that.
KUDRIASH. That's just the way the merchants go on among us. Besides, if you were ever so respectful to him, who's to hinder him from saying you're disrespectful?
BORIS. To be sure. And indeed he sometimes will say: I've children of my own, why should I give money away to outsiders? Am I to wrong my own like that?
KULIGIN. It's plain, sir, you're not in luck's way.
BORIS. If it were only me, I wouldn't care! I'd throw it all up and go away. But I'm sorry for my sister. He did write for her to come too, but mother's relations wouldn't let her, they wrote she wasn't well. It frightens me to think what the life here would be for her.
KUDRIASH. Of course. The master's no decent manners at all.
KULIGIN. In what capacity do you live with him, sir; what arrangement has he made with you?
BORIS. Why, none whatever; "you live with me," he says, "and do what you're told, and your pay shall be what I give you," that's to say, in a year's time he'll settle up with me as he thinks fit.
KUDRIASH. That's just his way. Not one of us dare as much as hint at a salary, or he storms till he's black in the face. "How do you know," he'll say, "what I have in my mind to do? Do you suppose you can see into my heart? Maybe, I shall be so disposed as to give you five thousand." It's no use talking to him! Only you may be pretty sure he's never been disposed that way in his life.
KULIGIN. It's a hard case, sir! You must try and get the right side of him somehow.
BORIS. But the point is, Kuligin, that it's impossible. Why, even his own children can never do anything to please him; so it's hardly likely I could!
KUDRIASH. Who could please him, when his whole life's spent in bullying people? Especially where money's at stake; no accounts are ever settled without storms of abuse. Often people are glad to go short of their due, if only he'll let them off quietly. Woe to us if anyone vexes him in the morning! He falls foul of everyone all day long.
BORIS. Every morning my aunt entreats us with tears in her eyes: "Don't anger him, friends! Dear boys, don't anger him!"
KUDRIASH. But you can never avoid it! If he goes to the bazaar, it's all up! He scolds all the peasants. Even if they ask him less than cost price they never get off without abuse. And then he's upset for the whole day.
SHAPKIN. He's a bully—there's no other word for him.
KUDRIASH. A bully? I should think he is!
BORIS. And what's fatal is if some man offends him, whom he daren't be rude to. Then all his household have to look out for themselves!
KUDRIASH. Bless my soul! That was a joke though. Didn't that hussar let him have it on the Volga, at the ferry! Oh, a lovely shindy he kicked up afterwards, too.
BORIS. Ah, and didn't his family suffer for it! Why, for a fortnight after we were all hiding away in the attics and cupboards.
KULIGIN. Surely that's not the folk coming back from vespers?
[Several persons pass in the background.
KUDRIASH. Come on, Shapkin, let's get a drink! It's no good stopping here.
[They bow and exeunt.
BORIS. Oh, Kuligin, it's awfully hard here for me who've not been used to it. Everyone seems to look with unfriendly eyes at me, as though I were not wanted here, as though I were in their way. I don't understand the ways here. I know this is truly Russia, my own country, but still I can't get used to it.
KULIGIN. And you never will get used to it, sir.
BORIS. Why?
KULIGIN. They're a coarse lot, sir, in our town, a coarse lot! Among the working people, sir, you'll find nothing but brutality and squalid poverty. And we've no chance, sir, of ever finding our way out of it. For by honest labour we can never earn more than a crust of bread. And everyone with money, sir, tries all he can to get a poor man under his thumb, so as to make more money again out of his working for nothing. Do you know the answer your uncle, Saviol Prokofitch, made to the provost? The peasants were always coming to the provost with complaints that your uncle never paid one of them fairly according to agreement. The provost said to him at last: "Look here," says he, "Saviol Prokofitch, you must pay the peasants what's fairly owing to them! Every day they come to me with some complaint!" Your uncle slapped the provost on the shoulder, and says he: "It's not worth while, your Worship, for you and me to waste our breath over such petty details! I have to do with numbers of peasants in the course of the year; you can understand, if I pay them a paltry farthing short, every man of them, it mounts up to thousands, and a capital thing too for me!" Think of that, sir! And the way they treat one another too, sir! They injure each other's trade all they can, and that not so much from self-interest, as from envy. They are always at feud with one another. They entertain in their grand mansions drunken attorneys' clerks, wretched creatures, sir, that hardly look like human beings. And they, for a small tip, will cover sheets of stamped paper with malicious quibbling attacks on their neighbours. And then there's a lawsuit commences between them, sir, and no end to the worry and fret. They bring it before the court here, and go off to the chief town, and there everyone in court is on the look-out for them and they clap their hands with glee when they see them. Words do not take long, but deeds are not soon done. They are dragged from court to court, they are worn out with delays; but they are positively delighted at that; it's just that they want. "I've lost a lot of money," one will say, "but it's cost him a pretty penny too!" I did try to put it all into verse....
BORIS. Why, do you make verse?
KULIGIN. Yes, sir, in the old-fashioned style. I have read Lomonosov and Derzhavin. Lomonosov was a deep thinker, an investigator of nature.... And he was one of us plain working folk too.
BORIS. You should write. That would be interesting.
KULIGIN. How could I, sir! They'd tear me to pieces, they'd skin me alive. Even as it is, sir, I have had to pay for my chattering; but I can't help it, I love to speak my mind freely. I meant to say something about their family life, sir, but we'll talk of that some other time. There's plenty to tell about that too.
[Enter Feklusha and another woman.
FEKLUSHA. De-lightful, my clear, de-lightful! Divinely beautiful! But what's the use of talking! You live in the Promised Land, simply! And the merchant gentry are all a devout people, and famed for many a virtue! liberality and much almsgiving! I am well content, my good soul, full to the brim of content! For their liberality to us will their abundance be greatly increased, especially in the house of Kabanova.
[Exeunt.
BORIS. Kabanova?
KULIGIN. A fanatical hypocrite, sir. She gives to the poor, but her own household she worries to death. (Silence.) All I want, sir, is to find out the secret of perpetual motion!
BORIS. Why, what would you do?
KULIGIN. How can you ask, sir! Why, the English offer millions for it. I should use all the money for public purposes,—we want to provide work for the working people. Here they have hands to work, and no work to do.
BORIS. And you hope to discover perpetual motion?
KULIGIN. Not a doubt, I shall, sir! I have only to scrape up enough money for models. Good-bye, sir!
[Exit.
BORIS (alone). I haven't the heart to disillusion him! What a good fellow! He dreams and is happy. But I, it seems, must waste my youth in this wretched hole. I was utterly crushed before, and now this madness creeping into my mind! So suitable! Me give myself up to tender sentiments! Trampled upon, broken-spirited, and as if that's not enough, in my idiocy I must needs fall in love! And of all people in the world! With a woman, whom I may never have the luck to speak a word to. (Silence.) But for all that, I can't get her out of my head, try as I will. Here she is! Coming with her husband, oh! and the mother-in-law with them! Ah, what a fool I am! I must snatch a look at her round the corner, and then home again.
[Exit. From the opposite side, enter Mme. Kabanova, Kabanov, Katerina and Varvara.]
MME. KABANOVA. If you care to listen to your mother, you'll do as I have told you, directly you get there.
KABANOV. How could I possibly disobey you, mother!
MME. KABANOVA. Young folks show little respect to their elders, nowadays.
VARVARA (to herself). Not respect you, my dear? That's likely!
KABANOV. I think, mamma, I never depart a hairsbreadth from your will.
MME. KABANOVA. I might believe you, my son, if I hadn't seen with my own eyes and heard with my own ears how little reverence parents receive nowadays from children! They might at least remember all the sufferings a mother has to put up with for her children.
KABANOV. Mamma, I....
MME. KABANOVA. If the mother that bore you does at times say a word that wounds your pride surely you might put up with it! Hey, what do you think?
KABANOV. But, mamma, when have I not put up with anything from you?
MME. KABANOVA. The mother's old, and foolish, to be sure; you young people must not be too exacting with us old fools.
KABANOV (sighs, aside). Oh, merciful Heavens! (To his mother) We should never dare think such a thing for a moment, mamma!
MME. KABANOVA. It's out of love that parents are severe with you, out of love they scold even—they're always thinking how to train you in the right way. To be sure, that's not in favour nowadays. And children go about among folks proclaiming that their mother's a scold, that their mother won't let them stir, that she's the plague of their life. And if—Lord save us—some word of hers doesn't please her daughter-in-law, then it's the talk all over the place, that the mother-in-law worries her to death.
KABANOV. You don't mean that anyone talks about you, mamma?
MME. KABANOVA. I haven't heard so, my son, I haven't; I don't want to tell a lie about it. If I had, indeed, I shouldn't be talking to you like this, my dear. (Sighs) Ah, sin is a heavy burden! Sin is never far off! Something said goes to the heart, and there, one sins, one gets angry. No, my son, say what you like about me, there's no forbidding anyone to talk; if they don't dare before one's face, they'll do it behind one's back.
KABANOV. May my tongue wither up and...
MME. KABANOVA. Hush, hush, don't swear! It's a sin! I've seen plain enough for a long time past that your wife's dearer to you than your mother. Ever since you were married, I don't see the same love for me that I did in you.
KABANOV. In what way do you see me changed, mamma?
MME. KABANOVA. In everything, my son! When a mother doesn't see a thing with her eyes, her heart's so sensitive she can feel it with her heart. Or maybe it's your wife sets you against me, I can't say.
KABANOV. Oh no, mamma! how can you say so, really?
KATERINA. I look upon you as I would on my own mother, and indeed Tihon loves you too.
MME. KABANOVA. You might hold your tongue, I should think, till you're asked a question. You've no need to defend him, young madam, I'm not going to hurt him, no fear! He's my son too, let me tell you; don't you forget it! What do you want to fire up and display your feelings before folks for! That we may see you love your husband? We know that, we know that, you show off before everyone.
VARVARA (to herself). A nice place she's pitched on to read us a sermon!
KATERINA. You have no need to say that of me, mamma. I am just the same before people, as I am by myself. I make no show of anything.
MME. KABANOVA. And I'd no intention of speaking about you at all, but it happened to come up.
KATERINA. Even so, why need you attack me?
MME. KABANOVA. My, what a stuck-up thing she is! Here she's in a huff directly!
KATERINA. No one likes to put up with unjust blame.
MME. KABANOVA. I know, I know my words are not to your liking, but that can't be helped. I'm not a stranger to you, it makes my heart grieve to see you. I've seen for a long time past that you want your own way. Well, well, you've only to wait a bit, you'll have it all your own way when I'm dead and gone. Then to be sure you can do as you please, there'll be no elders then to look after you. And, maybe, you will think of me then.
KABANOV. But we pray God night and day for you, mamma, that God may grant you health, and every blessing and success in all you do.
MME. KABANOVA. Come, give over, please. I daresay you did love your mother, while you were a bachelor. But you've no thoughts for me now you've a young wife.
KABANOV. The one doesn't hinder the other. A wife is something different, but for my mother I have a reverence quite apart.
MME. KABANOVA. Then would you give up your wife rather than your mother? No, that I'll never believe.
KABANOV. But why should I give up either? I love both.
MME. KABANOVA. Oh, I daresay, I daresay, you may talk away! I see plain enough that I'm a hindrance to you.
KABANOV. You must think as you please, it's for you to decide in everything. Only I can't comprehend why I was ever born into the world so unlucky as not to be able to please you anyhow.
MME. KABANOVA. What do you mean by whimpering like a sick child! A pretty husband, upon my word! You should just see yourself! Do you suppose your wife will fear you after that?
KABANOV. Why should she fear me? I'm content, if she loves me.
MME. KABANOVA. Why should she fear you! Why should she fear you! What do you mean? Why, you must be crazy! If she doesn't fear you, she's not likely to fear me. A pretty state of confusion there would be in the house! Why, you're living with her in lawful wedlock, aren't you? Or does the law count for nothing to your thinking? If you do harbour such fools' notions in your brain, you shouldn't talk so before her anyway, nor before your sister, that's a girl still. She'll have to be married too; and if she catches up your silly talk it's her husband will thank us afterwards for the lessons we've taught her. You see how little sense you've got, and yet you want to be independent and live as you like.
KABANOV. But indeed, mamma, I don't want to be independent. How ever could I be independent!
MME. KABANOVA. So, to your thinking then, kindness is all that's needed with a wife? Mustn't even scold her then, or threaten her?
KABANOV. But, indeed, mamma....
MME. KABANOVA (hotly). Wait till she sets up a lover.... Hey! But I daresay that's no consequence either, to your thinking? Hey? Come, speak?
KABANOV. But, mercy on us, mamma....
MME. KABANOVA (perfectly coolly). Fool! (Sighs) What's the use of talking to a fool! it's simply a sin! (Silence) I'm going home.
KABANOV. We'll come directly too; we'll only take one or two more turns on the parade.
MME. KABANOVA. Very well; do as you like, only mind you don't keep me waiting! You know I don't like that.
KABANOV. Oh no, mamma! God forbid!
MME. KABANOVA. Mind you don't then!
[Goes.