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• 1 2020-11-30T12:33:49-05:00 Strength in the Soft Domestic of Ulitskaya’s Sonechka 28 plain 2020-12-10T14:00:02-05:00
  Sandy Shen
  Throughout the twentieth century in Russian literature, women have been used as idealistic re-imaginings of the new Soviet Union in Yury Olesha’s Envy, as conniving and predatory figures in Mikhail Kuzmin’s Wings, and physical manifestations of the Great Terror’s destruction in Lydia Chukovskaya’s Sofia Petrovna. In comparison to their male counterparts, there is limited emphasis on women's complexity and value independent of the male gaze and historical narrative. Women are often trophies to be attained, maudlin creatures to be sympathized with, or characters to be distrusted. In a refreshing narrative shift, Lyudmila Ulitskaya expands the role of women through her novella Sonechka, which begins with a brief overview of the titular heroine’s rather lonely childhood during the tumultuous 1930s and 40s of Soviet Russian society. After the twenty-seven-year-old Sonechka encounters the fifty-year-old Robert for the first time at a library, they begin their married life just weeks later with the comforts of war, winter, and financial instability. Despite a challenging start, it is the beginning of a decades-long period of marital bliss and familial harmony. As Sonechka, Robert, and their daughter Tanya settle into a Russian middle-class existence, Sonechka works tirelessly as a seamstress and housewife to care for her family. It all quietly ends, however, with Robert’s affair with a young girl Jasia. The truly fascinating aspect of Sonechka is not what happens after each event, but rather how and why Sonechka responds to each obstacle life presents before her. Through her struggles of rejection, poverty, and betrayal, Sonechka reveals the power in her strength as a woman and domestic housewife.  
  
  Unlike previous women in the twentieth-century Russian texts covered on this site, Sonechka is described in a crude and unflattering manner: "her nose really was pear shaped, and lanky, broad-shouldered Sonechka with her skinny legs and flat and unmemorable bum" (Ulitskaya 8). Initially, her unattractive appearance makes her seem pitiable and unassuming, and Sonechka seems a world away from the glamorous, ethereal women typically featured in previous texts. But as she suffers through her family’s degrading comments and humiliation at the hands of her childhood crush, her physical features only underscore her resilient spirit and the depth of character (18). Her plain facial and physical features not only ground her character in reality, but they also make it easier to envision how she ages and endures life’s suffering. Ulitskaya creates a visceral, unedited image of Sonechka, making her loneliness and pain all the more real. Compared to idealized symbols of Russian femininity and the new modern era, it is easier to feel sympathy and respect for characters like Sonechka, who exist in the human realm, and Ulitskaya’s focus on her ordinary appearance and struggles highlight the arduous act of living itself: dutifully caring for family members each day, looking out for other’s mental and physical well-beings, and preparing hot meals three times a day. Ulitskaya does not glamorize Sonechka's labor as a domestic housewife but appreciates Sonechka for her untainted dedication to her family, as well as the countless other housewives who do their best for their families.
  
  One particular example of Sonechka’s strength of will is embodied by her daughter, Tanya. Because Tanya is “no beauty in a conventional sense, and not even pretty by most people’s standards,” Sonechka purposefully creates a nurturing, caring environment for her (47). With her mother’s unwavering love and attention, Tanya develops into a self-assured — albeit selfish — young woman who never suffers the shame and humiliation her mother did as a child. Sonechka and Tanya could have easily become pitiable women defined by their unattractiveness, but Sonechka persevered through her childhood trauma and succeeded in giving her daughter the warm, encouraging environment she lacked growing up. She is not someone to criticize the world or become embittered by her early childhood experiences and focuses instead of the things that bring her joy: her family.
  
  Along with a commitment to her family, reading is another valuable source of inner strength for Sonechka. Once she realizes people would mistreat her because of her appearance, she feels “freed from any inclination to be liked, beguiling, or attractive… and [reverts] to her intoxicating and overweening passion for reading” (19). For her, reading is not only a continuous source of comfort and joy, but a healthy way to escape childhood disappointments, wartime chaos, and the pain of her husband’s infidelity (12). To reclaim the sense of agency and identity she lacks in real life, Sonechka turns to the fictional worlds of Russian literature. In books, she can immerse herself in the world of another character, vicariously living out the characters’ adventures and struggles. Against the uncertain backdrop of war and social upheaval during early twentieth century Russia, the predetermined path outlined by Dostoevsky, Leskov, and Turgenev offers her a reprieve from a distressing, lonely reality (11). Her obsession with reading sets her apart from previous novels’ descriptions of women, as she is not preoccupied with an unattainable male suitor or defined by the historical events unfolding around her. Rather, her love for reading shields her from falling apart because of other people or events beyond her control.
  
  In fact, it is only when Sonechka is overtaken by her familial responsibilities that she no longer feels the need to escape reality. After she marries Robert and gives birth to Tanya, “her old life [turns] away from her and [takes] with it all the bookishness she had so loved, leaving her… unimaginable travails from poverty, the cold and her daily anxieties over little Tanya and Robert”  (32). But in exchange for the endless financial hardships and sacrificing her individual identity, she obtains unparalleled happiness: “[Sonechka] would smile in the first light of morning, her body wordlessly and joyously satisfying the appetites of two precious beings who were inseparable from her” (35). Before marriage, the prospect of love and motherhood is an unfathomable dream to her; they are experiences that belong to fictional characters she reads about, not her. Thus, when those dreams manifest into reality, Sonechka no longer sees a reason to escape the world through books. She chooses the physical toil, emotional labor, and financial difficulties that come with being a wife and mother, as the sense of love and belonging is like nothing she has ever felt in her life. While her endless devotion may seem blind and foolish, it stems from genuine gratitude and appreciation for a family she never dreamed of. Her lonely, insecure childhood may haunt her, but her tireless efforts — saving up for a house, preparing meals for her family — are laudable choices she has made to preserve her happiness.
  
  Even when she learns of Robert’s affair with Jasia, an orphan she herself welcomed into the family, Sonechka readily accepts and adapts to the loss of her dream. With her days of marital bliss over, she turns toward reading again: “completely devastated, weightless, with a transparent ringing in her ears she entered her home, went to the bookcase, [and] took down the first book which came to hand” (79). She would have been justified in confronting Robert or blaming Jasia, yet she is half-mournful, half-glad that “he [has] someone so young and beautiful at his side… and how well it [turned out] that life should bring about a miracle in his old age” (79). She recognizes that her dream of a long, beautiful marriage is gone and accepts the strange familial structure that has replaced it. By integrating Jasia, her husband’s mistress, into her extended family, Sonechka reveals her endless kindness and maturity by redefining what family and belonging mean to her. What she truly desires is not a husband or daughter to call her own, but someone who can appreciate and depend on her. While her reliance on others for meaning and direction in life may seem tragic and pitiful, there is strength in her measured response to her family’s collapse. Sonechka chooses to answer her husband’s infidelity and Jasia’s betrayal with understanding and goodwill, illustrating her commendable ability to readjust expectations after life’s disappointments. She does not waver in her commitment to those she loves. Instead, Sonechka offers an uncommon wisdom and fortitude in her pursuit of happiness. Unlike previous female figures, she does not exist as a representation of the state’s abuse of civil liberties or as an antagonist to a male protagonist, but as a woman searching for her place in the world.
  
  Sonechka’s position as a domestic housewife may initially inspire ideas of female inferiority and limited independence outside of the home, but she defies these assumptions through her unadulterated commitment to and love for her family. She does not entertain ideas of restoring her dead marriage and takes betrayals and disappointments in stride. Her strength of character, despite all her suffering, reminds us not to take those around us for granted, to realize how quickly happiness can slip from our grasp, and to accept all that we cannot change – particularly a cheating husband.
  
  
  
  Bibliography
  Ludmila Ulitskaya, "Sonechka," in Sonechka and Other Stories (Vol. 17), 7-98. Translated by Arch Tait. Edited by Natasha Perova. Moscow: Glas, 1988.