Ludmilla Petrushevskya's "The Time is Night"

 

Petrushevskya and Compassion in “The Time is Night”

 

Hello all. Regarding this week’s reading of our assigned novella, “The time Is Night,” from the collection There Once Lived a Mother Who Loved Her Children, Until They Moved Back In, written by Ludmilla Petrushevskya, translated to English by Anna Summers in 1988, published by Penguin books and with an introduction by Anna Summers:

            In the opening paragraph of the novella, Ludmilla Petrushevskya boldly and ambitiously alludes to F.M. Dostoevsky in writing, “Notes from the Edge of the Table” (3). This act of writing reorients the space of Russian narrative discourse through Petrushevskya’s using similar discursive practices of F.M. Dostoevsky which he employs in writing Notes from the Underground. Author Ludmilla Petrushevskya conveys through her subjective, first-person narrative the feminist perspective and how the world is viewed through that lens, as opposed to the dominant male discourse of the genre in its context. The novella, although fiction, does have a certain genuineness and honesty in its portraying the harsh living conditions occurring within in the novella’s cultural, political and historical contexts.

At novel’s outset, we inhabit the space within the home. When we talk about the home, we talk about the domestic sphere and the roles of those who occupy that particular space. In this text, what is the experience of the home like? And for whom?

For Petrushevskya, a woman’s role in this context equates to an arduous existence, writing: “And what could possibly await them in this life or ours? Darkness and cold, betrayals and death” (41), while demonstrating a yearning for family and human touch, writing, “the breathing of my Precious, which could alone provide consolation”(41). Further expressing this need for family and human touch, Petrushevskya writes, “Nature meant for us to love, and so we love—even the old folks, who just want a little warmth” (41).

However, despite the bleakness, Petrushevskya’s “Heroine” Anna carries on, strong-willed. Anna is a “woman of action”, if you will, in her constantly solving crises—interpersonal, financial and familial—while navigating the bureaucratic red-tape thereof. To Anna, every day is all about caretaking. But to go further, Anna’s existence appears to be a struggle to avoid getting cheated or manipulated in some way by others, mostly men and those in power, and to survive simply by eating whatever is remaining in the cupboard, to wearing warm boots to keep warm in the brutal cold and snow during the Russian “white nights,” to sewing and patching one’s clothes into something new to wear—a skirt or a dress—to simply feeding one’s family, and to maybe sneak a slice of bread when no one is looking, to feeding her family by writing as a poetess.

Petrushevskya’s character Anna sacrifices herself and her own needs by constantly putting others first, to make sure those she loves are alive and eating and well, instilling in Andrey and Alena the importance of appearing clean and being physically clean. Adding to that, Anna constantly reminds Alena to shower, whose gesture is a show of respect that Anna has for herself and would like to pass on to her children. I doubt the Underground Man from Dostoevsky’s Notes had any respect for himself, for he admitted how much he loathed himself.

Ultimately, Anna demonstrates compassion for others. That is what Dostoevsky’s and Camus’ “Heros” lacked: Compassion for others. The male narrators in those texts, Notes from the Underground and The Fall, respectively, were only interested in themselves and in their egos and pride, while maintaining a superior sense of morality and justice which to them justifies their spite and vengefulness. Total disregard for others. And I think that is where Petrushevskya departs, in that regard, in her compassion for others in terms of characterization of narrator/Hero/Heroine.