Предчувствие катастрофы: традиции чеховской драматургии в пьесе Т.Л. Щепкиной-Куперник «Счастливая женщина»

Abstract

Tatyana Lvovna Shchepkina-Kupernik is known as the author of theatrical memoirs and brilliant plays’ translations, but her dramaturgy heritage still lacks the research attention. The article analyzes one of the most striking plays by T.L. Shchepkina-Kupernik “The Happy Woman”. In 1911 it received the Griboyedov award for the best original dramatic play of that theatrical season, though nowadays it is undeservedly forgotten. The article disputes the prevailing idea of the play “The Happy Woman” as a work of exclusively gender themes, focused on the “women’s issue”. The analysis of the play’s poetics (features of the drama conflict, the nature of the dialogues, scenography, the specifics of the author’s remarks, the symbolism of sound images) allows us to conclude that Shchepkina-Kupernik consistently implemented the traditions of Chekhov’s dramaturgy. Certain symbolic overtones are created by the motif of “the lost life”, embodied in the fate of the main character, the emphasized weakness of male characters (focus on a career, superficiality, inability to influence the situation, unavailability). It deepens the content of the dramatic conflict and leads to the tragic outcome, just like in Chekhov’s plays, “not individual people are to blame, but the whole existing composition of life as a whole”. There is a bitter irony in the very title of the play, exposing the self-deception of the representatives of the world and the inability of those in power to maintain their dominant position. It is concluded that in the play “The Happy Woman” Shchepkina-Kupernik managed to identify the most dramatic collisions of the era. Written between two revolutions, the play was a reflection of the situation in the country on the eve of the impending catastrophe.