The story of tragic love in the essay by N. Leskov “Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk district

In subsequent literary years, Leskov continued to develop the problem of the fate of a strong, extraordinary personality in the conditions of the "crowdedness of Russian life", the pressing influence of life circumstances. At the same time, the writer leaves aside whole natures, despite the pressure of the environment, retaining their own "I", their high impulses. He is increasingly attracted to complex, contradictory characters, unable to withstand the harmful influence and power over them of the surrounding reality and hence subject to moral self-destruction. Leskov observed such characters more than once in everyday Russian reality and, without exaggeration, was inclined to equate them with Shakespeare's, so much they struck him with their inner power and passion. Among them is the merchant's wife Katerina Lvovna Izmailova, nicknamed Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk district "from someone's easy word" for her crimes. But Leskov himself sees in his heroine not a criminal, but a woman “performing a drama of love,” and therefore presents her as a tragic person.

As if following the remark of Nastya the songwriter that in love everything depends on people (“all people do this”), Leskov made the drama of love and the very feeling of Katerina Izmailova directly dependent on her nature. Love attraction to Sergei is born in Katerina from the boredom that overcomes her, reigning in the "merchant's chamber with high fences and lowered chain dogs", where "it is quiet and empty ... not a living sound, not a human voice." Boredom and "longing to the point of stupor" make the young merchant pay attention to "a young man with a daring handsome face, framed by jet-black curls." Hence the love story of the heroine from the very beginning is extremely commonplace.

If Nastya's lover's voice was brought by a night song languishing with sadness, then Katerina first heard her betrothed in the "choir" of vulgarly jesting workers in the gallery near the barns. The reason for Nastya's first meeting with Stepan is the desire to understand what kind of person this nocturnal cheerleader is, bringing out the songs "funny, daring" and "sad, tearing the soul." Katerina descends into the yard solely out of a desire to unwind, to drive away the annoying yawn. The description of the heroine's behavior on the eve of the first meeting with Sergei is especially expressive: "for nothing to do," she stood, "leaning against the jamb," and "husked sunflower seeds."

In general, in the feeling of a bored merchant's wife for the clerk, there is more the call of the flesh than the yearning of the heart. However, the passion that captured Katerina is immeasurable. “She was mad with her happiness,” she “without Sergey, it became unbearable to survive an extra hour.” Love, which blew up the emptiness of the heroine's existence, takes on the character of a destructive force that sweeps away everything in its path. She "now was ready for Sergei in fire and water, in prison and on the cross."

Previously not knowing love, Katerina is naive and trusting in her feelings. For the first time, listening to love speeches, "foggy" by them, she does not feel the falsity hidden in them, is not able to discern the given role in the actions of her beloved.

For Katerina, love becomes the only possible life, which seems to her a "paradise". And in this earthly paradise, the heroine discovers a beauty hitherto unseen by her: apple blossoms, clear blue skies, and "moonlight shattering on flowers and leaves of trees," and "golden night" with its "silence, light, aroma, and salutary enlivening warmth." On the other hand, the new, heavenly life is full of a pronounced egoistic beginning and the unbridled willfulness of Katerina, who directly declared to her beloved: “... if you, Seryozha, will you change me, if you will exchange me for anyone, for any other I am with you, my friend, forgive me, I will not part alive. In addition, if we take into account that the cunningly thought-out intrigue of the clerk-"girl" is woven along the canvas of the heroine's love, then the future catastrophe of the love story in "Lady Macbeth ..." seems to be a foregone conclusion.

But what a bright, frantic Katerina stands against the backdrop of the colorless lackey Sergei. Unlike her lover, she will not back down from her frenzied love either at the pillory or at the prison stage. The character of the heroine, incredible in strength and meaning, grew up before the readers, containing in herself the cause and consequences of love-catastrophe and having drunk the cup of such love in full, or, as Leskov said about his Katerina Izmailova, “performing the drama of love”.

However, this incredible female character also has an incredibly terrible result: a spiritual dead end leading to death without repentance, when Katerina drags her hated rival Sonetka into the water shafts, from which her murdered father-in-law, husband and Fedya look at her.

The story "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District" was published in January 1865. It was published under the title "Lady Macbeth of our county" by the magazine Epoch. According to the original idea, the work was to be the first in a cycle dedicated to the characters of Russian women. It was assumed that several more stories would follow, but Leskov never realized these plans. Probably not least due to the closure of the Epoch magazine, which intended to publish the entire cycle. The final title of the story appeared in 1867, when it was published as part of the collection "Tales, Essays and Stories by M. Stebnitsky" (M. Stebnitsky is Leskov's pseudonym).

The character of the main character

In the center of the story is Katerina Lvovna Izmailova, a young merchant's wife. She married not out of love, but out of need. For five years of marriage, she failed to make children with her husband, Zinovy ​​Borisovich, who was almost twice her age. Katerina Lvovna was very bored, languishing in the merchant's house, like a bird in a cage. Most of the time she just wandered from room to room and yawned. However, no one noticed her suffering.

While her husband was away for a long time, Katerina Lvovna fell in love with the clerk Sergei, who works for Zinovy ​​Borisovich. Love broke out instantly and completely captured the woman. In order to save both Sergei and her social position, Izmailova decided on several murders. Consistently, she got rid of her father-in-law, husband and young nephew. The further the action develops, the more the reader becomes convinced that Katerina Lvovna has no moral barriers capable of holding her back.

Love passion at first completely absorbed the heroine, and in the final ruined it. Izmailova, together with Sergei, was sent to hard labor. On the way there, the man showed his true colors. He found himself a new love and began to openly mock Katerina Lvovna. Having lost her lover, Izmailova also lost the meaning of life. In the end, she only had to drown herself, taking Sergei's mistress with her.

As noted by the literary critics Gromov and Eikhenbaum in the article “N. S. Leskov (Essay on creativity)”, the tragedy of Katerina Lvovna “is completely predetermined by the well-established and steadily regulating the life of the individual, the everyday life of the merchant environment”. Izmailov is often contrasted with Katerina Kabanova, the heroine of Ostrovsky's play The Thunderstorm. Both women live with unloved spouses. Both are burdened by merchant life. Both Kabanova and Izmailova's life changes dramatically due to illegal love. That's just in similar circumstances, women behave differently. Kabanova perceives the passion that has gripped her as a great sin and eventually confesses everything to her husband. Izmailova rushes into the pool of love without looking back, becoming determined and ready to destroy any obstacles that stand in her way with Sergei.

Characters

The only character (besides Katerina Lvovna) who receives much attention in the story and whose character is described in more or less detail is Sergei. Readers are presented with a handsome young man who knows how to seduce women and is distinguished by frivolity. He was fired from his previous job because of an affair with the owner's wife. Apparently, he never loved Katerina Lvovna. Sergei struck up a relationship with her, as he hoped with their help to get a better job in life. When Izmailova lost everything, the man behaved meanly and lowly with her.

The theme of love in the story

The main theme of the story "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District" is the theme of love-passion. This kind of love is no longer spiritual, but physical. Pay attention to how Leskov shows the pastime of Katerina Lvovna and Seryozha. The lovers hardly speak. When they are together, they are mainly occupied with carnal pleasures. Physical pleasure is more important to them than spiritual pleasure. At the beginning of the story, Leskov notices that Katerina Lvovna does not like to read books. Sergey is also difficult to call the owner of a rich inner world. When he first comes to seduce Izmailova, he asks her for a book. This request is due solely to the desire to please the hostess. Serezha wants to show that he is interested in reading, intellectually developed, despite his low social status.

The love-passion that seized Katerina Lvovna is destructive, because it is base. It is not capable of elevating, spiritually enriching. On the contrary, something that bears an animal, primitive character awakens from it in a woman.

Composition

The story consists of fifteen short chapters. In this case, the work can be conditionally divided into two parts. In the first, the action takes place in a limited space - the house of the Izmailovs. Here Katerina Lvovna's love is born and develops. After the start of an affair with Sergei, the woman is happy. She seems to be in paradise. In the second part, the action takes place on the way to hard labor. Katerina Lvovna seems to fall into hell, serving her sentence for her sins. By the way, the woman is absolutely not remorseful. Her mind is still eclipsed by love. At first, next to Seryozha for Izmailova, "and hard labor blooms with happiness."

Genre of the work

Leskov called "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District" an essay. The main feature of the genre is "writing from life", but there is no information about the prototypes of Katerina Lvovna. Perhaps, when creating this image, Leskov partially relied on the materials of criminal cases, to which he had access while serving in the Oryol Criminal Chamber.

The genre of the essay was not chosen by the writer by chance. It was important for him to emphasize the documentary nature of "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District". It is known that works of art based on real events often have a stronger impact on the audience. Apparently, Leskov wanted to take advantage of this. The crimes committed by Katerina Lvovna are more shocking if you think of them as real.

• "The Man on the Clock", an analysis of Leskov's story

The daughter of the common people, who also inherited the national scope of passions, a girl from a poor family becomes a prisoner of a merchant's house, where there is no living sound, no human voice, but only a short stitch from the samovar to the bedchamber. The transformation of a petty-bourgeois woman, languishing from boredom and excess of strength, takes place when the county heartthrob pays attention to her.

Love scatters over Katerina Lvovna the starry sky, which she had not seen before from her mezzanine: Look, Seryozha, what a paradise, what a paradise! The heroine exclaims in a childlike innocence on a golden night, looking through the dense branches of a flowering apple tree covering her at a clear blue sky, on which stood a full fine month.

But it is no coincidence that in the pictures of love harmony is broken by a sudden invading discord. The feeling of Katerina Lvovna cannot be free from the instincts of the possessive world and not fall under the influence of its laws. Love rushing towards freedom turns into a predatory and destructive beginning.

Katerina Lvovna was now ready for Sergei in the fire, in the water, in the dungeon and on the cross. He made her fall in love with him to the point that there was no measure of devotion to him. She was mad with her happiness; her blood boiled, and she could no longer listen to anything ...

And at the same time, Katerina Lvovna's blind passion is immeasurably greater, more significant than self-interest, which gives shape to her fatal deeds, class interests. No, her inner world is not shocked by the decision of the court, not excited by the birth of a child: for her there was no light, no darkness, no evil, no good, no boredom, no joys. All life without a trace was swallowed up by passion. When a party of prisoners sets out on the road and the heroine sees Sergei again, with him her hard labor blooms with happiness. What is the class height from which she collapsed into the hard labor world for her, if she loves and her beloved is nearby!

Sections: Literature

Target:

• To reveal the ideological and artistic originality of the story by N.S. Leskov.
• To captivate students with the creativity of the writer.

Tasks:

• To develop reading skills in determining the moral assessments of the characters' images.
• To develop the ability to determine the author's position, to trace how Leskov reveals social and universal problems in the story, the tragedy of a strong personality.
• Teach the skill of comparative characterization.
• Develop the skills of monologue speech, generalizations and comparisons.
• Develop aesthetic taste.
• Cultivate a civic position, a position of a critical attitude towards an unspiritual existence.

During the classes

1. Introductory speech of the teacher

Teacher. N.S. Leskov came to literature as an already established person, having traveled a lot around the country, knowing life very well, and its most diverse aspects. This is probably why most of the writer's works are polemical in nature.

At the beginning of his career, in 1865, Leskov wrote a story with such a strange title, colliding two concepts in it: “Lady Macbeth”, associated with Shakespeare’s famous tragedy, and “Mtsensk District” - with a remote Russian province.

2. Conversation on questions

Teacher. How does an author define the genre of their work? (He called it an essay, a genre of journalism, trying to emphasize by this fact that the story is about real events and the reasons that gave rise to these events.)

How does the author begin his work? (From the very first lines of the work, Leskov tells us, the readers, what the main character is: “They married her to our merchant Izmailov with Tuskari, from the Kursk province, not out of love or some kind of attraction, but because Izmailov was courting her, but she was a poor girl, and she didn’t have to sort out suitors ...”).

What other fate do these lines evoke in memory? (The fate of the merchant's wife Katerina Kabanova from Ostrovsky's play "Thunderstorm".)

- Is it possible to find plot parallels in Ostrovsky's drama and Leskov's story? (Yes. 1) A young merchant's wife breaks up with her husband, who is leaving home for a while; 2) during this marital separation, love comes to the heroines of Leskov and Ostrovsky; 3) both plots end with a tragic denouement - the death of the heroines; 4) similar circumstances in the life of two merchants: the boredom of a merchant's house and a childless life for an unkind husband.)

- Conclusion? (The discovered similarity is not accidental. Leskov highly valued the drama "Thunderstorm" and argued with critics who believed that folk life could only be the subject of a criminal chronicle, and not art.)

3. Analytical reading of the story

Teacher. What did the heroine Leskova look like? ( “Katerina Lvovna was not born a beauty, but she was a very pleasant woman in appearance. She was 24 years old; she was not tall, but slender, her neck was turned as if made of marble, her shoulders were round, her chest was strong, her nose was straight, thin, her eyes were black, lively, her high white forehead and black, almost blue-black hair.”)

- What kind of character did Katerina Lvovna have? (“... Katerina Lvovna had an ardent character, and, living as a girl in poverty, she got used to simplicity and freedom: she would run with buckets to the river and swim in a shirt over the pier or sprinkle sunflower husks through the gate of a passer-by.” )

- Does the character of Ostrovsky's heroine differ from the character of Leskov's heroine? (Unlike the young merchant Izmailova, Katerina Kabanova has a heightened poetic imagination. She suffers not so much from external restrictions as from an inner sense of lack of freedom. Dreams and visions of Katerina Kabanova are second nature to her, almost more visible than the world around her. her deep religiosity.)

- Confirm with the text of the works the different vision of the world by the heroines. (Kabanova: “... I lived without grieving about anything, like a bird in the wild ... I used to get up early ... I go to the spring, wash myself, bring water with me and that’s it, I’ll water all the flowers in the house ... Then we’ll go to church with my mother ... I loved to go to church to death! Exactly ... I will enter paradise ... And what dreams I dreamed ... what dreams! Or golden temples or some unusual gardens, and invisible voices sing all, and it smells like cypress, and the mountains and trees seem to not as usual, but as they are written on the images ... ". Izmailova: "Looks like Katerina Lvovna walks around the empty rooms, starts yawning out of boredom and climbs out of boredom into the matrimonial bedchamber, arranged on a high small mezzanine. She will also sit here, stare, how they hang stumps near the barns or pour out grains - she will yawn again, she is glad: she will take a nap for an hour or two. She yawned, not thinking about anything in particular, and she was finally ashamed to yawn ... ").

- How does love come to Katerina Kabanova? (Like “some kind of dream.” “Some kind of whisper is imagining: someone is talking to me so affectionately, it’s like he’s dove me, like a dove is cooing ...”).

- And to Katerina Lvovna? (Love for Katerina Izmailova comes from boredom: “What am I, really, gaping? ... Even if I stand up in the yard, I’ll take a walk or walk into the garden ...”).

- What is the psychological state of Katerina Kabanova? (She suffers and is afraid of her love: the sense of duty is so strong in her, and the idea of ​​adultery is not tiresome words. Her love is initially a psychological drama that makes the heroine both rejoice and suffer. “... and such a thought would come to me ... I would ride now along the Volga, on a boat, with songs, or on a good troika, embracing... sin is on my mind! this is not good, because this is a terrible sin ... that I love another?)

- And what can be said about the love of Katerina Lvovna? What did the clerk Sergei captivate her with? (In words. “You, I reason, you need to carry you all day in your arms - and you won’t get tired, but you will only feel it for yourself.” No one has ever spoken to Katerina Lvovna like that, and her soul, thirsting for love and affection , did not suspect deceit and calculation.)

- Let's turn to the dating scenes in both works, they are indicative. They are accompanied by a song image. But if in the drama “Thunderstorm” song imagery is a natural way of internal self-expression of the heroine, then for Sergey it is a “bargaining chip”, which he uses for selfish purposes. What is the result? (Katerina Lvovna, hearing Sergey’s confessions, “is ready for him into fire, into water, into prison and to the cross.”)

– What motives became the basis of the plot in the drama “Thunderstorm”? (Motives of sin and repentance, guilt and punishment. For the heroine herself, the violation of the moral law becomes a sinful crime.)

- And in Leskov's story? (There are no internal barriers to the passion of Katerina Izmailova, and therefore, with all the power released to her by nature, she eliminates external obstacles that arise in her path.)

– And the story of love in the plot of the story becomes the story of criminal offenses. Let's follow her. (At first, Katerina Lvovna behaves spontaneously. She did not intend to kill her father-in-law, but he became the first obstacle to her love and thus sealed her fate: “... Boris Timofeevich died, and he died after eating mushrooms, as many, having eaten them, die ... ". )

- What is special about this story? (The death of Boris Timofeevich is spoken of quickly, as if it were an everyday and habitual matter.)

– Has anything changed in the house, in the city after the death of the merchant? (No.)

- And how did the first crime change Katerina Lvovna? (“Then she was a woman of not a timid dozen, but here it’s impossible to guess what she’s conceived for herself: she plays a trump card, she orders everything around the house, but Sergey won’t let go of herself.”)

- Let's turn to the second epigraph of the lesson, which is also the epigraph of the story: "Sing the first song, blushing, to sing." What is its meaning? (Only the beginning is scary. A person who commits a crime crosses over his own conscience, then nothing will stop him. The cold-blooded murder of a father-in-law is the first step on the path of moral suicide of Katerina Izmailova.)

- Who was the director of the Mtsensk tragedy? (Sergey. Although the first murder is committed against his will, the thought of killing the merchant Zinovy ​​Izmailov is persistently provoked by him: “... your husband will run over, and you, Sergey Filippych, go away ... and watch how they take you by the white hands and lead you to the bedchamber , I must endure all this in my heart and, perhaps, even for myself, through that for a whole century, become a contemptible person ... I'm not like others ... I feel what love is and how it sucks my heart like a black snake ... ").

– What is the result? (The heroine becomes an obedient tool in the hands of a greedy and prudent cynic: the second murder is distinguished by sophisticated cruelty, composure. Katerina Lvovna demonstrates this cruelty not only in front of her husband, but also in front of her lover. She “indifferently” asks Sergei to hold the humiliated Zinovy ​​Borisych, which is why at the request Zinoviy Borisych replies about confession: “You’ll be good, and so you will be,” the merchant’s wife calmly and meticulously washes off “two tiny spots, the size of a cherry.”)

We will monitor the psychological state of the criminals. (“Sergei’s lips trembled, and he himself was overcome with a fever,” “Katerina Lvovna only had cold lips.”)

- Does the appearance of an unexpected heir in the house give an idea of ​​​​the further development of the plot? (Of course, after all, there are no longer any barriers for lovers in achieving selfish goals: wealth for the clerk and love for the merchant. Therefore, the appearance of the boy-passion-bearer only emphasizes the depth of the moral fall of the heroes. , and the two of them choked him…”).

- Make a conclusion. (The unbridled passion of Katerina Lvovna did not bring her happiness.)

- Concluding the conversation about the plot of the story, we will find out the originality of its denouement. (There are two of them in the work: the first - exposure, trial and punishment - completes the events of criminal offenses; the second is the tragic denouement of the love story of Katerina Izmailova, who after her arrest fell into a state of indifferent stupor: “She did not understand anyone, did not love anyone and did not love herself ".)

- Leskov scrupulously analyzes the “anatomy” of unbridled passion. This passion, with destructive force, internally disfigures Katerina Lvovna, kills her maternal feeling. Prove it. (Having once dreamed of a child, Katerina Lvovna indifferently turns away from a newborn baby in a prison hospital and just as indifferently renounces him: “Her love for her father, like the love of many too passionate women, did not transfer any part of her to the child ...”).

- Let's summarize everything we talked about today. (Katerina Lvovna is a strong and free nature. But freedom, which knows no moral restrictions, turns into its opposite. A strong nature, being in the grip of the “freedom” of crimes, is inevitably doomed to death.)

- Why? (Freedom cannot be unlimited; a person must have a strong moral law that will not allow crime.)

- How is Katerina Lvovna depicted in the last chapters? (She is presented in a completely different way than in the Mtsensk plot. She does not evoke amazement and horror, but pity. After all, the criminal herself becomes a victim.)

- Why? (The stronger and more reckless her love for Sergei, the more frank and cynical his abuse of her and her feelings. The abyss of the clerk's moral fall is so terrible that hard-worn convicts-prisoners try to convince him.)

- Does Katerina Lvovna awaken a sense of guilt, repentance? (Perhaps, because in the dark waves of the Volga she sees the heads of her husband, father-in-law, and nephew killed by her. This chilling vision turns out to be the last impression in the life of “Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk district.” But, dying, she carries away the last victim - rival Sonetka: “ Katerina Lvovna rushed at Sonetka like a strong pike at a soft-feathered raft…”).

4. Conclusion

Teacher. Draw your own conclusion.

5. Summary of the lesson

Teacher. Let's sum up our "investigation".

So, two women, two merchants, two Katerinas, two tragic destinies. But Katerina Kabanova is a “beam of light” that illuminated for a moment the abyss of the “dark kingdom”, and Katerina Izmailova is the flesh of the flesh of the “dark kingdom”, its direct product.

6. Conclusion

Teacher. Answer in writing the question that became the topic of the lesson.

The main theme that N.S. Leskov touches on in the story of Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk district is the theme of love; love that has no boundaries, love for which everyone commits, even murder.

The main character is the merchant's wife Katerina Lvovna Izmailova; the main character is the clerk Sergei. The story consists of fifteen chapters.

In the first chapter, the reader learns that Katerina Lvovna is a young, twenty-four-year-old girl, rather sweet, although not beautiful. Before marriage, she was a cheerful laugher, and after the wedding, her life changed. The merchant Izmailov was a strict widower of about fifty, lived with his father Boris Timofeevich, and his whole life was in trade. From time to time he leaves, and his young wife does not find a place for herself. Boredom, the most unrestrained, pushes her one day to take a walk around the yard. Here she meets the clerk Sergei, an unusually handsome guy, about whom they say that what kind of woman you want, he will flatter and lead to sin.

One warm evening, Katerina Lvovna is sitting in her high room by the window, when she suddenly sees Sergei. Sergei bows to her and after a few moments is at her door. A meaningless conversation ends at the bedside in a dark corner. Since then, Sergei begins to visit Katerina Lvovna at night, coming and going along the pillars that support the young woman's gallery. However, one night his father-in-law Boris Timofeevich sees him - he punishes Sergei with whips, promising that with the arrival of his son, Katerina Lvovna will be pulled out at the stable, and Sergei will be sent to jail. But the next morning, the father-in-law, after eating mushrooms with gruel, gets heartburn, and after a few hours he dies, just like rats died in the barn, for which only Katerina Lvovna had poison. Now the love of the master's wife and the clerk flares up more than ever, they already know about it in the yard, but they consider it this way: they say, this is her business, she will have an answer.

In the chapter of N.S. Leskov's story, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk district, it is told that very often Katerina Lvovna has the same nightmare. As if a huge cat walks on her bed, purrs, and then suddenly lies between her and Sergey. Sometimes the cat talks to her: I am not a cat, Katerina Lvovna, I am the famous merchant Boris Timofeevich. I’m only so bad now, I’ve become that all my bones inside are cracked from the bride’s treat. A young woman will look at the cat, and he has the head of Boris Timofeevich, and fiery mugs instead of eyes. On the same night, her husband, Zinovy ​​Borisovich, returns home. Katerina Lvovna hides Sergei on a pole behind the gallery, throwing his shoes and clothes into the same place. The husband who entered asks to put a samovar for him, and then asks why, in his absence, the bed is laid out in two, and points to Sergei's woolen belt, which he finds on the sheet. Katerina Lvovna calls Sergey in response, her husband is dumbfounded by such impudence. Without thinking twice, the woman begins to choke her husband, then beats him with a cast candlestick. When Zinoviy Borisovich falls, Sergei sits on him. Soon the merchant dies. The young mistress and Sergey bury him in the cellar.

Now Sergei begins to walk like a real master, and Katerina Lvovna conceives a child from him. Their happiness still turns out to be short-lived: it turns out that the merchant had a nephew, Fedya, who has more rights to the inheritance. Sergei convinces Katerina that because of Fedya, who has now moved in with them; there will be no happiness and power for lovers. ... The murder of a nephew is contemplated.

In the eleventh chapter, Katerina Lvovna carries out her plans, and, of course, not without the help of Sergei. The nephew is strangled with a large pillow. But all this is seen by a curious person who at that moment looked into the gap between the shutters. Instantly a crowd gathers and breaks into the house...

Both Sergei, who confessed to all the murders, and Katerina, are sent to hard labor. A child who is born shortly before is given to a relative of the husband, since only this child remains the only heir.

In the final chapters, the author tells about the misadventures of Katerina Lvovna in exile. Here Sergey completely refuses her, begins to openly cheat on her, but she continues to love him. From time to time he comes to see her on a date, and in one of these meetings he asks Katerina Lvovna for stockings, since he supposedly has severe pain in his feet. Katerina Lvovna gives away beautiful woolen stockings. The next morning, she sees them on the feet of Sonetka, a young girl and Sergey's current girlfriend. The young woman understands that all her feelings for Sergei are meaningless and do not need him, and then decides on the last ...

On one of the rainy days, convicts are transported by ferry across the Volga. Sergei, as has become customary lately, again begins to laugh at Katerina Lvovna. She stares blankly, and then abruptly grabs Sonetka, who is standing next to her, and throws herself overboard. They cannot be saved.

This concludes the story of N.S. Leskov Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk district.