Dead Souls

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1842

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-3

Part 1, Chapters 4-6

Part 1, Chapters 7-9

Part 1, Chapters 10-11

Part 2, Chapters 1-2

Part 2, Chapter 3-One of the Final Chapters

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Background

Socio-Historical Context

Gogol’s work is inextricably tied to his historical context, specifically mid-19th century Russian society. In the decades between the Napoleonic Wars of 1812 and to the Peasant Emancipation of 1861, Russian intellectuals debated the country’s destiny and relationship to the West.

The plot of Dead Souls rests on the social relationship between Russian aristocrats and the peasant majority in the feudal system of serf labor that was still common in much of Eastern and Central Europe in various forms into the early 19th century, but had already been largely abolished in Western Europe. Serfs, indentured tenant farmers, worked the land for a landowner and did not have freedom of movement. Serfs paid their lord either in labor (barschina) or in quitrent (obrok), a yearly cash tax. Peasants tended to be deeply devout adherents of Russian Orthodox Christianity, which meant that they were culturally almost completely separate from Russian aristocracy, who typically had European-style educations and spoke more French than Russian.

The novel features characters in each social class. The landowners Chichikov defrauds are primarily aristocrats, nobility, and high-ranking military officers who are mocked for their detachment from regular life, their overly ambitious pretentions, and their egotism. Selifan and Petrushka, stereotypical members of the peasant class, are mocked for their attachment to folk superstitions, unhygienic practices, alcoholism, and pretentions to intellectual pursuits.

Chichikov is a bridge between the two—a member of the lower nobility, whose rise in social standing is through civil service posts. The reforms of Peter the Great in the 1700s created the bureaucracy Chichikov exploits and the civil service ranks he uses in his scrabble to the upper class. The civil service provided nobles paths to prosperity outside of the military, and was fertile ground for corruption.

Ideological Context

When Tsar Nicholas I ascended the throne in 1825, he began his rule with the brutal suppression of the Decembrists, army officers who had served in the Napoleonic wars and who wanted to seat Nicholas’s older brother Konstantin on the throne to implement liberal reforms—including a constitutional monarchy. Nicholas I was a reactionary conservative, who, among other repressive measures introduced increasing literary censorship. Gogol and his close friend Alexander Pushkin came of age as writers during Nicholas’s crackdowns.

Gogol’s criticism of Russian bureaucracy accompanies his distaste for Europeanization—a core tenet of the Slavophile movement of the 1830s. Slavophiles argued that the nation had been led astray by the westernizing reforms of Peter I, and that the only hope for renewal lay with aristocrats adopting Orthodox Christianity and the mores of the peasantry. Gogol’s devout Christianity was an important part of his life and work: he made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and burned the second part of Dead Souls under the direction of a spiritual advisor. Some characters in the novel’s second part espouse this viewpoint overtly: Kostanzhoglo disdains consumer goods and the lavish spending of his neighbors; Murazov is a mouthpiece for moral, Orthodox Christianity-based reform.

Literary Context

The 1820s and 1830s were a literary golden age in Russia. Renowned poet Alexander Pushkin pioneered a modern literary language distinct from older national traditions, while Gogol made a name for himself as a satirist.

Gogol’s work, from his plays, to his short stories, to Dead Souls touches on similar themes: the corruption of the bureaucratic class, the rot at the core of institutions, and the haplessness of the aristocracy. In his 1836 comedy Revizor, or The Government Inspector, a town’s elite anxiously awaits the arrival of a new government official who may unmask their corruption. In the novella The Nose, a bureaucrat awakens to find that his nose is missing; as he fruitless requests bureaucratic assistance to rectify the loss, he is ashamed to realize that his nose has quickly attained a much higher rank and social station than he himself holds. Gogol’s fiction uses an intrusive, opinionated, and sarcastic narrator voice to introduce key themes, underline satire, and create humor. Gogol’s narrators frequently make absurd asides and comment on the author and his choices, becoming quasi-characters themselves.

Dead Souls was meant to echo Dante’s Divine Comedy both in its structure and in its interest in religion and salvation. Thus, the novel’s first part represents a descent into Hell, while subsequent parts would have depicted Chichikov’s redemption.