Fathers And Sons

Turgenev’s realist novel paints a detailed and animated portrait of Russia’s provincial nobility on the eve of peasant emancipation. Nikolai is a somewhat inept landowner: He cannot force his hired workers to complete farm tasks, his bailiff labors only when he sees his master, “The peasants on quitrent didn’t make their payments on time and stole firewood” (112).

This uneasy relationship between masters and servants is a motif throughout the book. Only surface changes have been made in preparation for the serf emancipation: the Kirsanovs no longer use serf labor in the house, the radical feminist Kukshina dresses her maid not like a servant to show her “progressive tendencies” (52), and the Bazarov family no longer uses servants to swap flies away during dinner. The most obvious evidence of the slippage between class ranks is Fenechka, the daughter of a servant, Nikolai mistress, and the mother of his son Mitya. Nikolai is loath to marry her until his brother agrees that keeping her in this way is a greater breach of social convention than marrying below his social inferior.

Bazarov, with his humbler background, is more emblematic of the emerging social group known as the raznochintsy: those who pursued higher education or professional work without access to significant landed wealth. Bazarov’s unease at his tenuous social standing comes out when he mocks Sitnikov, a man whose family is much wealthier, but who is Bazarov’s social inferior because the wealth comes from inn-keeping. This social clash comes to head with the duel between Bazarov and Pavel: a traditional ritual between aristocrats that Bazarov regards as “ridiculous” and yet cannot say no to (120).

All of the novel’s social conflicts are born out of Russia’s late 19th century sociopolitical flux: how a modernizing aristocracy would relate to the peasantry and the absence of serfdom, and how increasingly radical students espoused visions of transformation they could not realize. The real life nihilists and radical populists would prove a potent force in the decades after the novel’s publication.

Bazarov refers to people and social dynamics in scientific terms, always eager to formulate new hierarchies based on rational, materialist value to replace the old traditional ones based on aesthetics. For example, he declares that a “decent chemist is more useful than any poet” (21) and dissects frogs while disparaging the beauty of nature.

When Bazarov falls in love with Anna, the strength of this chaotic and irrational emotion makes him loathe himself as “deserving of pity” (79). Anna quickly recognizes that the relationship will bring her only ruin and turmoil, declaring, “one mustn’t fool around with this kind of thing; serenity is still better than anything else on earth” (84). She chooses reason by marrying a young lawyer she does not love, though they live together “harmoniously” (160).

Though Bazarov treats his departure from Nikolskoe as a lucky escape from being consumed by romance, he cannot outrun love: He finds “his will to work had deserted him” (148), and even on his deathbed he confesses to Anna that his love for her remains.

Arkady, in contrast, accepts his love for Katya and has a prosperous life as his father’s heir. His failure to win Anna does not ruin his life, and Bazarov’s “malice” at the news of his happy relationship ultimately comes to nothing (144). The novel ends with restored domestic harmony for the Kirsanovs, while Bazarov’s failed love affair foreshadows his death.