Marko Vovchok

Vovchok tended to write three broad categories of folk stories. She often centered serfs, free peasants, or more traditional Ukrainian fables and tales.[11] She also usually depicted women as the protagonists of these stories. Her empathetic and emotional portrayals of serf and peasant women caught the attention of many Russian and Ukrainian readers, as well as her detailed descriptions of the effects of serfdom on women.[12] Vovchok's focus on women is present in almost all of her stories, regardless of plot and other themes. She focused often on the domestic life of women, as well as the individual and specific difficulties they faced.[11] Vovchok also wrote many stories about freed serfs, in which she focused more on the domestic life that was possible for members of the freed serf class. These stories often overlapped with the themes and plots that were found in other typical folk stories of the time and region.[11] She emphasizes the joys and hardships that freed serfs could face, but she often included the caveat that no matter the hardships freed serfs face, they were much happier just being out from under the yoke of serfdom. In the few English translations of Vovchok's work, often her fables and folk songs are omitted and are therefore not well documented in the English language.

Vovchok combined poetic and folk song influences with realism in many of her stories. She often placed emphasis on her serf and peasant characters by leaving members of the aristocracy and landed gentry unnamed (referring to them as "master", "mistress", "old lady", etc.). In addition, her stories are often narrated by serf or free peasant women with an emphasis on Ukrainian vernacular.[11] Vovchok's stories often have a rhythmic narration and many epithets, calling back to her folk song influences. In her stories about freed serfs and free Ukrainian peasants, Vovchok's plots also often leaned toward Romanticism.[11]

Many of Vovchok's stories containing anti-serfdom themes were published in the years before the Emancipation of the Serfs in 1861. In her stories about serfdom, Vovchok focuses on the cruelty of the nobility and the resilience of the serfs. She outlines the way that masters often treated young girls on their estates, and the attitudes of other serfs in the household who are unable or unwilling to look after each other.

"Odarka" tells the story of Odarka, the young daughter of a serf family. Having just turned fifteen, she is requested by the landlord of the estate, a man who had "destroyed more than one girl's happiness."[11] After she is taken to the main house, her parents and aunt hear nothing of her for a long time until she sneaks home. Odarka tells the family that she was threatened, beaten, and finally raped. Nobody in the household would help her out of fear of the master and because she was not the first girl to be used in such a way. The next day, she is collected back to the house by two servants who again emphasize their lack of agency in the matter. Instead of being taken back to the old master, Odarka and her aunt are given to the young master and his Polish wife, who was convinced to save Odarka by taking her as her servant. Vovchok also highlights the cruelty and violence that can be performed by mistresses. At the new manor, she is humiliated and forced to dance by her new mistress and the children of the other nobles. In "Odarka", although the young master's wife initially seems to help Odarka by removing her from the old master's household, she eventually turns cruel toward to girl, calling her lazy and taking pleasure in her humiliation. She likes to make her dance until she collapses and the children of nobility throw stones at her.[11] Odarka eventually falls ill from their torment and her homesickness. She dies soon after, wishing to return home to her mother and father.

The novel was translated in English as After Finishing School[4][13] and in French as Une Dame Instruite [14] It is the story of a Ukrainian serf maidservant to a cruel mistress who came back home from a finishing school. [15]

"Instytutka" follows Ustyna, an orphan serf, who serves on the estate of an older woman. When the lady's granddaughter returns from studying in Kyiv, she is taken on as a personal servant for the young woman. The new addition to the household has even more hatred for the servants than her grandmother, ordering them around and punishing them for any perceived slight. Referred to throughout the story as "the young lady," she sees her education as useless and is focused on marrying a wealthy gentleman with a large estate. Despite her many suitors, she ends up falling in love with a local doctor with only a small estate. Although she is distressed by the doctor's lack of wealth, she agrees to marry him. Her grandmother promises that she will give her estate to her granddaughter and stay back to take care of it while the young lady goes away to her husband's small estate. Ustyna, the servant girl, is taken with them. While the husband has some compassion for serfs, he is ultimately overpowered by his wife and is not willing or able to shield them from her cruelties. At the new estate, Ustyna encounters other members of the household: Granny, the old housekeeper; Nazar, the driver; and Katrya, the cook and Nazar's wife. Ustyna eventually courts and falls in love with Prokip, another serf on the estate. Katrya is forced to try to earn the mistress' favor during the day and take care of her sick baby at night, eventually working herself so hard that her baby dies. Distraught by this, she is no longer useful to the mistress in the house and is sent out to the fields where she dies. A new cook is brought onto the estate from Moscow who caters to the young lady's whims. The young woman's grandmother dies. The young masters are expecting a child and in the middle of their announcement celebration, Prokip takes Ustyna to the young man and asks for permission to marry her. He agrees as does the young woman after she is encouraged by her party guests. The young woman is even crueler to Ustyna after she and Prokip are married. One day, when Ustyna, Prokip, and Granny are picking apples, Granny gives some to some children. The young woman catches her and accuses her of stealing. She starts pushing and hitting Granny, and Prokip grabs her wrist to stop her. She then accuses Prokip of attacking her and forces him into conscription. Ustyna takes this opportunity to leave the estate with Prokip, and they are able to rent a house in another town. There, they live in relative freedom, having occasional contact with Nazar and news of Granny. Eventually, the military must march out. Ustyna lived in the town for the next seven years, waiting for Prokip to come back, but she never hears from him again.[15]

Vovchok's first volume of folk stories was published by the already established fellow Ukrainian author and literary critic P. Kulish. Kulish believed that Vovchok would have a great career as a leader in Ukrainian literature and praised her for her mastery and poetic ability within the Ukrainian language. This praise was echoed by Ivan Franko.[11] Taras Shevchenko praised her for her depictions of Ukrainian serfdom, dedicating one of his poems to her and calling her a "prophet". In the poem, "A Dream" (or "To Marko Vovchok"), Shevchenko writes about the future generations of freed Ukrainian serfs, themes that were consistent with Vovchok's works.[11][16] Vovchok's own story, "Instytutka," which she wrote in 1859, was dedicated to Shevchenko and contained some of her most powerful anti-serfdom sentiment. Shevchenko compared her writing to that of George Sand.[11]

Vovhock was not only praised by her fellow Ukrainians. Ivan Turgenev, one of the most popular and influential writers in Russia at the time praised her work for its content and writing style. Turgenev wanted to widen her audience, as she was already very popular in Ukraine, and translated many of her stories into Russian, in conjunction with Vovchok's own translations.[11][12] Many critics praised Vovchok's truthful and realistic depiction of serfs and peasants, as well as the critiques she leveled against landlords and the landed gentry.[17] Although many of her contemporaries in Russia received her work positively, there were criticisms from those who viewed her work as too sensational. Some critics thought that she was putting too much emphasis on the dark tones of her stories and that she was deliberately attempting to sway to audience into a particular view about serfdom. The influential Russian critic Nikolay Dobrolyubov criticized Vovchok for her attempts at establishing a literary culture in the Ukrainian language while also using her stories in his own writings as examples of the fortitude of peasants. This designation of the Ukrainian language as a "peasant dialect" was echoed in many other critiques of the time.[12]

Vovchok's stories were well-known in other neighboring Slavic countries. An accomplished translator herself, Vovchok translated many of her stories into French which were then circulated throughout Europe. Her children's story "Marusia" was required reading in many French schools and was circulated widely throughout Europe. It was translated into German and English from her own French translation.[11] Turgenev shared the Russian translation of her stories in Europe to other writers, such as Alexander Herzen, who expressed interest in Vovchok and her work. However, her works did not receive much attention in England as there were few English translations ever made.[11]