Women and Fate: Deconstructing the "Hero" Anonymous 11th Grade

In the Russian novel A Hero of Our Time, translated by Vladimir and Dmitri Nabokov, author Mikhail Lermontov relates the travels of the alienated and manipulative Pechorin, an upper-class military officer struggling with fate in his attempts to interact with women. In the novella “Princess Mary”, Pechorin writes that he views his fate, predicted by an old woman as “death from a wicked wife”, as an “ineffable presentiment”; he is convinced that it will come true, and as such, he carries in his soul an “insuperable aversion” to marriage (Lermontov 137). As such, Pechorin’s relationships with women are marked by his ever-present awareness of his supposed fate, and it is this fear that drives his treatment of them. His treatment of women can be interpreted as heroic, for his respect for them, especially in comparison with his peers—but also as indicative of an antihero, for his manipulation of them. By portraying Pechorin’s relationship to women as an expression of his fear of fate, Lermontov suggests that there is no such thing as a hero: the complexity of human nature prevents an evaluation as such.

Lermontov’s depiction of Bela as exotic and foreign paints Pechorin as or neither heroic nor unheroic, but also distinctly human in...