Marriage Literary Elements

Comedic play

Russian

Nineteenth-century Russia

As with most plays, the point of view is third-person, watching the events play out on the stage (or on the page, as the case may be).

Humorous, ironic, satirical

Protagonist: Podkoliosin, an indecisive Russian forwarding clerk who somewhat desires marriage. Antagonist: Podkoliosin's indecisiveness, which causes most of the stress in the play.

Podkoliosin has announced that he wishes to marry, but he acts in a completely different manner. The plot of this play follows Kochkariov as he attempts to coerce, convince, and manipulate Podkoliosin into marriage for his benefit, working against Podkoliosin's inherent flightiness.

At the very end of the play, Kochkariov has succeeded in getting Podkoliosin and Agafya engaged, and they are about to be married when Podkoliosin suddenly has a change of mind and dramatically leaps out the window to avoid his confined life as a married man.

In the first scene, when Podkoliosin says that he doesn't feel like it and should try again tomorrow, it foreshadows the final scene where he doesn't feel like getting married and jumps out the window rather than face the consequences of his actions.

"As for the wedding breakfast, I've a caterer in my eye, friend. He feeds one, the dogs, so that one can't get up from one's chair." - Kochkariov (Act I, Scene I)

Allusions are made by Zhevakin, a former navy man, of the exploits of the Russian navy in the late 1700s and early 1800s, including events in Sicily and the reign of Paul I (the veracity of which may be questionable).

To convince Podkoliosin to get married, Kochkariov evokes several images of Podkoliosin as a comfortable married man. He uses many appealing images of interior decoration, wife, and children to do so, likening his family to a family of dogs and his children to drops of water to appeal to Podkoliosin's vanity and pride.

In his mind, Podkoliosin is of the opinion that he wants to get married. This is impossible, however, since his heart doesn't believe it and convinces him at every opportunity to escape and avoid married life at all costs. This paradox forms the basic conflict of the play.

The way Kochkariov gets angry at Fiokla at the beginning of the play for lying to him parallels a similar scene in the second act in which most of the suitors grow upset with her for exaggerating certain aspects of Agafya and her estate.

"I know your other mirrors: they make you look ten years older" - Podkoliosin (Act I, Scene I)

At the beginning of each of the play's three scenes, there is a short and vague description of the appearance of the stage at the onset of the scene. Scene I, for example, has this: "A Bachelor's Room. Podkoliosin, alone, is lying on a sofa smoking a pipe." In various places, there are additional directions for an actor to do something like stroke his hair, smile, or run out of the room. Entrances and exits are also recorded.

There is one soliloquy of note: at the end, Podkoliosin is by himself in a room in Agafya's house, awaiting his fiancé's return. He gives a dramatic monologue which he begins by praising marriage and its aspects, and during which he changes his mind and frantically decides that marriage is too stifling a condition to be in, and at the soliloquy's climax, he dramatically defenestrates himself.