With those caveats firmly in mind, I hope you enjoy the paper!
ELB
In "The Nose", Ivan Yakovlevich's wife provides an example of the aggressive, domineering woman so often remarked upon in Gogol's writings as evidence of his misogyny. Upon Ivan's discovery of the phallic icon within the loaf of bread, his wife immediately begins berating him. She blames him for bringing this phallic object into her domain, the kitchen, and condemns him as a blackguard, drunkard, and cutthroat. When Ivan wants to wrap up the nose and leave it in the kitchen briefly, she demands that he remove it immediately.
"I won't hear of it! What do you take me for? Keep a cutoff nose in my room? You heartless villain, you! All you know is to strop your razor. Soon you won't be fit to carry out your duties at all, you whoremonger, you scoundrel, you! You don't expect me to answer to the police for you, do you? Oh, you filthy wretch, you blockhead, you! Out with it! Out! Take it where you like, only don't let me see it here again!" (Gogol 1957a, 204)Ivan's wife knows that the phallic icon does not belong to her, because she is a true woman. She forces Ivan to take possession of and responsibility for the nose, thereby connecting him with the phallic object. Her attitude can then be described not so much as castrating, as it is rejecting of his femininity and imposing an unwanted masculinity. He is not a true woman; therefore he is not an equal with her and is dismissed from her environment and company. This repudiation of the gender-crossed individual by the wife then causes the individual (Ivan) to resent the wife. If Gogol were associated with Ivan as discussed previously, then this would explain his depiction of many female characters as hateful, aggressive and domineering.
If the true woman rejects Gogol's character's desire to be
female, then that woman would be despised. This negative view of
women does not hold for all of Gogol's characters, however. In
several of his stories there is at least one female character who
embodies all that is good and pure and admirable in humans. These
women are extraordinarily beautiful and exalted as if they were goddesses.
What is woman? The language of the gods. We admire the serene, clear face of man; but we do not behold in him the image of the gods: we see in him woman, we admire in him woman, and only in her do we admire the gods. She is poetry! She is thought, we are only her incarnation in reality. (Driessen, 34)Woman is not mere flesh and blood; she is in fact "the language of the gods". Man is not worthy of the reverence with which woman should be regarded; we may admire man, but what we truly venerate in him are his feminine attributes. Gogol regards the feminine state much more highly than he does the male state. His further descriptions of Alcinoe, woman personified, provide evidence of his total reverence of all things female.
Her marble arm, traversed by the blue of veins filled with divine ambrosia, floated freely; her bare foot, red-enribboned, released from the jealous fetter of her shoe, advanced majestically and seemed not to touch the earth; her high breast lifted to the rhythm of her sighs; the diaphanous drapery covering her breasts shivered, designing piquant folds. (Troyat, 41)Even her physical attributes are not mortal: her veins are filled, not with blood, but with "divine ambrosia". She is not mortal flesh, but something that rightfully exists on a higher plane. Additionally, Gogol seems to give particular care to describing Alcinoe's clothing in sensual terms: "diaphanous drapery" falling into "piquant folds". This may in fact correspond with his longstanding fascination with fabrics and women's clothing. Perhaps in possessing or wearing those clothes, he seeks to bring himself closer to the feminine ideal described in this early essay.
Gogol states that men are worthy of admiration only
when they possess those precious female attributes referred
to above (Driessen, 34). In fact, he is considered to be
beautiful depending upon the degree of his resemblance to a woman:
"We are constantly fired upon by her impulses, and the longer
and the stronger their influence upon us, the higher and more
beautiful we become" (Magarshack, 78).
This beautiful, exalted female is found again as
Annunciata in "Rome" (Gippius, 100) and as the three 'sisters',
Sculpture, Painting and Music, in the essay of the same name
(Gogol 1982, 25-29). She is later found in altered form as the
deceptively beautiful prostitute in "Nevsky Prospekt" (Gogol
1964, 429). Perhaps this character, which bridges the distance
between Gogol's divine maidens and domineering harridans,
reflects Gogol's growing disillusionment, as he begins to accept
the fact that he can never become the glorious female with
which he identifies.
Nikolai Gogol - Introduction to Research Paper
Terms and Scientific Background
Biographical Information
Literary Analysis of "The Nose"
Literary Analysis of "Terrible Vengeance"
Psychoanalysis of Female Characters
Conclusion, Sources Cited, and Footnotes