About the work
Comedy in five acts by Alexander Nikolayevich Ostrovsky, written in 1852 and first published the same year in the journal "Moskvityanin"; it premiered on 20 August 1853 at the Maly Theatre in Moscow — Ostrovsky's first play to reach the stage successfully. No German stage translation is known to date.
Plot
The widowed Anna Petrovna wants to marry off her penniless daughter Masha as quickly as possible to escape her own financial straits. Masha loves the unreliable Meritch, who turns out to be a fortune hunter, and is eventually pressured into marrying the coarse but wealthy official Benevolensky. The play ends with a resigned engagement in which Masha accepts her hopeless situation.
Cultural significance
Literary scholar Victor Terras read the play as an early realistic depiction of the economic bind facing young women in Ostrovsky's Russia, whose only prospect of material security lay in a marriage of convenience. After early censorship delays, the premiere drew considerable public attention and cemented Ostrovsky's reputation as chronicler of Moscow's merchant and clerical milieu.