About the work
Die Heirat (Marriage, Женитьба) is a two-act comedy by Nikolai Gogol subtitled “A Wholly Improbable Occurrence,” which he began writing in 1833. It was published in 1842, premiered on 9 December that year at the Alexandrinsky Theatre in St Petersburg, and had its Moscow premiere on 5 February 1843.
Plot
The unmarried civil servant Podkolyosin is talked into meeting the merchant's daughter Agafya Tikhonovna by the matchmaker Fyokla and his friend Kochkaryov. Once Kochkaryov has driven off the rival suitors and the wedding is agreed, Podkolyosin is overcome at the last moment by fear of marriage: he jumps out of the window and escapes in a cab, leaving the abandoned bride and matchmaker behind.
Cultural significance
The window-jumping scene became a byword for marriage panic and reappears, among other places, in Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, while Dostoevsky refers to Podkolyosin in The Idiot. Modest Mussorgsky began setting the play as an unfinished comic opera from 1868 onward, and Marriage remains one of Gogol's most frequently staged comedies.