Uncle’s Dream (1859)

This short novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky was his first in more than 10 years, the first since his imprisonment on political charges and 10 years of exile to Siberia. He opposed the serf system and associated with an activist group, and along with imprisonment and exile he suffered a mock execution, a form of torture. Uncle’s Dream is short enough to classify as novella and works as a story of manners, perhaps as only Dostoevsky could do it. There’s a matriarch and her attractive 23-year-old daughter. And there is a prince of the realm, ancient and doddering—BUT presently unmarried. The matriarch has her eye on him for her daughter. The matriarch blames all the world’s ills, or perhaps just her own, on Shakespeare, which strikes me as singularly Dostoevskian. As the story goes along it appears it is Romeo and Juliet that she specifically objects to. Her daughter has other suitors, one of whom is the nephew of the prince. The prince is a wonderful character. He stammers (one of the least annoying I’ve seen in literature, it even gets to be kind of fun) and he melts into reflexive lust whenever a young woman is nearby. At one point there’s a lot of whisking around as the matriarch schemes to get her daughter alone with the prince to manipulate a proposal. They pull it off, but to get him out of it the nephew and others scheme to make him think it was all a dream. The prince is mostly oblivious. The others are trying to bluff the matriarch and her daughter out of forcing the issue. The prince seems willing to marry her if that’s how it has to be, but after a point the daughter can’t stand the humiliation any longer of all this intriguing. The ending is strange, dragging in a new character for no apparent reason, although the finish beyond that, a long view of the daughter and matriarch, is inspired. This has all the stuff I like and expect from Dostoevsky, with the outraged and the indignant sputtering their rages past one another. I am already inclined toward these marriage-seeking stories, which tell us so much about the way people behave. I love the Shakespeare detail, and the prince is a perfect example of Dostoevsky’s contempt (laced with envy) for the aristocracy. Welcome back from Siberia, Fyodor.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.