Exploratory Essay: Vulnerable Inner Heart Of A Superfluous Man

In 19th century Russian, the concepts of love have specific rules and etiquette that are entirely different from the day we live in. The term  “Superfluous Man” largely influenced Russian’s society; it defines a man who was born as a nobleman, possessed privilege and wealth effortlessly, and led a carefree but dull and boring life. The superfluous man was well known in 19th century Russian because many men acted like this. Due to their endless leisure time, without doing any house chores or working, they turned out to be an indolent people and gambling acted as their basic social activity. These actions eventually shaped his psychological portrait and affected his romantic affairs negatively.

The superfluous men hold on to those characteristics was being described “It is commonly recognized that self-doubt, like self-condemnation, often leads to its opposite, that is, self-affirmation and even self-exaltation” (Pereira 297). It explained Russia’s psychological aspect developed the superfluous men fictitious mind of being a Byronic hero who imagines itself as a protagonist. When ones meet the exceed of self-conscious, he sequentially became a narcissist. Due to artistic symbolic of Russia, it possesses an enormous virtue of painting, buildings, literature, and sculpture which led people fond into the pursuit of beauty. Thus noblemen are more concern about their self-image.

Russian society had input on how men were expected to be in relationships. “There were national and gender differences, with the nation having a stronger effect on the conception of romantic love than does gender.” (De Munck 1) This indicates the country its own creates a phenomenon that how love relationship should be perceived, and eventually shape the mind of the peoples. Love relationship was taught and inequality between gender was being fixed. “Russian fathers retained the authority to prevent the son from marrying the woman with whom he had enjoyed sexual relations. As a result, everywhere that the young flouted traditional morality, the woman took far greater risks than the man and was far the more likely to suffer in consequence.” (Engel 1) Pre-marital sexuality is restricted in the 19th century Russia and the statement above reveals although men are the fault to blame too they could just run away the problem and the women have no option but to endure the humiliation.

Women’s expectations in 19th-century Russian romantic relationships. Then, bring in superfluous man and how they may take advantage or function with these expectations. In love relationships, a superfluous man doesn’t care for others and seduces women, women often get unrequited love from them. Because of their ego, superfluous men don’t receive true love, and the stories below will not lead to happy marriages and the superfluous man end up being alone. Women are powerless at that period and had no right to decide their marriage. They were obliged to be inferior to men. Marriage was being arranged, in other ways, men can propose to his beloved but not for women, they need to be innocent and not to fall into somebody else until she meets her husband. A survey took by De Munck, to examine how men and women approach to love-related questions, came out the significantly higher agreement on the part of Russian females with the statement “Sex without love leaves sadness in its wake.” we interpret the statements of males to reflect a dialectic between their notion of themselves as dominant in a relationship with a female (De Munck17). When we observe this, women are eager to obtain love from men while the man took the dominance by naturally. We can see that how man perceives love relationship, they don’t care that much as the women do.                           

In the 19th century, numerous Russian literature writers wrote about the superfluous man. A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov provides an example of a superfluous man in a romantic relationship. The protagonist Pechorin, who keeps a diary, elaborates how he cheated on Princess Mary’s feelings to redeem his ego. Princess Mary pays attention to another guy that is inferior to Pechorin which strikes his ego. So, he wants to obtain her trust. He mentions, “Whenever I become acquainted with a woman, I always guess without fail, whether she will fall in love with me or not”(Lermontov 114). He believes Princess Mary will fall in love with him and gets revenge by winning Princess Mary’s heart. Pechorin is a superfluous man; he plays tricks in Princess Mary’s mind which allows him to seduce her and makes her pay attention to him. When he gets the attention of Princess Mary, he doesn’t want her attention anymore. Superfluous men only want themselves to be in the spotlight and do not want others to snatch their glow.

All in all, the superfluous man fails in his love relationship. Pechorin seduces Princess Mary but showed their love afterward after betrayed the women who loved them. Their egoism and narcissism reveal the character of Russian superfluous man identity. Superfluous men fear being judged by everyone because they perceived themselves as perfect, their strong self-consciousness explained why comments and criticisms struck their ego very easily. The reason they build up this character was influenced by the society and in the present day, some still carry on some concept of superfluous men in the relationship but it mostly based on the decision of a couple now.

 Work Cited

De Munck, Victor, et al. “A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE STRUCTURE OF LOVE IN THE U.S. AND RUSSIA: FINDING A COMMON CORE OF CHARACTERISTICS AND NATIONAL AND GENDER DIFFERENCES.” Ethnology, vol. 48, no. 4, 2009, pp. 337–357. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/29764870.

Engel, Barbara Alpern. “Peasant Morality and Pre-Marital Relations in Late 19th Century Russia.” Journal of Social History, vol. 23, no. 4, 1990, pp. 695–714. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3787669.

Lermontov, Mikhail. A Hero of Our Time. Everyman’s Library, 1840.

    Pereira, N. G. O. “The Nineteenth-Century Russian Intelligentsia and the Future of Russia.” Studies in Soviet Thought, vol. 19, no. 4, 1979, pp. 295–306. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20098851.

Sobol, Valeria. “Febris Erotica: Aleksandr Herzen’s Post-Romantic Physiology.” Slavic

Review, vol. 65, no. 3, 2006, pp. 502–522. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4148661. [Alexander Herzen’s Beltov in Who is to Blame? (1845–46)]

Turgenev, Ivan. The Diary of a Superfluous Man. New York: Macmillan and Co., 1899, pp.

9-99, archive.org/details/diaryofsuperfluo00turgrich/page/n7.

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