Yulia Mikhailovna von Lembke

Who She Is

Yulia Mikhailovna von Lembke is the wife of the province's governor, Andrei Antonovich von Lembke, a relation of the Drozdovs and of Karmazinov, and the hostess who opens the town to new ideas and to Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky. She married, past forty, a man of German descent, playful and weak, who spent his time gluing together paper theaters, trains, and churches, and her ambition dragged him out of that rest (ch. IV, Part Two). When she arrives in town with her husband, the town's treatment of Varvara Petrovna, and therefore of Stepan, begins to change (ch. II, Part One). What moves her is the wish to govern the province through her husband and to save young people from the edge of the abyss by uncovering a state conspiracy. What she lacks is the habit of distrusting those who flatter her. The trait that defines her is the certainty of being surrounded by people fanatically devoted to her.

Trajectory

In ch. II, Part One, she is first named by Varvara Petrovna, who tells Stepan that on the trip to Switzerland she ran into an intrigue by Yulia Mikhailovna, the future governor's wife and a relation of the Drozdovs, and of a cousin of the family, against the courtship of Nicolas and Liza, and that she undid it. The same conversation warns that Karmazinov, a relation of Yulia's, will come with her when the new governor arrives. In ch. IV, Part One, at the cathedral, at her first public appearance, she yields the way to Varvara Petrovna with a courtesy that is, in its own fashion, irony. Then, when Varvara Petrovna consults her in public about bringing the lame woman home, she agrees with delight and praises the compassion of Lizaveta Nikolaevna Tushina as an elevated feeling. The town concludes that it was not the governor's wife who snubbed Varvara Petrovna, but Varvara Petrovna who kept the governor's wife within limits.

In ch. I, Part Two, the chronicler and Stepan conclude that only Pyotr can have spread the town's rumors. In four days he has met everyone, and he dines with Yulia almost every day. In ch. IV, Part Two, at the birthday of the marshal of the nobility's wife, a general with a lisp asks aloud whether it is true that Nicolas is mad. Yulia, irritated because everyone is looking at her, answers with a phrase that goes around the town and becomes everyone's opinion:

Varvara Petrovna, triumphant, goes to visit her to give thanks, and leaves fascinated by her and furious with Stepan. Yulia says she has never heard of his merits, that the Sistine Madonna is disappointing, and that young people must be coddled to keep them from the edge of the abyss. She announces the literary matinee, with lunch and a ball, for the benefit of poor governesses, at which Karmazinov will read his farewell and Stepan may read something short. The chronicler also reports that she took the paper works from her husband, let him write a novel in secret, and tries to make him the administrator of her plans. When she hears that her husband gave Pyotr the collection of proclamations he has gathered since 1859, she is irritated at his imprudence, and she forbids the civil servant Blum to be mentioned in front of her. She vouches that Pyotr is fanatically devoted to her, that the phrasemongers are not dangerous, and that if there is anything, she will be the first to know it from him. The narrator notes that without her vanity and ambition, much of what bad men did would not have happened.

In ch. V, Part Two, the party is postponed several times, while around Yulia a circle of young people and ladies forms, with Pyotr at the center, Liamchin at the piano, Liputin, whom she wants as editor of a newspaper, and even Karmazinov. The frivolity of the group invents adventures only in order to tell them. Yulia grows angry at each one and forgives everything the next day, on Pyotr's advice and because of a remark by Karmazinov, who finds the pranks characteristic and bold. In ch. VI, Part Two, she dreams of uncovering a state conspiracy and saving the young by revealing it. She believes that Pyotr, tied to everything revolutionary in Russia and devoted to her, will show her the plot, and so she sends him to entertain her husband.

In ch. X, Part Two, the chronicler recounts what he knows of the early morning, partly from Yulia herself. Lembke wakes her at three in the morning for an ultimatum. He says that their life together was her proving to him at every turn that he was a nonentity, and him proving to her that he was not. There are two centers of power, his and that of her boudoir, and this cannot exist. He lets slip his jealousy of Pyotr. She interrupts him to say that she has long known of the criminal plans and will find a harmonious outcome. When he threatens to arrest and chain the man he calls her lover, or to throw himself out of the window, she laughs a long laugh, like a Parisian actress. In the morning, on the way to Skvoreshniki to see the site of a second party arranged with Varvara Petrovna, she is overtaken by Liamchin with the news from the square, and returns to town with the group. Finding her husband in the salon, she passes him as if he did not exist, without word or glance, and takes Stepan into the room like a prize she has seized, showering him with courtesies. When Lembke trips on the carpet and leaves, saying he is going to change, she follows him. She returns five minutes later, struggling to look calm, says that he is a little agitated, that he has been like that since boyhood, and calls the committee to open the session. It is in this salon that Liza asks Stavrogin about Captain Lebyadkin.

In ch. I, Part Three, the matinee goes ahead despite the day of confusion, because Yulia invests it with such great meaning that she would have held it even if her husband had died the night before. Blind to the last minute, she does not notice that the whole town expects a scandal and that the ladies hate her as one, and she remains convinced she is surrounded by people fanatically devoted to her. She rejects the committee's compromise, a decent party without champagne and with modest takings, and chooses colossal takings. This keeps alive the rumor of a banquet she herself planted when she spoke of toasts. When Stepan loses his way in his speech and the seminarist interrupts him, she gets up and pulls her husband from his armchair: the scandal is already too big.

In ch. II, Part Three, Yulia is in tears, almost hysterical, before Pyotr and the prince, and reproaches him for apostasy, blaming the whole shame of the morning on his absence. In truth she wants to be forced to go to the ball, and by him. Pyotr shares out the blame and gives her the script: appear at the ball, declare yourself the victim of a madman, send two doctors to his father, and let the town laugh, with a diagnosis of society:

At the ball, pale, with her eyes wide open, she does not let go of her husband. When she sees Pyotr appear behind her with the air of a guilty schoolboy, she lets slip aloud that at least now he will not deceive her. When Lembke, on hearing the cry that Zarechye is in flames, orders "the first one" arrested and searched, and says that the ball was organized for the purpose of setting a fire, his finger is pointed at her:

She screams and faints, truly, and when she comes to, the first cry is for her husband, because with all her fantasies undone, only Andrei Antonovich is left to her. In ch. IV, Part Three, the day after the fire, Pyotr manages to force his way into her house, though she does not want to receive him. The chronicler judges that he frightened her with a threat of complicity, should she talk. Only three weeks later, before she leaves for Petersburg, does she tell the chronicler about the visit, and say with a shudder that Pyotr frightened her beyond all measure. At the station, in ch. VI, Part Three, a young relation of hers says that Yulia did not even receive him the day before. Pyotr, who claims to be going to Petersburg with letters from her to three or four people, explains her fear by the worry that they may already have written from there. In ch. VIII, Part Three, in Liamchin's testimony, which defends her without being asked, she is innocent: she was only deceived.

Themes Embodied

Yulia is the point where Individual and Society enters through the salon. The town gives way to conspiracy because the governor's wife opens the room to it, and she does so because she wants a party that will consecrate her, a newspaper, a plot to reveal. Nothing in her is a revolutionary's calculation. The novel places her in the most fragile position, that of someone who believes the new ideas are a fashion of which she is the patron, and that is why Pyotr treats her as an instrument he plays with the praise she needs.

The book gives three versions of how much of what happens belongs to her, and none is refuted. The chronicler calls her the cause: without her vanity and ambition, much of what bad men did would not have happened. Pyotr, in the scene of tears, dilutes her guilt. There was no conspiracy beyond Liputin, he says, the atmosphere was her doing, since she coddled the poets and let Liamchin kiss her hand, and Karmazinov was foisted on the town by her. Liamchin, in his testimony, grants her the innocence of someone who was deceived. The first version reads her by intention, the second by effect, and the third by her position as someone who knows less than she thinks she knows. The text sustains all three because Yulia is at once the one who opens the door, the one who does not see who comes in, and the first to be blamed by her husband when everything collapses.

The faint at the ball and the cry for her husband show what remains of an ambition when its fantasies fall away: not the idea, not the salon, but the husband whom, in his complaint, she had treated as a nonentity. The chronicler puts the phrase down as a statement, without comment. It can be read as the end of a fantasy that held up only because of him, or as the one thing she truly had, and the text says no more.

Relationships

• Andrei Antonovich von Lembke: the husband from whom she takes the paper works, whom in his complaint she treats as a nonentity, and of whom, in the end, only the care is left to her (ch. IV, Part Two, ch. X, Part Two, ch. II, Part Three).
• Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky: the man she judges fanatically devoted (ch. IV, Part Two), who invents plans for her and flatters her until she becomes as necessary as air, and who frightens her after the fire (ch. II, Part Three, ch. IV, Part Three).
• Karmazinov: the relation whose farewell she requests for the matinee, and whose remark makes her forgive the pranks of youth (ch. IV, Part Two, ch. V, Part Two).
• Varvara Petrovna Stavrogina: the salon rival to whom she yields the way in the cathedral, and who visits her to give thanks and leaves won over (ch. IV, Part One, ch. IV, Part Two).
• Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky: the man of whose merits she says she has never heard, and whom she later covers with courtesies, as if he were something she had seized (ch. IV, Part Two, ch. X, Part Two).
• Lizaveta Nikolaevna Tushina: the young woman who accompanies her to the cathedral, and in whose name she approves the compassion (ch. IV, Part One).
• Liputin: the candidate for editor of her newspaper (ch. V, Part Two).