Who She Is
Margarita Nikolayevna, thirty years old, married to a rich, good husband whom she does not love, who has lived in mourning for months for the Master, who disappeared after burning the novel. In chapter 13 she appears throughout without a name, only as "she"; from chapter 19 on she is the one who drives the action, and it is through her that the book's two plots meet.
I had to either forget him or die. For I could not go on living that way.
Trajectory
In chapter 13, through the voice of the Master, she is the unknown woman with the yellow flowers, who begins visiting him every day, reads the manuscripts, starts calling him Master and manages to save from the fire only a bundle of scorched pages.
She carried in her hands abominable flowers, of a disquieting yellow.
I will save him, I will save him. What does all this mean?
In chapter 19 she accepts Azazello's invitation without knowing to whom she is surrendering; in chapter 20 she applies the cream, becomes young again, writes the note to her husband and flies away. In chapter 21 she destroys the apartment of Latunsky with a hammer and stops before a frightened little boy in the dark. In chapter 22 she is chosen after none of the one hundred and twenty-one Margaritas found in Moscow fit the role, and in chapter 23 she presides over the ball of the full moon (see The Moon); in chapter 24, at the moment of payment, she first asks for Frida; only in the second request, granted for free, does she ask for the Master.
Forgive me and forget me as soon as possible. I am abandoning you for eternity. Do not look for me, it is useless. I became a witch because of the misfortunes and sorrows that befell me. My time has come. Goodbye.
Latunsky! [...] Latunsky! It was he who... It was he who destroyed the Master!
The scene with the boy is the only moment of the flight in which Margarita uses her newly gained power to console, not to destroy or to seduce; the novel places it right after the revenge on Latunsky, as if it wanted to show the two faces of the same force before the ball.
I want them to stop holding out to Frida the handkerchief with which she smothered her own baby.
In chapter 29, on the terrace, Matthew Levi asks that she, who loved and suffered for the Master, be taken along with him.
In chapter 30 she dies with the Master after the toast with Azazello's Falernian; in chapter 31 she looks back on the Sparrow Hills and no longer sees Moscow; in chapter 32 she pleads for mercy for Pilate and leads the Master to the eternal house across the stone bridge. In the Epilogue she appears with the Master in Ivan's dreams and kisses him on the forehead.
Listen to the rest [...] listen and delight in what was not given you in life, the silence.
Themes Embodied
The standard themes that run through her are love, compassion and charity, and sacrifice. The narrator's address to the reader in chapter XIX, a rare device in the novel:
Who told you that there is no true, faithful, eternal love in the world? Then cut out the tongue of that infamous liar!
The two requests that decide Margarita's place in the book are made for people she barely knows: for Frida, whom she saw only once at the ball, and for Pilate, whom she knew only from the novel and sees for the first time in chapter 32. For herself, when Woland asks her "What do you wish for yourself?", she asks for the Master's return; and for the rest of the night she still pleads for Latunsky and intercedes for Natasha. Woland's "Never ask for anything!" comes just before the request for Frida, when she has just refused any payment.
Relationships
- The Master: the beloved, whom she calls Master and goes to fetch at the cost of becoming a witch.
- Woland: who receives her as queen of the ball and grants her requests.
- Azazello: who brings her the invitation and the cream, and afterward the Falernian.
- Korovyov: who receives her in apartment 50 (see Apartment 50) and explains the condition of the ball.
- Frida: the ball guest for whom she makes her first request.
- Latunsky: the critic whose apartment she destroys.
- Hella and Behemoth: the rest of the retinue, whom she meets in apartment 50.
- Pontius Pilate: the man in the stone armchair, for whom she pleads mercy.
- Ivan Nikolayevich Bezdomny: to whom she appears in the dreams of the Epilogue.