Who She Is
Nastenka's grandmother is a blind old woman, owner of a little wooden house with three windows, as old as she is, with a mezzanine she rents. She raised her orphaned granddaughter, taught her French and paid a tutor, and lives on the pension and the rent from the mezzanine, which together make up almost all of the house's income. She was richer once and still talks about the good old days. She never appears on stage: everything known about her comes from Nastenka's story, Second Night, told by the granddaughter, who laughs at her and defends her in the same sentence. What she wants is to keep her granddaughter; what she fears, judging by what she says of the novels she has read, is the young man who seduces a girl with a promise of marriage and abandons her.
Trajectory
On the Second Night, even before the story, Nastenka mentions in passing that she lives with her blind grandmother and that for two years the grandmother has pinned her to her dress with a pin. In Nastenka's story, Second Night, she explains the origin of the punishment, a prank at fifteen that she does not reveal:
взяла булавку и пришпилила мое платье к своему, да тут и сказала, что так мы будем всю жизнь сидеть, если, разумеется, я не сделаюсь лучше, she took a pin and fastened my dress to hers, and right then said that this is how we would sit our whole lives, unless, of course, I became better.
The grandmother dozes in her armchair, and that is how Nastenka put Fyokla, the deaf maid, in her place; the grandmother woke, asked something, and Fyokla unfastened the pin and ran off. When the new lodger arrives, the grandmother accepts him because he does not haggle, asks her granddaughter whether he is young and handsome and forbids her to look at him, reminding her that in the old days things were different: in the old days she was younger, the sun was hotter and the cream soured more slowly. She is the chatterbox who sends her granddaughter to fetch the abacus in front of the lodger, and it is her armchair that is dragged when Nastenka gets up, forgetting the pin. She accepts with thanks the French books he offers, but wants to know whether they are moral; she says she read many seduction novels, so well written that one spent the whole night reading them, and, on learning that the books are by Walter Scott, has someone look for love notes hidden under the binding. When the lodger offers the box for The Barber of Seville, she cries out with delight: in the old days she played Rosina in a home theater. She goes to the opera, blind, because she wanted to hear the music and, her granddaughter says, because she wanted to please her.
On the Fourth Night, she enters the plans of the Dreamer and Nastenka, who agree to take her along, since she has her pension and will not bother them; the granddaughter reports that the grandmother wants to rent the empty mezzanine to a young man. That same night, Nastenka points to her grandmother's watchfulness as a possible origin of all her love:
может быть, и вся любовь моя была обман чувств, воображения, может быть, началась она шалостью, пустяками, оттого, что я была под надзором у бабушки?, perhaps my whole love was an illusion of the senses and of the imagination, perhaps it began as mischief, as trifles, because I was under my grandmother's watch?
Themes Embodied
The grandmother is the book's memory in the form of a person: everything in her points to the old days, and what she brings into the present is exactly what will change her granddaughter's life. She was Rosina in a home theater and accepts the Rossini opera out of longing (The Barber of Seville), and it is in that opera that the granddaughter understands that the lodger wants her (Nastenka's story, Second Night). She read the seduction novels she forbids, and what she fears is the plot her granddaughter nearly lives.
The pin is the eye she does not have, and the sentence it imposes, for a lifetime, tells how much she fears losing her granddaughter. Nastenka calls her funny and says she loves her a little, and both things are true: the watchfulness that imprisons is also the only protection a blind old woman can give an orphan.
Divergent Readings
In one way of reading, the grandmother is Nastenka's jailer, and the bundle of the Nastenka's story, Second Night is an escape from her house as much as a gesture of love. In another, she is the good old woman the granddaughter describes, who goes to the opera to cheer her and who, with The Barber of Seville, unknowingly plays the role of matchmaker.
The text gives both through the mouth of the same narrator, and the irony lies in the fact that the grandmother favors what she forbids: she asks whether the lodger is handsome, takes her granddaughter to his opera and, on the Fourth Night, wants once more a young man in the mezzanine.
Relationships
- Nastenka: the granddaughter she pins to her dress and whom she describes in Nastenka's story, Second Night.
- The lodger: the young man of the mezzanine whom she accepts because he does not haggle and to whom she goes to The Barber of Seville (Nastenka's story, Second Night).
- The Dreamer: never sees her, and includes her in the plans of the Fourth Night.