Who She Is
Matryona is the Dreamer's maid, an old woman who cooks, serves the table and looks after his room, or does not: the ceiling is covered with cobwebs that she cultivates successfully (The spiderweb and the room). She speaks little, calls the master "little father," and is the only person with whom the Dreamer shares his days. He describes her as good and without any imagination at all, and that is why she matters: in the room of a man who lives by daydreams, she is the life that does not dream. She wants nothing the text states, and knows nothing of what happens on the embankment.
Trajectory
On the First Night, anguished without knowing why, the Dreamer looks at the green, smoke-stained walls and the cobwebbed ceiling, calls Matryona and gives her a fatherly scolding for the dirt; she looks at him in surprise and leaves without answering, and the cobweb stays where it is.
On the Second Night, she enters the Dreamer's speech: pensive and always sad, she is the one who clears the table and brings the pipe to the hero who dined without noticing, and it is her coffeepot, simmering in the kitchen, that he uses as the image of imagination heating up slowly in the room.
On the Fourth Night, in the plans with Nastenka, the Dreamer recommends Matryona (she is good, she just has no imagination at all), and Nastenka decides that she and Fyokla will live together.
On the Morning, she brings him Nastenka's letter, which arrived by the city post, and, when he drops the letter and covers his face, she speaks:
А паутину-то я всю с потолка сняла; теперь хоть женись, гостей созывай, Well, I took all the cobwebs off the ceiling; now you can even get married and call the guests.
He looks at her and sees her suddenly old, stooped, and the room aged along with her. The last vision of the future includes the maid:
я увидел себя таким, как я теперь, ровно через пятнадцать лет, постаревшим, в той же комнате, так же одиноким, с той же Матреной, I saw myself as I am now, exactly fifteen years from now, aged, in the same room, as lonely as I am now, with the same Matryona.
Themes Embodied
Matryona is the room's clock. On the First Night, her cobweb marks the stopped time of a man who changes nothing in his own life; on the Morning, the cobweb removed marks the end of the nights, and her face aging before him is the form time takes when he is alone again.
The cobweb that the scolding of the first night did not remove comes off on the day of the letter, on its own, and Matryona announces the room ready for a marriage that will not happen. The phrase has no intention behind it, and that is why it stings: whoever has no imagination says exactly what the Dreamer imagined on the Fourth Night.
Divergent Readings
She can be read as comic contrast, the prosaic maid who serves as ground for daydream, as with the coffeepot of the Second Night and the recommendation of the Fourth Night. She can also be read as the company the Dreamer will in fact have, the only one the book guarantees: in the vision of the Morning, fifteen years from now the same Matryona will be there, who has not become one bit smarter.
The two readings meet on the Morning: the same trait that made her comic, the lack of imagination, is what makes her the portrait of his future, a future with nothing left to imagine.
Relationships
- The Dreamer: the master who scolds her about the cobweb on the First Night and to whom she hands the letter on the Morning.
- Nastenka: never sees her; enters her plans with the Dreamer on the Fourth Night, as Fyokla's companion.