Male and Female Ivan Turgenev's Term Paper

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She's a remarkable nature, emancipee in the true sense of the word, an advanced woman."(Turgenev, 47) When Bazarov meets Kukshina however, he is again skeptical as to whether to believe in her accomplishments, and betrays his despise for the opposite gender even more when he hears she is not at all pretty and advocates that, if a woman is not pretty, she is not worth knowing. Bazarov's view on women is thus very eloquent, as it expresses the general mood of the age: women are the weak, passive gender, who can only make themselves useful for society if they are pretty and play well their roles as wives and mothers. However, the way in which the plot develops, points to the fact that women have more power than the men in the novel are willing to grant them. Although he is Bazarov's disciple, Arkady changes his nihilist view of love when he meets Katya. The same thing happens to Bazarov when he falls in love with Anna, although he is reluctant to admit to it until the end of the novel, when the young doctor dies from a typhus infection. When he meets Anna, Bazarov is impressed by her intelligence, but expresses his opinion in his usual misogynistic way: "Yes... A female with brains. Yes, and she's seen life too." He attempts to persuade himself that women are all manipulative and tries very hard to withstand the impulse to fall in love with Anna. When she rejects him, he is even more convinced that women are all hypocritical.

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Gradually however, a change takes place in him, and Bazarov becomes a different person by the end of the novel, arguably because he has discovered love and feelings, and these have shook his nihilistic views of the world.

On the other hand, the view that women hold of men is somewhat less clear in the novel, since they are not given a voice as such. Nevertheless, we can discern a few typical attitudes. Fenitchka, for example, is described as a typical woman for that century, very shy and delicate, afraid to step into the male world: "She carried a large cup of cocoa and setting it down in front of Pavel Petrovich, she was overcome with confusion; the hot blood rushed in a wave of crimson under the delicate skin of her charming face. She lowered her eyes and stood by the table slightly pressing it with her finger tips. She looked as if she were ashamed of having come in and somehow felt at the same time that she had a right to come."(Turgenev, 21) in the novel, women seem generally to be on the verge of an awakening to emancipation and self-consciousness. Just like Fenichka, they are still shy but at the same time, they feel they "have the right" to play a more definite role in society. In the end, Turgenev shows that women can hold power over men in a very positive way, and even Bazarov admits that this may be the right thing in many cases.

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