Futility · Chapter
VIII explained
The three sisters plead with Fanny Ivanovna to see their mother, Magda Nikolaevna, who is waiting on the landing.
What happens
The three sisters plead with Fanny Ivanovna to see their mother, Magda Nikolaevna, who is waiting on the landing. Fanny refuses, asserting her authority as mistress of the flat. The narrator later encounters Magda on the staircase, and she confides in him about her desire for a divorce from Nikolai Vasilievich, her plans to marry Cecedek, and her frustration at being barred from her own home.
Themes in this chapter
Family and Dysfunction
The chapter highlights the fractured relationships within the Bursànova family, with Magda barred from her own home and the sisters caught between their mother and Fanny.
Love and Illusion
Magda's confession reveals the illusions and half-truths surrounding her marriage to Nikolai and her affairs, questioning the nature of love and commitment.
Characters to notice
- Fanny Ivanovna
Refuses to admit Magda Nikolaevna into the flat, asserting her authority as mistress despite her precarious position.
- Nina Bursànova
Leads the sisters in pleading with Fanny to see their mother, then threatens to never speak to Fanny again when refused.
- Sonia
Supports Nina's plea to Fanny, echoing the request to see Magda.
- Vera
Returns to Petersburg and joins the sisters in urging Fanny to see their mother.
- Magda Nikolaevna Bursànova
Found weeping on the landing; confides in the narrator about her desire for a divorce, her plans to marry Cecedek, and her resentment at being excluded from her own home.
- Andrei Andreiech
The narrator, who encounters Magda and listens to her confession, learning more about the family's legal and emotional entanglements.
Key passages
“After all, I am the mistress of this house. True, I have been thrown into the mud and trampled on, told I am not wanted, done away with, about to be thrown into the street like a dog, but while I am here I am the mistress of this flat.”
Fanny insists on her authority as head of the household, despite feeling degraded and unwanted.
Fanny's assertion of control amid her own vulnerability.
“I came, and I was not admitted. … Into my own house, my own flat. It was my flat, Andrei Andreiech. I chose it. I bought the things and arranged them.”
Magda laments being denied entry to the home she once owned and furnished.
Magda's sense of dispossession and injustice.
“If I am in the wrong and he is in the right, is it likely, I ask you, that under any conceivable law Nikolai should lose the children? It is the one who is in the wrong that loses the children.”
Magda argues that if Nikolai were truly in the right, he would not risk losing custody of the children in a divorce.
Magda's legal reasoning about divorce and custody.