What Is to Be Done? · Chapter
XV: Viéra Pavlovna’s Fourth Dream explained
In her fourth dream, Viéra Pavlovna encounters a radiant goddess who reveals herself as the embodiment of love, freedom, and equality.
What happens
In her fourth dream, Viéra Pavlovna encounters a radiant goddess who reveals herself as the embodiment of love, freedom, and equality. The goddess explains that she combines the qualities of earlier queens—Astarte, Aphrodite, and 'Chastity'—but surpasses them through the new power of equal rights between lovers. She traces the historical evolution of woman's status from slavery to the dawn of her own reign, first recognized by Rousseau. The dream culminates in a vision of a future where her kingdom spreads over all the earth, and Viéra Pavlovna recognizes the goddess as her own self, transformed by love.
Themes in this chapter
Freedom and Individuality
The goddess declares that her essence is freedom, rooted in equal rights and the absence of deceit or hypocrisy.
Love and Marriage
The dream redefines love as a union of equals, where both partners are free and neither is property of the other.
Women's Emancipation
The goddess traces the historical oppression of women and heralds a new era of equality and self-determination.
Characters to notice
- Viéra Pavlovna
The dreamer who beholds the goddess and learns that the goddess is her own self, kindled by love and equality.
Key passages
“I have all the enjoyment of sense which Astarte had; she is the original mother of all of the rest of us tsaritsas who succeeded her. I have the rapture at the sight of beauty no less than Aphrodite had; I have the reverence for purity which 'Chastity' possessed.”
The goddess embodies the pleasures of Astarte, the aesthetic rapture of Aphrodite, and the purity of Chastity, but all are transformed by the new element of equality.
The goddess synthesizes earlier ideals of love and beauty, elevating them through the principle of mutual freedom.
“When a man recognizes the equal rights of a woman with himself, he ceases to regard her as his personal property. Then she loves him as he loves her, only because she wants to love; but if she does not want to love, he has no right over her, as she has none over him. Therefore in me is freedom.”
True love requires equality: neither partner owns the other, and love is freely given and freely withheld.
This passage articulates the core of the goddess's new power—freedom based on equal rights.
“I am free, because there is no deceit in me, no hypocrisy. I shall say not a word which does not express what I feel; I shall give no kiss which is not from the heart.”
The goddess's freedom is expressed through absolute sincerity in words and actions.
Authenticity and transparency are presented as essential to the ideal of love.