The Ideal of a Russian Ladylove in Oscar Wilde’s Play: some features of Vera Sabouroff’s image

Vera Sabouroff in Vera; or, the Nihilists by Oscar Wilde is stereotypically interpreted as a nihilist. The purpose of the article is to reveal some of Vera’s features as a (loving and loved) Russian woman. The article suggests that Oscar Wilde might have known the main meanings of the female name Vera (‘faith’, ‘trust’) in Russian and thus emphasized its connection with the verb trust. The following meanings of the name Vera are revealed in the play context: faith in God; faith in humanity, kindness, and justice; faith as trust in love (Vera’s trust saves Alexis’s life, etc.). The qualitative and quantitative analysis explores six features in Vera’s image. Three of them reflect her female nature (Devoted Woman, Snegurochka, Knight’s Lady) and the three others describe the romantic context of her life (Impossibility of Happiness for Woman, Chance of Happiness for Woman, True Love). The results show that Knight’s Lady and Devoted Woman are the predominant features of Vera’s nature, while True Love is the predominant feature of the romantic context of Vera’s life. The research results also reveal Vera Sabouroff’s resemblance to some portraits of the Russian woman from history and literature of the 19th century. Vera’s care for prisoners brings to mind the Decembrist’s wife (a symbol of Russian woman’s self-sacrifice). Vera’s distantness in love and contrastive semantics of snow / chill / water versus flame / light / heat / sun reveal her as an incarnation of Snegurochka (Snow Maiden). Vera’s figurative coldness and nearly physical resistance to love resemble Anna Odintsova in Fathers and Sons by Ivan S. Turgenev. The contrast of exterior coldness and a fiery heart in Vera’s image remind of Tatyana Larina in Eugene Onegin by Alexander S. Pushkin. Comparing the peasant girl Vera both to the sun and an empress echoes Nikolay A. Nekrasov’s lines praising the merits of Russian peasant women in The Red-Nosed Frost. Translations of these works appeared within two decades before Wilde’s play premiere (1883). Thus, Vera’s image might have been formed in Wilde’s mind gradually. Comparing Vera to the morning sun poetically completes her image as a woman whose warmth defeats her own former coldness and whose light dispels the fatal dark in the male character’s soul. The results of the research widen our understanding of the Russian culture influence on Oscar Wilde’s work.