The main character of the drama is Katerina, a young woman, the daughter-in-law of Kabanikhi. Katerina is a whole person, brought up by the Volga expanse. In her character, the playwright emphasized the awakening of consciousness, a sincere deep feeling of love and independence, tenderness, love for beauty and an irresistible attraction to a harmonious and happy life. These character traits do not allow her to come to terms with despotism and lies; she organically does not tolerate those house-building orders that contradict the natural needs of man, enters into a tragic conflict with them, wages a stubborn unequal struggle, as far as she can, and, finally, dies in the waters of the Volga, unhappy, but not surrendered.

The image of Katerina is depicted realistically and embodies the essential character traits of a Russian woman on the eve of the liberation reform. The development of Katerina's character is so naturally and vividly presented that it accurately conveys to us the story of a terrible, tragic life that fell to the lot of a disenfranchised woman in old Tsarist Russia.

From childhood, Katerina is brought up in the spirit of religion and humility. She was given in marriage to Tikhon Kabanov without her consent and without love. She was too young to understand this feeling. It all happened like in a dream. She did not dare to resist her parents and decided to endure rather than cause trouble to her relatives. In the house of Kabanova, Katerina did not meet a humane attitude towards herself either from her husband or from her mother-in-law. On the contrary, she was forbidden to have her own judgment, her own feelings, and in material terms she was directly dependent on her mother-in-law. Soon she has a longing for happiness and love, a desire to find a response in the heart of a loved one.

“At night, Varya, I can’t sleep,” she says, “I keep imagining some kind of whisper: someone is talking to me so affectionately, like a dove cooing. I don’t dream anymore, Varya, as before, paradise trees, yes mountains, but it’s as if someone hugs me so warmly, hotly and leads me somewhere and I follow him, I follow.
As a child, Katerina loved to dream romantically. This romanticism was supported in her by religion and a painfully poor, monotonous life. Her imagination worked tirelessly and took her into some kind of poetic world. The harsh reality, the senseless ravings of wanderers turned into golden temples, extraordinary gardens. In the future, we see how a gloomy and sorrowful life sobers her up and leads her to a real view. Finding herself in the dungeons of the boar's house, Katerina did not put up with humiliation and was eager for light, air, she wanted to indulge in a dream, look at the Volga, admire nature, but she is kept in captivity, her aspirations are trampled on. At first, as before, she seeks an answer and support in religion, but she no longer finds consolation in it, she cannot imagine an ideal world with the same clarity.

“A dream comes into my head. I won't leave her anywhere. If I start thinking, I won’t collect my thoughts, I won’t pray, I won’t pray in any way. I babble words with my tongue, but it’s not at all the same in my mind: it’s as if the evil one is whispering in my ears.
Katerina matured, a real outlook on life was formed in her. She understands that the Kabanovs' house is the same prison; her husband is disgusted with her, because he is under the shoe of his mother and lives an animal life without any aspirations. “How can I love you,” she bluntly declares to Tikhon. And about Varvara, she will say about Tikhon: “And in the wild, he is as if bound.” At first, Katerina, being a prisoner of traditions, was afraid of new thoughts, worried about the future, tried to restrain her impulses. But the passion that gripped her turned out to be above all: she sincerely fell in love with her nephew Wild Boris and decided to leave Kabanova's house. She fell in love with Boris because he is not like the others, humane, maybe a friend who recognizes the right of human dignity to others.

The tragedy of Katerina's position is aggravated by the fact that, breaking the shackles of false morality, she could not finally defeat in herself those traditions that religion and upbringing instilled in her and which paralyzed and weakened her struggle. She was instilled with fear from childhood. Her life is filled with contradiction: either she boldly takes a new step, or cries, prays. For every thought she expects some kind of punishment, she is afraid; she thinks that the storm will kill her like a criminal. This fear is supported by those around her. Feklusha scares her with stories about the end of the world, she is horrified by a half-crazy lady threatening with a stick: "You will all burn in fire in unquenchable."

But love of freedom kindles in her hatred for the world of inertia and lies. “Who has fun in captivity? At least now I live, toil, I don’t see a gap, ”she says. And in her actions she had gone so far that she could no longer return to her former position. If you can not enjoy the sun, joy, love, then she does not want to live. When they found out about her connection with Boris and when Boris left Kalinovo, Katerina tragically experienced loneliness and came to the thought of death. Here are the words the playwright conveyed her mood in the last monologue:
“Where to now? Go home? No, I don’t want to go home, to the grave!., to the grave! It's better in the grave... There's a little grave under the tree... how nice... But I don't even want to think about life. Live again? No, no, don't... Not good.! But people are disgusting to me, and the house is disgusting to me, and the walls are disgusting.
Katerina did not want to live in slavery and preferred death to life.

Did Katerina Kabanova have a way out

The play by Alexander Nikolayevich Ostrovsky "Thunderstorm" was released in 1860, during a period of public upsurge. The story itself, told in the play, reflects the typical conflicts of the era of the 60s: the struggle between the obsolete morality of petty tyrants and their unrequited victims and the new morality of people in whose soul a sense of human dignity awakens. A special place among the characters of the play is occupied by the image of Katerina. According to Dobrolyubov, from him "breathes on us with a new life, which opens up to us in her very death."

Katerina is a poetic and dreamy nature. Remembering her childhood and girlish years, she herself tells Varvara about how the world of her feelings and moods was formed. She lived happily and easily in her parents' house, but she did not receive an education. Stories of wanderers and praying women replaced books for her. Impressive by nature, Katerina eagerly listened to their every word, taking everything on faith. This is how most women were educated in the 19th century. Today the wanderers have replaced the TV. Katerina speaks in a language that only a poetically inclined and gifted woman could speak in the merchant environment of that time. It contains elements of poetic folk speech, and the influence of church and book literature, as well as church services, which Katerina loved to attend "until death". She is distinguished by a special soft lyricism, emotionality and sincerity, which correspond to the general character of Katerina. The play repeatedly repeats an image that helps to understand the main thing in Katerina's character - the image of a bird. In folk poetry, the bird is a symbol of will. Hence the constant epithet "free bird". “I lived, I didn’t grieve about anything, like a bird in the wild,” Katerina recalls about how she lived before her marriage, “... Why don’t people fly like birds? she says to Barbara. “You know, sometimes I feel like I’m a bird.” But the free bird got into an iron cage. And she struggles and yearns in captivity.

The nature is dreamy, impressionable, with a predominantly “loving, ideal” character, according to Dobrolyubov’s definition, Katerina at the same time has an ardent and passionate soul. Katerina suffers only for the time being. “And if I get cold here,” she says, “they won’t hold me back by any force. I'll throw myself out the window, I'll throw myself into the Volga. I don’t want to live here, so I won’t, even if you cut me!” Among the victims of the "dark kingdom" Katerina stands out for her open character, courage, and directness. “Deceive - I don’t know how; I can’t hide anything, ”she answers Varvara, who says that you won’t live in their house without deceit. And such an impressionable, poetically minded and at the same time resolute woman finds herself in the Kabanova family, in a musty atmosphere of hypocrisy and importunate, petty guardianship, from which it breathes deathly cold and callousness. Naturally, the conflict between this atmosphere of the "dark kingdom" and the bright spiritual world of Katerina ended tragically.

I would like to ask the question: “Could it have been different?” The tragedy of Katerina's situation was further complicated by the fact that she was given in marriage to a man whom she did not know and could not love, no matter how hard she tried to be a faithful and loving wife. Katerina's attempts to find a response in her husband's heart are shattered by Tikhon's slavish humiliation and narrow-mindedness and the rudeness of his interests. Tikhon thinks only about how to run to the Wild for a drink, a spree. He, like Katerina, wants to escape from the house, but, unlike his wife, this sometimes succeeds. It is easy to understand with what force her feelings flare up when she meets a person who is not like everyone around her. Katerina loves differently than the women around her. She is ready for anything for a loved one, transgressing even those concepts of sin and virtue that were sacred to her. Katerina's religiosity is not Kabanikh's hypocrisy, but a deep sincere conviction. “Ah, Varya,” she complains, “I have a sin on my mind! How much I, poor thing, wept, no matter what I did to myself! I can't get away from this sin. Nowhere to go. After all, this is not good, because this is a terrible sin, Varenka, that I love another. The catastrophe comes precisely because Katerina cannot and does not want to hide her sin.

In the fourth act of the drama in the scene of repentance comes the denouement. A terrible thunderstorm, which she perceives as a “thunderstorm of the Lord”, “a terrible lady with her curses and an ancient picture on a dilapidated wall depicting a“ fiery Gehenna ”- all this almost drives Katerina crazy. She publicly, on the city boulevard, repents before her husband. If the drama ended with this scene, the invincibility of the foundations of the "dark kingdom" would be shown. This would give Kabanikha the right to triumph: “Where does it lead!” But the drama ends with Katerina's suicide, which should be taken as her moral victory over the "dark forces", which she did not want to submit to. By this, she showed her desperate, albeit powerless protest against the "dark kingdom". Today you can ask the question: “Why did she do it?” After all, she could leave home, like Varvara, which would have annoyed Kabanikha even more. But Katerina was ready to do it. She was not afraid of distant Siberia, where her beloved Boris Grigorievich was sent. But he was too weak, he did not have enough character to escape from the power of the Kabanovs and the Wilds. He is the only one among all who truly understands Katerina, but he is unable to help her: he does not have the determination to fight for his love. The path to a free life for Katerina is closed, and she does not want to go home, because "what is home, what is in the grave."

She sees no other way than suicide. Yes, it would probably be difficult to find a way out in the conditions of the mores that reigned in society in the middle of the 19th century. After all, another heroine of Russian literature later comes to the same decision - Anna Karenina. Dobrolyubov called Katerina "a ray of light in a dark kingdom," which for a moment illuminated its deep darkness.

In 1864, A. I. Herzen wrote about The Thunderstorm: “In this drama, the author penetrated into the deepest recesses<…>Russian life and threw a sudden ray of light into the unknown soul of a Russian woman who is suffocating in the grip of the inexorable and semi-savage life of the patriarchal family.

The image of Katerina rightly belongs to the best images of women not only in the work of Ostrovsky, which today is acquiring a new significance, but also in all Russian fiction.

The action of Ostrovsky's drama "Thunderstorm" takes place in the nineteenth century, in a small provincial town where patriarchal orders reign. Katerina, the main character of the play, lives in the wealthy house of the Kabanovs with her husband Tikhon and her mother-in-law, nicknamed Kabanikha for her absurd character and tyranny. In his work, Ostrovsky shows the conflict between the "dark kingdom", which personifies the way in the Kabanovs' house, and Katerina, who would like to build her family on the principles of mutual love and respect. Katerina, living in the Kabanov family, is forced to endure the oppression of the tyranny of the Kabanikh. The situation in the family requires her to lie and deceive. “It’s impossible without this, you remember where you live; our whole house rests on this,” says her husband’s sister Varvara. Everything that surrounds Katerina rebels against her natural aspirations and desires. In a conversation with Varvara, she simply and at the same time very accurately conveys her attitude to the current situation in five words. "Yes, everything here seems to be from under captivity!" She is torn from this captivity to a free life, even if she has to die in this impulse. She does not consider life the existence that she leads in the Kabanov family. Katerina wants to live, not exist, she wants to live freely without any pressure on her. Her husband Tikhon cannot help her in her quest to live freely. He, like Katerina, suffers a lot from the old Kabanikh. He is simple-minded and not at all evil, but extremely weak-willed. He is not able to protect his wife from the attacks of his own mother. Katerina, realizing this, feels pity for him. This feeling in her is much stronger than her love for Tikhon. In her desire to escape from the dark kingdom, she is looking for a person who would understand her and share her views. It turns out to be the nephew of a wealthy landowner Boris. This is a well-educated person who arrived from the capital, he does not accept the customs prevailing in the city, and understands Katerina well. In addition, he is financially dependent on his uncle, just like a young woman from her husband and mother-in-law. She fell in love with him more out of desperation than for his spiritual qualities. Katerina cannot decide, cannot find a way out of the current situation.
But there is always a way out of any situation and not one. One of the possible options is to leave everything as it is and continue to endure and try to come to terms in the hope that something will change in the future. If it were possible to change the people around her ... But this will not happen. Kabanova cannot leave what she was brought up with, and her spineless son cannot suddenly, for no apparent reason, acquire firmness and independence.
Another way seems less impossible. Katerina could have fled with Boris from the arbitrariness and oppression of her family. Secretly meeting with Boris, she asks him: "Take me with you from here." But this is also impossible, because Boris is Diky's nephew and financially dependent on him. In addition, Dikoy and Kabanov agreed to send him to Klyakhta, and, of course, they would not let him take Katerina with him. In essence, Boris is the same Tikhon, only "educated". Education took away from him the strength to do dirty tricks, but it did not give him the strength to resist them.
She also could not simply leave the Kabanovs' house and return to her parents or settle somewhere with relatives, since in those days women had a different position in society than now. This was not allowed by moral standards. According to the social norms of that time, the wife had to obey her husband and, as a rule, she was financially dependent on him.
In the end of "Thunderstorm" a terrible challenge is given to self-foolish power. Ostrovsky, at the end of his tragedy, shows the reader the impossibility of existence in an environment where tyranny reigns with its violent and deadly principles. His Katerina chooses the only worthy way out of that terrible situation. She carried her protest to the end. Rushing into the abyss, she gained freedom, showed everyone that life in the "dark kingdom" is much worse than death. Although, from the point of view of Christian morality, Katerina did wrong (after all, the church condemns suicides), I believe that this was the only way out for her, since patience would destroy her personality, teach her to lie and dodge, kill everything good and positive in her .

Katerina Kabanova - the heroine of the drama A.N. Ostrovsky "Thunderstorm"
A wonderful woman, married to Tikhon, a weak and weak-willed person, unable to resist the iron will, despotism of her mother, Marfa Ignatievna Kabanova, who constantly mocks Katerina., She lives "from the white world."
The action takes place in the city of Kalinov, the "dark kingdom".
In this city, people live who are not able to appreciate beauty, who demand complete submission, who are malicious, deceitful, vile, in their essence.
That is the majority.
Katerina is one of the few who can resist this.
She is a sensitive nature, alive, capable of loving, truly feeling.
With all her being, Katya strives to resist the "cruel morals" of the city.
She was happy in her parents' house and treated her mother with great trepidation and love "she did not look for a soul in her."
"Thunderstorm" is the highest achievement of Ostrovsky in the pre-reform years (1859)
The central conflict of the play, conceived as a social drama, gradually reaches true tragedy. This is due to the image of Katerina Kabanova.
Katerina is a pure, bright nature, she loves and feels life absolutely sincerely.
Books, candles, icons - the world that Katya loved. This is a person with high spirituality, spiritual purity.
It is in herself, and the rest of the world, vicious, by people living in darkness, complete darkness of their self-interest, baseness. She was too beautiful for them, for the world in which she was forced to exist.
Most of all, Katerina herself needed support, support, she is tender, fragile, like a flower, tender, defenseless, her vulnerable soul cannot stand rough treatment.
Previously, her mother was such a support.
Katya lived in her little world, where she was calm, warm, comfortable.
In care, affection and love.
In marriage, she loses everything. Her former world is destroyed, and the new one is too cruel, gloomy, gloomy for her.
There is nothing in it. From her husband's side, she receives nothing but a heightened sense of loneliness. Emptiness, cold, pain.
Katya is slowly dying. Her soul is withering.
The life of a “bird in a cage” disgusts her.
Fly away, run away, fly high into the heavens as a proud and free bird, not chained to the chains of foundations, traditions that are alien to any renewal.
She needs freedom like air, but there is nothing to breathe. The only salvation is in prayers, in turning to God.
I see how Katerina, praying, remembers that cheerful, carefree and happy time when you are young, you rejoice at every day, moment, second, breathe deeply and feel free, from prejudice, suffering, pain, where you are understood and loved.
Katya lives in the past, but this makes her soul groan.
She wants to be happy with her husband, to love him, but she cannot.
Katya meekly tries to come to terms with "boar's mores", but the desire to be free is stronger.
Boris for the unfortunate woman is like a saving straw, she grabs onto it in order to survive.
Passion captures her entirely. She plunges into the pool, she asks the Lord for help to get out of it, but she cannot overcome the temptation.
She needed the support of her husband, mother-in-law, but none of them supported her.

I think that for Katya there was another way, without fear and reproach, and this is not suicide.
You just need to stop feeling like a victim, not look for support and support in others, wait for someone to come and help, but become the very support for yourself. After all, her rich inner world can give her both strength and freedom .. You just have to not run away and not look for support in Boris, as salvation, living in the past or pitying yourself.
Oppose the "dark kingdom" of Kalinov, Kabanikha and Wild, destroy all that evil that has subjugated the city.
Katerina is a very strong person, but her trouble is that she does not realize this.
First of all, you need to listen to yourself, your heart, soul and not depend on external circumstances, they are not able to break and conquer, I think Katerina did it herself.
His excessive impressionability, sometimes bordering on insanity, his fanatical religiosity, his humility with fate, hope, faith, in someone, but not in himself.
Katya could not surrender to the feeling for Boris, although it captured her entirely.
I could not reveal my inner potential, my amazing abilities to feel subtly, to love, to feel harmony with nature and with God.
Katerina is a great woman, a great person.
They say about such people, "the Lord kissed."
Beautiful. Be like flowers in the life of your beloved men.
And only love, light, a “beam” of the sparkling light of the soul, coming from the depths of you, illuminates your path in any, the most “dark” kingdom. Shine for your loved ones. Be happy. And never renounce the feeling, because it’s exactly what Katerina did, finding no way out, find the strength to treat your loved ones with kindness and affection, so that they feel: you love.

Was Katerina's death accidental? Could it have been avoided? And, finally, was there a different path for the heroine? There is no single answer to all these questions.
Was there another way? I think there was. Katerina could become a nun and devote herself to the God she loved so much. She could, of course, leave her husband, but she would cover herself with shame and take sin into her soul, because marriages, in those days, were concluded before God.
Was the heroine's death accidental? Unlikely. Everything was leading up to this. The endless nit-picking of the mother-in-law, the indifference of her husband strongly influenced Katerina, tormented her soul. When Boris betrayed the girl, this was the last straw. The betrayal of a loved one broke Katerina, and she decided on a desperate act. The girl nevertheless “took off”, stepping on the high bank into the Volga, “spread her wings” and boldly fell into the abyss.
Dobrolyubov called Katerina "a ray of light in a dark kingdom." The girl tried to fight the old order in Kalinovo. She won a victory, albeit a sad one, but a victory nonetheless. The death of Katerina served as the first impetus for the destruction of the old order and the arrival of a new generation.
Is it possible to meet people like Katerina in our time? I believe that it is possible. Even in the most “dark time” there is a person with a pure and open soul, able to sacrifice himself for the benefit of others.

Essay on literature on the topic: Was there another way for Katerina? (based on the play by A. N. Ostrovsky “Thunderstorm”)

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