Agaf ’ja Tixonovna’s aesthetics and Podkolesin’s philosophy

I argue that the two protagonists of Gogol’s comedy “Ženit’ba” (“Thee Marriage”, 1842) demonstrate typical features of male and female characters according to the early gender psychology formed in the eighteenth and developed in the nineteenth century. Agaf’ja Tixonovna is sensitive and intuitive, she envisages her ideal bridegroom following the well-established aesthetic pattern of selection and synthesis invented by Zeuxis and applied by Lavater. Podkolesin is selfconscious and hyper-reflective, he perceives the highest purpose of marriage according to Plato and his romantic followers. So the main object of Gogol’s romantic irony might be a huge distance between elegant aesthetic, psychological and philosophic theories and the reality they stem from and return to.

The article is written in Russian.