Angels and Outcasts : An Anthology of Deaf Characters in Literature

Mumu

by Jvan T vt~genev EDITORS' PREFACE Gerasim, the noble deaf hero of Mumu, can remain noble only because he is outside of the society of the time due to his deafness. Had he been a man of normal hearing, the tragedies in the story would not have befallen him, but, at the same time, his nobility would have been compromised. His emotions and sentiments could remain pure and unsullied only as long as he lived in isolation, protected from the chance offalling into the habitual obsequiousness ofhis fellow peasants. Had he learned how to get his way (through such obsequiousness, for example), he would probably not have been thrust into the position of having to make such infinitely painful decisions as he has to make in this story. Had he learned of society's ways, he could have performed as others did also, and his nobility would never have been called into existence. And that is the very point ofthe story: Turgenev assails the peasant-master system as a system that corrupts both parties, the peasant and the master (or, in this case, the mistress), and shows that the only way a person could remain true to himself under the system was to be in it but not of it. The story is powerful and well-crafted. Characterization is vivid. Yet, though the central character is deaf, there is really very little of insight into the deaf experience in this nouvelle beyond the mere fact ofisolation and the emotional strength such isolation requires. The suggestion that deaf people are more noble than others is simply another example of the theme found in "Pierre and Camille" and 84 • Mumu • "Doctor Marigold": the romantic belief in the superiority of the "natural" man compared to the socialized man. A question arises at the end of this story: why does Gerasim drown Mumu when he must know at that point that he will leave Moscow to return to the country? Couldn't he, we wonder, have simply taken the dog back with him to the village? It would appear that Turgenev conceived of the world of Gerasim as a world in which no compromise was possible. It was a world of action, not words. Only with words can compromise be made. Is Gerasim's world really a better world? Probably not, but it sure made the world of Moscow look bad. MUMU In One of the streets on the outskirts of Moscow, in a grey house with white columns, a mezzanine, and a balcony that was all warped and out of shape, there once lived a woman landowner, a widow, surrounded by a multitude of serfs. Her SOnS were in government service in Petersburg; her daughters were married; she rarely left the house; and she spent the last years of her miserly and weary old age in solitude. Her day, joyless and overcast, had long passed away, but her evening too was blacker than night. Of all her servants the most remarkable person was the caretaker Gerasim, a man ofwell over six feet, ofimmensely strong build, and deaf and dumb from his birth. His mistress had taken him away from his village, where he lived alone in a little hut, apart from his brothers, and was COnsidered to be almost the most punctual peasant to pay his tax to his landowner. Endowed with quite extraordinary strength, he did the work of four men; everything he put his hand to turned out well. It was sheer delight to watch him ploughing, when, leaning heavily On the plough with 85 • The Nineteenth Century • his huge hands, he seemed to cut open the yielding bosom of the earth alone and without the help of his poor horse; when, some time at the beginning of August, about St. Peter's Day, he plied his scythe, he did so with a shattering force that might have uprooted a wood ofyoung birch trees; when, swiftly and without stopping for a minute, he threshed the corn with a flail of over two yards long, the elongated and firm muscles of his shoulders rose and fell like levers. His perpetual silence lent a solemn dignity to his unwearying labour. He was a fine peasant and, were it not for his affliction, any girl would have been glad to marry him. But now Gerasim had been brought to Moscow, a pair of boots had been bought for him, a long...