About this audiobook
In the Prostakov household, an indulged young nobleman receives lessons without showing much desire to learn. His mother's authority governs domestic life through intimidation and self-interest, while questions of marriage and inheritance draw other people into the family's plans. Education becomes a public appearance as much as a private task.
Denis Fonvizin sets comic incompetence beside arguments about duty and moral character. Tutors, relatives and visitors reveal different understandings of what a person of privilege ought to know. The household's treatment of dependants makes the effects of ignorance visible beyond the classroom, connecting manners with the exercise of power.
The comedy explores upbringing, entitlement and the difference between possessing a social rank and deserving respect. Its humour arises from language and behaviour that expose the values beneath them, inviting readers to consider how a family can reproduce its faults when affection is separated from responsibility and learning is reduced to an obligation to be evaded.
