The Golovlyov Family

Arina Petrovna runs the Golovlyov estate with an iron will, building up its wealth and judging her children by the demands they make on it. Yet the property she hopes to preserve cannot hold the family together. Failed ambitions, disputes over inheritance and old resentments draw her sons back into increasingly bitter dependence. Porfiry, nicknamed Little Judas, becomes a master of affectionate language and pious argument while refusing the help his relatives need. Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin follows the decline of this landowning family across generations. Deaths and divisions of property change who holds power without restoring trust between the survivors. Appeals to duty and parental love become ways of avoiding responsibility. Through domestic conversations and ordinary acts of neglect, the novel shows how greed and hypocrisy wear away human ties. Its family tragedy grows from the distance between professed concern and the cruelty of everyday conduct.