Compare And Contrast Turgenev's Attitude Towards Peasants And Serfs

Turgenev’s Attitude Towards Peasants and Surfs Russian peasants and serfs in Turgenev’s time and long before were worse off than most in the rest of Europe. They belonged to nobles, landowners or merchants and could be treated the same as slaves. Turgenev had written a fictional book based off of his travels and interactions with different people through out the Russian country side. The main character is the narrator of this book, who is that of a noblemen hunter. The narrators shows his attitude of the peasantry plus serf and their place in society. Assuming that Turgenev’s attitude is the same as his narrator character his attitude is quite clear. “His characters sometimes reflect his own views.”# Turgenev had a critical attitude of the peasants and serfs place in Russian society. This critical attitude can be seen through out the stories in his book. He demonstrates this with how the peasants plus serfs were portrayed, interact with others and were treated. There are common themes through many of the stories that show the narrators attitude on peasants and serfs. These plus the careful way in which Turgenev wrote these stories show the resistance to change the peasants and serfs place in

“By depicting serfs sympathetically, the sketches contributed to the growing dissatisfaction with the evils of serfdom.”# While he had wrote this as fiction and had tried to mask much of his critical attitude it was not enough. “circumstance that led to Turgenev’s arrest, followed by his exile to his estate of Spasskoye.”# Even though he was not successful in avoiding arrest he did still however try to mask what he had written about. This had been done by claiming the book as fiction. “Although the fictional characters of Turgenev and Dostoevsky often reflected the political-ideological struggles of their