The Life of a Peasant Woman

Nastya, a quiet, shy and nice-looking peasant servant, strikes a friendship with Masha, the landlord's six-year-old daughter. Then disaster strikes: Nastya is to marry Grigory, an ugly half-wit with a reputation of a village idiot, the outrageous scheme being arranged between her own evil brother Kostik and his business partner Isay Prokudin, Grigory's father, desperately looking for an 'heir'. The marriage proves to be a tragic farce. For Nastya a long period of fierce mental and physical suffering follows. She tries to escape, gets retrieved, suffers from a mysterious mental condition people around her see as "possession" which promptly disappears as she finds herself in the home of Sila Ivanovich Krylushkin, an old man and a local herb-healer. Meanwhile, Grigory ventures for Ukraine to make money as a labourer, Nastya returns to Prokudin's house and slowly gets back to life, still feeling apathetic and unhappy.

She meets Stepan, a good-looking peasant man, equally unhappy in his family life, who falls in love with her. She reciprocates. The two decide to run away, obtain false documents and head for the South aiming at Nikolayev, but get caught in Nezhin, a provincial Oryol Governorate town, and find themselves jailed. Nastya gives birth to a boy, who soon dies. As the pair is being transported back home, Stepan falls ill and lags behind, later to die of typhoid. Now raving mad, Nastya arrives back to the Prokudin house. Again Sila Krylushkin comes to help, giving the woman safe haven in his home where some of his patients are being kept. The house is raided by the police to investigate its owner's illegal healing practice. Nastya is sent to an asylum, escapes, lives in the local woods for some time, then, as the winter comes, is found frozen to death.[2]

In the epilogue to his 1924 publication Pyotr Bykov wrote:

Leskov has attached much importance to this first attempt at a peasant novel. While revisiting his work and making editorial changes he more and more highlighted certain aspects of it which made him more and more intrigued. Once, having gathered around him a tight circle of literary friends, Nikolai Semyonovich read the novel and, having finished, announced his intention to radically re-work it. He fulfilled his promise. Having made drastic changes, he wanted to publish it as a separate edition but failed to do this due to heavy censorship that was there [in the late 1880s].

According to Bykov, Leskov has presented him the manuscript as a gift, a sign of gratitude for the Bibliography of N.S. Leskov. Thirty years: 1860–1889 which Bykov compiled and also for the work he's done as an editor for the 1889 Complete Leskov edition.

"I think it would be only fair to pass to you this re-worked version of The Life of a Peasant Woman which I renamed now into Amour in Lapotochki. Read this and do not judge me harsh. May be you'll be able to make use of it when better day for Russian peasants will come and there will be a renewed interest towards [this book]," Leskov has allegedly told him.[2]

The fact that Leskov indeed was going to make changes to his 1863 original text was indisputable, for he wrote of this very intention in his foreword to the 1867 collection called The Novelets, Sketches and Stories. It was there that he promised that the book's 2nd volume will feature "an attempt at a peasant novel" called Amour in Lapotochki. But this re-worked version of The Life of a Peasant Woman never materialized – neither in the Vol.2 of Stories by M.Stebnitsky (1869), nor in its 1873 re-issue or in the 1889 Complete Leskov.

From Bykov's account it followed, though, that Leskov re-wrote his novel in the 1880s. The author's contemporaries insisted that such work could have been done much earlier, in the 1860s. Later scholars were doubting Bykov's tale in general as well as particular details of it, like that concerning the author's reading the original text (7 printer sheets) to his friends in one sitting – only to declare his intention to re-work it. It was only logical for Leskov to gather his friends to read them the new version of the text. The question why he's never published it (under the new title, which apparently appeared in 1867) remained unanswered.[2]

In the mid-20th century Soviet versions of Complete Leskov Bykov-published version has been ignored. In fact, the whereabouts of Bykov's manuscript by this time have been unknown, apparently it has been lost. Yet, the comparative analysis of the two texts has been made. Changes that Leskov has made, were mostly editorial cuts: he removed numerous descriptions and side-plots, like the whole story of Nastya's tender relations with (part 1, chapter 3), the anecdote about a bell being dragged uphill (part 1, chapter 4), the story of the newly-wed's journey to Nastya's landlord (part 1, chapter 5). It looked indeed as if Leskov was trying to make the piece look more like a traditional novel, removing sketch-like aberrations he deemed superfluous. A lengthy epilogue, describing the life of the villagers after the abolition of serfdom has been removed too; perhaps for the author it looked dated. One large piece of text has been added to the original one (part 1, chapter 8): it dealt with "strange feelings" Nastya has had on her way from the local smith's house back to that of Prokudin, - an obvious attempt to add psychological touch to the description of his heroine's mental condition.[2]

• Житие одной бабы. The original Russian text.