Katerina's religiosity in the play Thunderstorm. Katerina is a decisive, integral Russian character (based on the play by A

In Katerina’s worldview, Slavic pagan antiquity, rooted in prehistoric times, with democratic tendencies Christian culture. Katerina’s religiosity absorbs sunrises and sunsets, dewy grass on flowering meadows, birds flying, butterflies fluttering from flower to flower. Along with it is the beauty of a rural church, and the expanse of the Volga, and the Trans-Volga meadow expanse. And as the heroine prays, “what an angelic smile she has on her face, and her face seems to glow.”

Ostrovsky’s earthly heroine, emitting spiritual light, is far from the harsh asceticism of Domostroevsky morality. According to the rules of Domostroy, during church prayer one had to listen to divine singing with unflagging attention, and “keep your eyes down.” Katerina directs her eyes upward. And what does she see, what does she hear during church prayer? These angelic choirs in the pillar sunlight pouring from the dome, this church singing, picked up by the singing of birds, this spirituality of the earthly elements - by the elements of heaven... “As if, it happened, I entered heaven, and I didn’t see anyone, and I didn’t remember the time, and I didn’t hear when the service was over.”

IN Hard time life Katerina will complain: “If I had died as a little girl, it would have been better. I would look from heaven to earth and rejoice at everything. Otherwise she would fly invisibly wherever she wanted. I would fly out into the field and fly from cornflower to cornflower in the wind, like a butterfly.” “Why don’t people fly!.. I say: why people don't fly like birds? You know, sometimes I feel like I'm a bird. When you stand on a mountain, you feel the urge to fly. That’s how I would run up, raise my hands and fly.”

Katerina’s freedom-loving impulses, even in her childhood memories, are not spontaneous: “I was born so hot! I was still six years old, no more, so I did it! They offended me with something at home, and it was late in the evening, it was already dark, I ran out to the Volga, got into the boat and pushed it away from the shore.” After all, this act of Katerina is completely consistent with her people's soul. In Russian fairy tales, the hero is always hiding from his pursuers.

Without feeling the pristine freshness of Katerina’s inner world, you won’t understand vitality and the power of her character, the figurative mystery vernacular. “How frisky I was! - Katerina turns to Varvara, but then, wilting, she adds: “I’ve completely withered with you.” Katerina’s soul, blossoming at the same time as nature, really fades in the hostile world of wild boars and wild boars.

In the early fifties, significant changes occurred in Ostrovsky’s work. Look at merchant life in the first comedy “Our People - We Will Be Numbered!” seems to the playwright “young and too tough.” “...It is better for a Russian person to rejoice when he sees himself on stage than to be sad. Correctors will be found even without us. In order to have the right to correct the people without offending them, you need to show them that you know the good in them; This is what I’m doing now, combining the sublime with the comic.” In the plays of the first half of the fifties, “Don’t Get in Your Own Sleigh,” “Poverty is Not a Vice,” and “Don’t Live the Way You Want,” Ostrovsky depicts mainly the bright, poetic sides of Russian life. The same traditions are preserved in the drama “The Thunderstorm”. The poetics of Ostrovsky’s works still captivates the hearts of readers and viewers.

The image of Matryona Timofeevna in the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'”... Part called "Peasant Woman". In general, this image occupies a special place in all of Nekrasov’s poetry. The Russian woman has always been the main thing for Nekrasov...

Summary of an integrated drawing lesson in the senior group: “Trees”, World of Preschoolers... Summary of an integrated drawing lesson in the senior group: “Trees” Continue to introduce children to non-traditional drawing techniques. Pin...

"Public garden on the high bank of the Volga; beyond the Volga - rural view“- with such a remark Ostrovsky opens “The Thunderstorm”. The action of the Russian tragedy rises above the Volga expanse, opens up to the all-Russian expanse, it is immediately given poetic inspiration: “The city cannot hide, standing at the top of the mountain.”
In Kuligin’s mouth sounds the song “Among the Flat Valley” - the epigraph and poetic grain of “Thunderstorms”. This is a song about the tragedy of goodness and beauty: the richer spiritually and more moral person, the fewer supports he has, the more dramatic his existence. This song already anticipates the fate of the heroine with her human restlessness, with her inability to find support and support, with her inability to adapt to circumstances.

And here before us is Katerina, who alone is given in “The Thunderstorm” to retain the fullness of viable principles folk culture. Where do Katerina’s vital sources of this integrity come from? In order to understand this, we must turn to the cultural soil that nourishes it. Without her, Katerina's character fades like mown grass.
Katerina’s worldview harmoniously combines Slavic pagan antiquity with Christian culture, spiritualizing and morally enlightening old pagan beliefs. Katerina’s religiosity is unthinkable without sunrises and sunsets, dewy grasses in flowering meadows, birds flying, butterflies fluttering from flower to flower. In the heroine’s monologues, familiar Russian motifs come to life folk songs. In Katerina’s worldview, the spring of primordially Russian song culture beats and acquires new life Christian beliefs.

Let's see how Katerina prays, “what an angelic smile she has on her face, and her face seems to glow.” There is something iconographic in this face, from which a bright radiance emanates. But the earthly heroine of A. N. Ostrovsky, emitting spiritual light, is far from the asceticism of official Christian morality. Her prayer is Holy holiday spirit, a feast of the imagination: “Exactly, it happened that I would enter heaven, and I didn’t see anyone, and I didn’t remember the time, and I didn’t hear when the service was over.” Katerina’s life-loving religiosity has gone far from the norms of the old patriarchal morality.
She experiences the joy of life in the temple, bows to the sun in the garden, among the trees, grass, flowers, morning freshness, awakening nature: “Or early in the morning I’ll go to the garden, the sun is just rising, I’ll fall on my knees, I pray and cry, and I don’t know what I’m praying for and why I’m crying; that’s how they’ll find me.”
In the dreams of young Katerina there are echoes of Christian legends about paradise, the divine garden of Eden. It is obvious that the legend of paradise includes all the beauty of earthly life: prayers to the rising sun, morning visits to key students, bright images of angels and birds. In the vein of these dreams is another serious desire - to fly: “Why don’t people fly!.. That’s how I would run, raise my hands and fly.”

Where do these fantastic dreams come from for Katerina? Are they not the fruit of a morbid imagination, or a whim of a refined nature? No. In the consciousness of Katerina, those who entered the flesh and blood of the Russian awaken folk character ancient pagan myths, deep layers are revealed Slavic culture.

Freedom-loving impulses in childhood memories are also not spontaneous. They also bear the influence of folk culture. “I was born so hot! I was only six years old, no more, so I did it! They offended me with something at home, and it was towards evening, it was already dark, I ran out to the Volga, got into the boat, and pushed her away from shore. The next morning they found it, about ten miles away!" After all, this act is consistent with the folk tale about truth. IN folk tales the girl turns to the river with a request to save her, and the river hides the girl in its banks. So little Katerina’s impulse to seek protection from the Volga is quite fabulous and completely social: here is a departure from untruth and evil to the land of truth and goodness, here is the rejection of wrongdoing from childhood and a decisive readiness to leave this world if everything in it becomes boring to her.
And in the Kabanovs' house, Katerina finds herself in " dark kingdom“spiritual lack of freedom. “Everything here seems to be from under captivity,” a stern religious spirit has settled here, democracy has evaporated here, the cheerful generosity of the people’s worldview has disappeared.
During the course of the action, Katerina does not hear Feklushi, but it is generally accepted that she has seen and heard many of these wanderers in her short life. The heroine's monologue, which plays a key role in the tragedy, refutes such a view. Even the wanderers in Kabanikha’s house are different, from among those hypocrites who “due to their weakness did not walk far, but heard a lot.” And they talk about " the last times", about the impending end of the world. These wanderers are alien to the pure world of Katerina, they are in the service of Kabanikha, and that means they can have nothing in common with Katerina.

The monologues of the heroine of the play embody the people's cherished aspirations and hopes. Tenderness and daring, dreaminess and earthly passion are combined in Katerina’s character; The main thing in it is not the mystical impulse away from the earth, but the moral force that spiritualizes earthly existence.
In Katerina, the love of life of the Russian people triumphs, who sought in religion not the negation of life, but its affirmation. The soul of Ostrovsky's heroine is one of those chosen Russian souls who are alien to compromise, who thirst for universal truth and will not agree to anything less.

In the play “The Thunderstorm,” Ostrovsky creates something completely new for his work. female type, simple, deep character. This is no longer a “poor bride,” not an indifferently kind, meek young lady, not “immorality due to stupidity.” Katerina differs from Ostrovsky’s previously created heroines in the harmony of her personality, strength of spirit, and her attitude.

This is a bright, poetic, sublime, dreamy nature, with a highly developed imagination. Let us remember how she tells Varvara about her life as a girl. Visits to church, embroidery classes, prayers, pilgrims and pilgrims, wonderful dreams in which “golden temples” or “extraordinary gardens” appeared to her - these are the memories of Katerina. Dobrolyubov notes that she “tries to comprehend and ennoble everything in her imagination... Rough, superstitious stories turn into golden, poetic dreams for her...”. Thus, Ostrovsky emphasizes in his heroine spirituality, her desire for beauty.

Katerina is religious, but her faith is largely due to her poetic worldview. Religion is closely intertwined in her soul with Slavic pagan beliefs and folklore concepts3. So, Katerina is sad because people don’t fly. “Why don’t people fly!.. I say: why don’t people fly like birds? You know, sometimes I feel like I'm a bird. When you stand on a mountain, you feel the urge to fly. That's how she would run up, raise her hands and fly. Anything to try now? - she says to Varvara. IN parental home Katerina lived like a “bird in the wild.” She dreams about how she flies. Elsewhere in the play she dreams of becoming a butterfly.

The theme of birds introduces the motif of captivity and cages into the narrative. Here we can recall the symbolic ritual of the Slavs releasing birds from their cages. This ritual was carried out at the very beginning of spring and symbolized “the liberation of elemental geniuses and souls from the captivity in which they languished, imprisoned by the evil demons of winter.” This ritual is based on the Slavic belief in the ability of the human soul to reincarnate.

But the theme of birds also sets the motive for death here. Yes, in many cultures Milky Way called the “bird road” because “the souls ascending along this road to heaven were represented by light-winged birds.” Thus, already at the beginning of the play there are motifs that serve as signs tragic fate heroines.

Let's analyze the character of Katerina. This is a strong nature with self-esteem. She can’t bear it in Kabanikha’s house, where “everything seems to be out of captivity,” and the endless reproaches of her mother-in-law and her husband’s stupidity and weak character are unbearable. In Marfa Ignatievna’s house, everything is built on lies, deceit, and submission. Hiding behind religious commandments, she demands complete submission from her household, their compliance with all house-building norms. Under the pretext of moral sermons, Kabanikha methodically and consistently humiliates his household. But if Marfa Ignatievna’s children “adapted” to the situation in the house in their own way, finding a way out in silence and lies, then Katerina is not like that.

“I don’t know how to deceive; I can’t hide anything,” she tells Varvara. Katerina does not want to tolerate unfounded insults from her mother-in-law. “Who enjoys tolerating falsehoods!” - she says to Marfa Ignatievna. When Tikhon leaves, Kabanikha notes that “ good wife“After seeing my husband off, he howls for an hour and a half.” To which Katerina replies: “No need! Yes, and I can’t. Something to make people laugh.”

It is possible that Kabanova’s constant attacks on her daughter-in-law are also connected with the fact that subconsciously she feels in Katerina a significant, a strong character, able to resist the mother-in-law. And Marfa Ignatievna is not mistaken in this: Katerina will endure only up to a certain point. “Eh, Varya, you don’t know my character! Of course, God forbid this happens! And if I’m really disgusted with it, they won’t hold me back by any force. I’ll throw myself out the window, throw myself into the Volga. I don’t want to live here, I won’t do it, even if you kill me!” - she admits to Varvara.

She tells Varvara about a characteristic event from her childhood: “...I was born so hot! I was still six years old, no more, so I did it! They offended me with something at home, and it was late in the evening, it was already dark; I ran out to the Volga, got into the boat and pushed it away from the shore. The next morning they found it about ten miles away! In this story, the motives of Slavic pagan culture are guessed. As Yu.V. notes Lebedev, “this act of Katerina is consistent with people's dream about truth-truth. In folk tales, a girl turns to a river with a request to save her, and the river shelters the girl in its banks.” IN compositionally Katerina's story precedes the ending of the play. For the heroine, the Volga is a symbol of will, space, and free choice.

Longing for will merges in Katerina’s soul with thirst true love. At first she tries to remain faithful to her husband, but there is no love in her heart, and Tikhon does not understand her, does not feel his wife’s condition. She also cannot respect her husband: Tikhon is weak-willed, not particularly smart, his spiritual needs are limited to drinking and the desire to “take a walk” in freedom. Katerina’s love is a selective feeling. She loves Boris Grigorievich, Dikiy's nephew. This young man seems to her kind, intelligent and well-mannered, he is so different from those around him. His image is probably associated in the heroine’s soul with a different, “non-Kalinov” life, with other values to which she subconsciously strives.

And Katerina secretly meets with him while her husband is away. And then she begins to be tormented by the consciousness of the sin committed. Here in “The Thunderstorm” an internal conflict arises, allowing critics to talk about the tragedy of the play: Katerina’s actions not only seem sinful to her from the point of view Orthodox religion, but also diverge from her own ideas about morality, about good and evil.

The tragedy of the play is also given by the motive of the inevitability of the heroine’s suffering, which arises in the context of her character and attitude. On the other hand, Katerina’s suffering seems undeserved to readers: in her actions she realizes only the natural needs of the human personality - the desire for love, respect, the right to select feelings. Therefore, Ostrovsky’s heroine evokes a feeling of compassion in readers and viewers.

The concept of “the duality of a tragic act” (horror and pleasure) is also preserved here. On the one hand, Katerina’s love seems to her to be a sin, something terrible and terrible, on the other hand, it is for her the opportunity to feel happiness, joy, and the fullness of life.

Tormented by the consciousness of her own guilt, the heroine publicly confesses to her husband and mother-in-law. Katerina repents of everything in the city square during a thunderstorm. It seems to her that thunder is God's punishment. The thunderstorm in the play is a symbol of the heroine’s purification, catharsis, which is also a necessary element of tragedy.

However, the internal conflict here cannot be resolved by Katerina’s recognition. She does not receive the forgiveness of her family, the Kalinovites, and does not get rid of the feeling of guilt. On the contrary, the contempt and reproaches of others support this feeling of guilt in her - she finds them fair. However, if those around her had forgiven and pitied her, the feeling of burning shame possessing her soul would have been even stronger. This is the undecidability internal conflict Katerina. Unable to reconcile her actions with her feelings, she decides to commit suicide and throws herself into the Volga.

Suicide, from the point of view of the Orthodox religion, is a terrible sin, but key concepts Christianity is love and forgiveness. And this is exactly what Katerina thinks about before her death. “It’s all the same that death will come, that it will... but you can’t live! Sin! Won't they pray? He who loves will pray..."

Of course, external circumstances were also reflected in this action - Boris turned out to be a timid, ordinary person, he is not able to save Katerina, give her the desired happiness, in essence, he is not worthy of her love. The image of Boris Grigorievich, unlike the local inhabitants, in Katerina’s mind is nothing more than an illusion. And Katerina, I think, feels this during her last meeting with him. And the stronger becomes for her the awareness of her own wrongness, bitterness and disappointment in love itself.

It is these feelings that strengthen the tragic attitude of the heroine. Of course, Katerina’s impressionability and exaltation are reflected here, as well as her reluctance to continue to put up with the cruelty of the world around her, with the tyranny of her mother-in-law, and the impossibility of further following Kalinov’s morality - to live without love. “If she cannot enjoy her feeling, her will, completely lawfully and sacredly, in broad daylight, in front of all the people, if what she has found and what is so dear to her is snatched from her, then she does not want anything in life, she does not want anything in life. doesn't want to. The fifth act of “The Thunderstorm” constitutes the apotheosis of this character, so simple, deep and so close to the position and heart of everyone decent person in our society,” wrote Dobrolyubov.

In Katerina’s worldview, Slavic pagan antiquity, rooted in prehistoric times, harmoniously merges with the democratic trends of Christian culture. Katerina’s religiosity includes sunrises and sunsets, dewy grass in flowering meadows, birds flying, butterflies fluttering from flower to flower. With it is the village church, the vastness of the Volga, and the Trans-Volga meadow expanse. And as the heroine prays, “what an angelic smile she has on her face, and her face seems to glow.” Isn’t she akin to the “sun-glazed” Catherine from the biographies of saints revered by the people:

“And such a radiance emanated from her face that it was impossible to look at her.” Ostrovsky’s earthly heroine, emitting spiritual light, is far from the harsh asceticism of Domostroevsky morality. According to the rules of Domostroy, during church prayer one had to listen to divine singing with unflagging attention, and “keep your eyes down.” Katerina turns her eyes to grief. And what does she see, what does she hear during church prayer? These angelic choirs in the pillar of sunlight pouring from the dome, this church singing, picked up by the singing of birds, this spirituality of the earthly elements - the elements of heaven... “Sure, it happened that I would enter heaven, and I didn’t see anyone, and I don’t remember the time, and I don’t hear when the service is over.” But Domostroy taught to pray “with fear and trembling, with sighing and tears.” Katerina’s life-loving religiosity is far from the harsh precepts of Domostroevskaya morality.

Katerina experiences the joy of life in the temple. She bows to the sun in her garden, among the trees, herbs, flowers, and the morning freshness of awakening nature. “Or early in the morning I’ll go to the garden, when the sun is still rising, I’ll fall on my knees, pray and cry...” In a difficult moment of life, Katerina will lament: “If only I had died as a little girl, it would have been better. I would have looked from heaven to earth and rejoiced.” everything. Otherwise, she would fly invisibly wherever she wanted. She would fly out into the field and fly from cornflower to cornflower in the wind, like a butterfly.” “Why don’t people fly!.. I say: why don’t people fly like birds? You know, sometimes it seems to me that I’m a bird. When you’re standing on a mountain, you feel the urge to fly. That’s how you’d take a run, raise your arms and fly ..."

How to understand these fantastic desires of Katerina? What is this, a figment of a morbid imagination, a whim of a refined nature? No. Ancient pagan myths come to life in Katerina’s mind, and the deep layers of Slavic culture stir. In folk songs, a woman longing for the other side of an unloved family often turns into a cuckoo, flies into the garden to her beloved mother, and complains to her about her hard lot. Let us remember Yaroslavna’s cry in “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign”: “I will fly like a cuckoo along the Danube...” Katerina prays to the morning sun, since the Slavs considered the East a land of almighty fruitful forces. Even before the arrival of Christianity in Rus', they imagined paradise as a wonderful, unfading garden in the domain of the God of Light. There, to the East, all the righteous souls flew away, turning after death into butterflies or light-winged birds. In the Yaroslavl province, until recently, peasants called the moth “darling”. And in Kherson they claimed that if funeral alms were not distributed, then the soul of the deceased would appear to his relatives in the form moth. From pagan mythology, these beliefs passed into Christian. In the biography of Saint Martha, for example, the heroine has a dream in which she, inspired, flies into the blue heavens. Katerina’s freedom-loving impulses, even in her childhood memories, are not spontaneous: “I was born so hot! I was only six years old, no more, so I did it!

They offended me with something at home, and it was late in the evening, it was already dark, I ran out to the Volga, got into the boat, and pushed it away from the shore." After all, this act of Katerina is completely consistent with her folk soul. In Russian fairy tales, a girl (* 62) turns to the river with a request to save her from her evil pursuers. And the river hides her in its banks. In one of the Oryol legends, a girl pursued by the robber Kudeyar runs up to the Desna River and prays: “Mother, most pure Mother of God! Mother, Desna River! It’s not my fault, I’m disappearing from evil man!" After praying, she throws herself into the Desna River, and the river immediately dries up in this place, gives her an onion, so that the girl remains on one bank, and Kudeyar the Robber on the other. And they also say that the Desna somehow rushed to the side - So the wave captured Kudeyar himself and drowned him.

Since ancient times, the Slavs worshiped rivers and believed that they all flow to the end of the white world, to where the sun rises from the sea - to the land of truth and goodness. Along the Volga, in a dugout boat, the Kostroma residents sailed the sun god Yarila and escorted him to the promised land of warm waters. They threw shavings from the coffin into running water. They floated obsolete icons along the river. So little Katerina’s impulse to seek protection from the Volga is a departure from untruth and evil to the land of light and goodness, this is a rejection of “vain lies” from early childhood and a readiness to leave the world if everything in it “gets fed up” with her. Rivers, forests, grasses, flowers, birds, animals, trees, people in the popular consciousness of Katerina are the organs of a living spiritual being, the Lord of the universe, who sympathizes with human sins. Katerina’s feeling of divine powers is inseparable from the forces of nature.

In the folk "Pigeon Book"

The sun is red - from the face of God,

Frequent stars - from the vestments of God,

Dark nights are from the thoughts of the Lord,

Morning dawns are from the eyes of the Lord,

Stormy winds come from the Holy Spirit.

So Katerina prays to the dawn of the morning, to the red sun, seeing the eyes of God in them. And in a moment of despair, she turns to the “violent winds” so that they can convey to her beloved her “sadness, melancholy, sadness.” From point of view folk mythology all nature acquired an aesthetically lofty and ethically active meaning. Man felt himself to be the son of animate nature - an integral and unified being. The people believed that a kind person can tame the forces of nature, and the evil one incur their disfavor and anger. The righteous, revered by the people, could, for example, return raging rivers during floods to their banks, tame wild animals, and command thunder. Without feeling the pristine freshness of Katerina’s inner world, you will not understand the vitality and power of her character, the figurative mystery of the folk language. “How playful I was!” Katerina turns to Varvara, but then, wilting, she adds: “I’ve completely withered with you.” Blooming at the same time as nature, Katerina’s soul really fades in the hostile world of the Wild and Kabanovs.

The fate of Katerina in the drama “The Thunderstorm” evokes pity and at the same time respect. This simple Russian woman differs from the people around her not only in her unfortunate fate and terrible death, but also in her rare spiritual qualities. Russian critics dubbed her “a ray of light in a dark kingdom.” Why if she couldn’t change anything and left this life as a loser?

Initially, Katerina is a spiritually strong person, with a rich original imagination. Thanks to her upbringing, her dreams were directed towards religiosity. But Katerina knew how to poetically rethink church truths. So, she often dreamed of paradise gardens and birds, and when she entered the church, she saw angels.

Katerina’s religiosity makes her more vulnerable (she cannot lie, since it is a sin), and at the same time gives her the power of truth in the implicit struggle with the bigot Kabanikha. Love for Boris brings Katerina face to face with the “dark kingdom,” although she does not perceive her protest as indignation against the existing system. And yet, for every resident of Kalinov, Katerina’s loneliness in their “dark kingdom” is obvious.

It is emphasized by the composition of the work. Katerina - the only hero, who does not have a couple (unlike the couples Kabanov - Dikoy (rich tyrants), Tikhon - Boris (their weak-willed slaves), Varvara - Kudryash (successfully adapted). Katerina, by her origin, is a stranger in Kalinov.

Katerina is the highest, most poetic embodiment of the ideas and principles of the patriarchal world. It is no coincidence that her image was clearly inspired by the author’s images of Russian poetry. The motive of Katerina’s desire for Boris, her “destroyer,” seems to be borrowed from folk song(“You kill, ruin me from midnight...”): “Why did you come? Why have you come, my destroyer? “Why do you want my death?”; “You ruined me!” How strong her feeling must be if she goes to certain death in his name! “Don’t be sorry, destroy me!” - she exclaims, deciding to reciprocate Boris. And gradually Katerina comes to the conclusion: “If I’m tired of being here, they won’t hold me back by any force. I’ll throw myself out the window, throw myself into the Volga.”

But the patriarchal world around is no longer the same as it is in Katerina’s soul. A lump of contradictions grows, and, finally, there is nothing left in Katerina that is similar to what surrounds her.

In the first scene, listening to the dialogue between Kuligin and Tikhon, we imagine Katerina as a submissive victim, a person with a broken will and a trampled soul. “Mama eats her, but she walks around like a shadow, unresponsive. She just cries and melts like wax,” Tikhon says about his wife.

We are ready to see a powerless victim, but a person appears on stage who is capable of dreaming and loving; still able to live. She is a person with a strong, decisive character, with a lively, freedom-loving heart. She ran away from home to say goodbye to Boris, without fear of punishment for this act. She not only does not hide, does not hide, but “loudly, at the top of her voice” calls her beloved: “My joy, my life, my soul, I love you! Respond!”

Katerina’s last monologue depicts her inner victory over the forces of the “dark kingdom.” “Live again? No, no, don’t... it’s not good!” The word “bad” is characteristic here: living under the yoke of Kabanikha, from Katerina’s point of view, is unnatural and immoral: “But they’ll catch me and force me back home...” “Oh, hurry, hurry!” The thirst for liberation also triumphs over dark religious ideas. Katerina becomes convinced of her right to freedom of feeling, to the freedom to choose between life and death. “It’s all the same that death will come, that it will... but you can’t live!” - she reflects on suicide, which from the point of view of the church is one of the most terrible sins. But she found the strength to question this idea: “Sin! Won't they pray? He who loves will pray..."

Just as a thunderstorm on a hot summer day brings coolness, so after Katerina’s death, the victims of the “dark kingdom” awaken a sense of self-esteem and a desire to escape from a humiliating situation. Varvara and Kudryash flee Kalinov. Kuligin addresses those gathered on the shore with reproach. Even Tikhon finds the strength to blame his mother: “You ruined her! You! You!"

Katerina's death, like the sun, illuminated the “dark kingdom” with all its ugly inhabitants.

In Ostrovsky's forty original plays from contemporary life, there are practically no male heroes. Heroes in the sense positive characters, occupying a central place in the play. Instead of them, Ostrovsky's heroines are loving, suffering souls. Katerina Kabanova is one of their many.