The Bridegroom Alexander Pushkin: An Explication, The Main Idea

The Bridegroom: An Explication


            Considered as the father of modern Russian literature, Alexander Pushkin is known for his use of realistic characters and simple language in his work. The Bridegroom, first published in 1825, utilized a number of motifs from the Russian folklore, Robber Bridegroom. It is a full-scale narrative poem, almost a short story, and showcased the oral storytelling tradition of the peasantry with which Pushkin grew up with.


            On one hand, The Bridegroom is a sinister tale of a merchant’s daughter and a traumatic experience she has undergone as a child, and how she was able to liberate herself only years later through her uncanny courage and quick thinking. From the beginning of the poem, one already knows that something dark has happened to Natasha, what with her missing for three days, and with her coming in distraught and unwilling to answer any questions from her parents (Pushkin, 1982, l. 1–8). The narrative provides us with greater understanding of the terror that Natasha went through by describing what she feels “She did not hear them,/She could hardly breathe/Stricken with foreboding” (Pushkin, 1982, l. 8–10). The rhythm of the poem itself conveys this breathlessness, so that when one reads the poem out loud, he might experience the same breathlessness experienced by Natasha as she ran away from the woods where terror resides. Through this simple literary tool, Pushkin keeps the reader gripped to the poem, until the secret of what happened to poor Natasha is revealed and the use of the title The Bridegroom is finally explained.


            The Bridegroom is quite easy to understand, its story, both horrifying and empowering. But far from the story of a child who witnessed a murder conducted by the man who would soon become her bridegroom, the poem is really a comment on the Russian society and its various traditions. For example, notice these words used by the matchmaking woman when she come to call on Natasha’s family, “you/have the goods and I/A buyer for them:/A handsome young man./He bows low to no one,/he lives like a lord/With no debts nor worries;/He’s rich and generous,/Says he will give his bride,/On their wedding day,/A fox-fur coat, a pearl,/Gold rings, brocaded dresses,/Yesterday out driving,/He saw your Natasha;/Shall we shake hands/And get her to church?” (Pushkin, 1982, l. 45–60). The use of the words “goods” to refer to Natasha and “buyer” to refer to the soon-to-be bridegroom clearly illustrates the prevalence of marriages of convenience during the time the poem was written. In essence, these marriages were love-less and were simply commercial in nature, one was a buyer, the other was a good to be bought, not a human being to be loved and cherished for, as is the notion of marriages we have today. One is then prompted to ask, why would the young man wish to marry Natasha, someone he has only seen once, if he wasn’t...