City Folk and Country Folk

A while ago I was calling Turgenev the Russian Jane Austen—now I've discovered that the country has its own Brontë sisters! Like the British writers, the Khvoshchinskaya sisters were poor but educated gentlewomen writing under male pseudonyms in the mid-19th century. But while they have similar biographies, middle sister Sofia's style is less gothic romance and more social comedy. Setting her book in the countryside during the summer after the serfs were emancipated, she uses female heroes and villains—with a few men thrown in—to examine the peculiar differences among the flaky layers of the upper crust. (And I do mean flaky.) Maybe Sofia is the female Turgenev, or the real Russian Austen? Her mother and daughter heroines suffer no tragedy like Ivan's nor get married like Jane's. But by simply using their hearts and minds they achieve a delightfully satisfying triumph.