Friday, January 14, 2011

Miss Doubkov

Miss Doubkov may be the most remarkable resident of Coaltown. She's certainly the most perceptive. Early on we learn that she figured out long ago who killed Lansing and who rescued Ashley. She seems to understand everyone's situation, everyone's motives. She's the one who helps Lily run off to be a singer. She's the one who instructs George on how to make his confession and escape to Canada. In fact, she was the inspiration for George's dream of Russia.

I don't have a question, here, and I don't have my book to reference all Miss Doubkov's important scenes, but her character seemed to play a significant role in the story of the two families. Thoughts?
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2 comments:

kc said...

I loved her. I love the sophistication and reason and respect for personal liberty that she always contributed. She was a great facilitator of freedom. Maybe her Slavic background provided her tragic sense of life — how she operated with the notion that we all get only one chance at life and how it's a great spiritual crime for any person to interfere with another person's shot at happiness, especially if that interference takes the form of crass selfishness or of silly social expectations.

At first I suspected that she might be devious or corrupt in some awful way, but then I accepted that hint of darkness — which is also a necessary part of her character as a survivor of great ordeals — as part of her glamor and depth. She has known the world and understands what's truly important.

And who can resist the picture of a tatty, scrappy European aristocrat making her way in the New World with the labor of her own hands? It's almost like Wilder is saying "aristocratic" is really more a character attribute than a social rank.

12:38 PM, January 14, 2011
cl said...

I'm about to post something similar on the tapestry thread, but I think she was useful for a sort of fish-out-of-water perspective of small-town America, and she for that same reason could be a confidante for both families because she didn't have that same littleness, if we can call it that, that Beata and Eustacia wrestled with because of social conventions.

Wilder put a lot of emphasis on America's diversity at the time (John Ashley, German, or Eustacia, I think from the Caribbean), and Olga worked as another unique flavor to the mix of what the nation was becoming.

3:36 PM, January 18, 2011

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