Sofia Ivanovna Character Analysis

Nicknamed “the shrieker” by Fyodor Pavlovich, Sofia is Fyodor’s second wife and the mother of Ivan and Alexei. She was very young when Fyodor married her and was previously in the charge of General Vorokhov’s widow. Sofia came from another province and was the orphaned daughter of “some obscure deacon.” Sofia later tried to hang herself to escape from the widow. After this failed suicide attempt, she married Fyodor at the age of sixteen. The narrator notes that Fyodor was struck by the girl’s innocent beauty, which was very different from “the coarser kind of feminine beauty” possessed by his orgy partners. She gives birth to Ivan Fyodorovich in the first year of her marriage and has Alexei three years later. She dies from “something like a kind of feminine nervous disorder” when Alexei is four.