In this powerful and brutal short story, Leskov demonstrates the enduring
truth of the Shakespearean archetype joltingly displaced to the heartland
of Russia. Chastened and stifled by her marriage of convenience to a man
twice her age, the young Katerina Lvovna goes yawning about the house,
missing the barefoot freedom of her childhood, until she meets the feckless
steward Sergei Filipych. Sergei proceeds to seduce Katerina, as he has done
half the women in the town, not realizing that her passion, once freed,
will attach to him so fiercely that Katerina will do anything to keep hold
of him. Journalist and prose writer Nikolai Leskov is known for his
powerful characterizations and the quintessentially Russian atmosphere of
his stories.