“A Gentle Creature” (also translated as “The Meek One”) is an 1876 short story by Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky. The story is a first-person, stream-of-consciousness confession, delivered by a pawnbroker in the hours after his young wife takes her own life. In a frantic manner, he tries to reconstruct their courtship, their marriage, and the moment he lost her. Written as a claustrophobic psychological monologue, the story explores the way in which pride, coercive respectability, and emotional coldness turn a marriage into a system of domination and despair. 

This guide refers to the 2009 Oxford World’s Classics edition, translated from Russian to English by Alan Myers. 

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of death, death by suicide, child abuse, and gender discrimination.

An unnamed narrator tells his story from a first-person perspective. He has been trying to “make sense of all this” (61), referring to the nearby body of his young wife. She died just hours ago, and her body has been laid across two card tables until it can be taken away. He speaks to his audience, promising that he will fill the hours until the body is removed by telling the story of how he met his wife and how she came to take her own life. 

The narrator is a lonely 41-year-old man who runs a pawnshop. The dull routine of his life as a pawnbroker was interrupted some months earlier by the appearance of a young teenage girl, “three months off 16” (62), though she seemed younger. He was struck by her awkward, delicate, meek air and her “big blue wistful eyes” (62). The young girl had been seeking a job as a governess in a series of increasingly desperate classified ads in The Voice. Since she hadn’t found a job, she had to pawn items to pay for more ads. The narrator took pity on the girl and offered her more money than her possessions were worth. 

The girl visited the store repeatedly. These visits broke up the monotony of the narrator’s life, and he began to look forward to her arrival. On one occasion, he offered her advice on how to improve her ads. On another, he quoted lines at her from Faust by Johann Wolfgang van Goethe. Their brief conversation triggered a decision. At the same time, he “naturally” began to investigate her story by bribing a servant named Lukeriya. He discovered that the girl was an orphan who lived with her two “disorganized” aunts. They viewed the girl as an investment, hoping that they could benefit by arranging a lucrative marriage. They didn’t care who the girl wanted to marry, only that they enrich themselves. A neighboring shopkeeper (who had buried two wives already) planned to propose marriage to the girl, which was what prompted her to place ads in the newspaper as a final attempt to take control of her life. Upon learning all this, the narrator decided to approach the aunts himself. 

He offered to marry the girl and delivered a blunt assessment of his status and prospects. He confessed that he had “no great talent” but had some standing in society and his own business (68). He alluded to a certain ambition regarding his business but refused to clarify what he meant exactly. The narrator was pleased with his pitch, though, to his surprise, the girl took some time to decide. Eventually, she agreed to marry him. Her delayed response filled the narrator with a sudden flood of doubts, but he was pleased.

The narrator managed to persuade the girl that he would buy her trousseau (wedding linens) as she assured him that she didn’t want anything. During the early stages of their marriage, she was very enthusiastic. She came “rushing to [him] with love” when he entered a room (71), and he listened to her about various subjects in which he had no interest. He wasn’t used to having another person in his home or life. Carefully, he begins to explain where their relationship went wrong. He describes the way in which his miserly, parsimonious attitude toward finances dulled the girl’s spirits, while he struggled to explain his pawnbroking business to her. He wanted her to work in his store, but he didn’t approve of the way she handled business. The communication between them broke down. They argued and then fell into a silence that was, the narrator believes, more telling than any quarrel. 

The narrator describes the appearance of his home. He felt claustrophobic with his new wife. They visited the theater and then returned home in silence. She seemed “morbid and hysterical” rather than affectionate (74). The narrator believes that many of the problems stemmed from the girl taking it upon herself to value things that people wanted to pawn. The girl took pity on an old woman, the narrator says, and allowed her to exchange one pawned article for one much less valuable. The narrator chastised the girl for this; she then had “a fit of some kind” (77). To the narrator, she seemed to be like a wild animal. He forbade her from being involved in the pawn business in the future. She laughed and left the apartment. 

Later, the girl returned but said nothing about where she went. She began to leave the house more frequently, never telling the narrator what she did when she wasn’t at home. The narrator bribed one of the aunts for information: The girl, he was told, had begun to spend time with a former officer named Lieutenant Yefimovich. The narrator knows the man well, having spent time in the same regiment as Yefimovich. During that time, he says, Yefimovich hurt him more than anyone. He recalls a time—a month earlier—when Yefimovich visited the pawnshop and struck up a conversation with the girl, much to the narrator’s chagrin. The narrator had taken the visit to be an act of insolence, but now he knows that his wife was visiting Yefimovich when she left the house. 

Since the girl knew Yefimovich, she also knew the narrator’s shameful secret. She confronted the narrator, asking him whether it’s true that he was dismissed from his regiment because he wouldn’t engage in a duel. He tried to justify his actions, insisting that he didn’t avoid the duel out of cowardice but because he was making a moral point. The dismissal from the regiment nearly ruined him, and he spent three years wandering the streets of Petersburg impoverished until an inheritance allowed him to set up his pawn business. The girl blamed the narrator for not telling her any of this before their wedding. She then left the house. 

Quickly, the narrator arranged to eavesdrop outside the room in which his wife and Yefimovich were going to meet. The sound of his wife laughing at Yefimovich was a great pain. He interrupted their meeting with a revolver in his hand and dragged his wife away. They returned home in silence. The girl seemed shook up until they arrived home, at which point—the narrator says—she seemed to be sure that he was going to shoot her. She was already familiar with the gun, he explains. He had encouraged her to practice with it since she was going to be working in his shop. That night, she slept on a sofa. This was the first time that they didn’t sleep in the same bed as a married couple. 

The narrator awoke to find the girl above him with the gun in her hand. She pointed the revolver at his temple. He closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep, believing that the girl would recognize his willingness to die. When he eventually opened his eyes, she was gone. He believed that he had triumphed over her. That next day, the narrator purchased a separate bed for his wife. The same day, she fell sick and was confined to bed for six weeks. 

In the present, Lukeriya (whom the narrator hired after marrying his wife) announces that she will not stay in his employ after the girl is buried. The narrator mentions his struggle to pray in this moment. 

The narrator returns to his story. His wife was sick for six weeks, and he called Doctor Schroeder, who visited her often. The narrator didn’t care about the cost. Gradually, she began to recover but remained silent. The narrator believes that she was “too shaken and crushed” to speak (86). He understands this, as he still recalls the pain of his own shameful dismissal from the regiment. He reflects on this, remembering how he was at a theater when a soldier made a derogatory comment about the captain. Believing the incident to be benign, the narrator didn’t stand up for the captain. The other officers accused him of disloyalty. He was told that he could recover his reputation by challenging the hussar to a duel. Since the narrator had no interest in doing so, he resigned in disgrace. After three years of destitution, he opened his pawnshop. He still felt the “permanent stain on [his] reputation” (89), right up until he married the girl. 

The narrator had hoped that the girl would be his friend and help him recover. However, he came to realize that a girl of 16—with problems of her own—may not be able to understand his pain. He hoped that by “withstanding the revolver” he had avenged his shameful past (89). The winter passed as the girl recovered. The narrator snuck furtive glances at her as she went about her work in silence. He performed good deeds that he believed would bring pleasure to the girl, though he notes that—at this stage—he didn’t notice the scales that were covering his eyes. 

The narrator describes a “strange pensiveness” that he discerned in his wife for a month. He summoned the doctor again when she coughed meekly, but she insisted that she was well. The narrator believes that she was “embarrassed” that he was still her husband. One day, he heard her sing. She sang when he wasn’t present, Lukeriya revealed, which sent the narrator into a crisis. He took an aimless walk and then returned home, where he rushed to his wife, dropped before her, and began to kiss her feet. He promised her that he would change. He promised to take her to Boulogne to help her recovery. 

This incident was just five days ago, the narrator says. He believes that—had he a little more time—he would have been able to dispel “the darkness.” Returning to the story, he describes how he spoke frenetically about Boulogne. He talked about his and his wife’s future together, building their new lives after closing down the pawnshop. He talked to her about everything, including his weeping. He worries that looking at her so “rapturously” may have frightened her. On the fateful day, she came to him and, in a frank admission, said that she knew that she was “a criminal” and that she had been tormented by this crime. She promised to be his faithful wife. The narrator rushed out to obtain the passports so that they could go to Boulogne. 

Since the narrator had been out of the house, he must rely on Lukeriya’s account of what happened next. The girl dismissed the servant, who returned later to see the girl standing in the window with a religious icon in her hand. She threw herself out of the window and died. The narrator returned home to find a big crowd gathered around his wife’s dead body. He believes that he was five minutes too late to save her, though he still doesn’t know why she took her own life. He has many more unanswered questions, such as whether she respected him or despised him, but he will never have answers. Now, he paces the room frantically, imagining a confrontation with courts and judges in which he would defend himself. When they take away her body, he has no idea “what on earth [he is] going to do” (103).