LIUDMILLA PETRUSHEVKAYA AND THE RECONFIGURATION OF MOTHERHOOD IN THE TIME: NIGHT
LIUDMILLA PETRUSHEVKAYA AND THE RECONFIGURATION OF MOTHERHOOD IN THE TIME: NIGHT

Summary/Abstract: Lyudmila Petrushevskaya, the writer of The Time: Night revolutionizes the image given to mothers and grandmothers throughout history in Russian literature. She lived during the communist years and wants to bring awareness through her stories. The characters she creates aren’t built after that ideology and this makes them seem real and human. They are full of problems and mistakes. She builds stories about people living across the hall, people who lived the terror of the communist years, people who endured poor conditions and people who poured their frustrations on their children. Her flawed mothers are a huge part of her imagined novellas in which both love and cruelty dominate the relationship between mother and children. “Love them and they’ll tear you into pieces, don’t love them and they’ll leave you all the same.” She leaves, though, a crumb of hope at the end of the novel when the daughter of her main characters breaks the vicious circle by leaving her house forever.

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