No Need for Dogs or Women: Muteness in Turgenev's ‘Mumu’

Turgenev's novella ‘Mumu’ (1852) pushes the position of external observation prevalent in early nineteenth-century Russian prose to its absolute extreme. Gerasim, the hero of the novella, is both deaf and mute, thus rendering it impossible to infer his thoughts and feelings via external observation alone. The culmination of Turgenev's efforts to overcome this self-imposed obstruction is the discovery of a new and qualitatively different narrative position – that of the author of the novel who holds the authority to render transparent the hearts and minds of his characters. This position is soon to be consolidated and explored in the ensuing Russian realist novel.