65 pages • 2 hours read
Ivan TurgenevFathers And Sons
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1862A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 18-20Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 18 Summary
Anna becomes “paler overnight” (80). She summons Bazarov to her study, asking him to recommend scientific texts and resuming their previous conversation about the nature of happiness. Anna finds it absurd that Bazarov plans to become a provincial doctor like his father: “you, with your ambition, a district doctor!” (81). He claims it is absurd to discuss the future, as it “doesn’t depend on us” (81).
When she takes his reticence as a personal insult and lack of trust, he confesses his love for her, which is so strong “it resembled malice and was perhaps even related to it” (83). He kisses her without permission, and then storms out. Later, he sends her a letter offering to leave—implying that he was too sexually aggressive. Alone with her thoughts, Anna blames herself and blushes, remembering how close they were. She decides that “serenity is still better than anything else on earth” (84), but finds herself crying for reasons unclear to her.
Chapter 19 Summary
During that night’s awkward dinner, Bazarov is filled with contempt and he refuses to speak to anyone. He apologizes to Anna again. With hurt pride, he claims that he must leave because “you don’t love me and never will” (86). Anna, watching his face, realizes that she is scared of him. Arkady is baffled by everyone’s extreme and changed behavior.
The group is saved from some awkwardness by the arrival of Sitnikov, who shows up uninvited with a made-up excuse about Kukshina wanting to inquire about Anna’s health. His arrival, however, is welcome: “the appearance of mediocrity is sometimes a useful thing in life […] it sobers emotions that have become too self-confident or forgetful, suggesting their own proximity to the mediocre” (85).
Bazarov refuses to answer Arkady’s questions about his relationship with Anna or about why he is leaving the next day. Arkady briefly thinks of Anna, until another face replaces hers in his mind. When Arkady laments Sitnikov’s arrival, Bazarov declares, “I need dolts like him” (86), which makes Arkady see “full extent of Bazarov’s conceit” (86).
The next day, Sitnikov must depart when Bazarov and Arkady do, so he offers Bazarov the use of his coach. At a stop at an inn, Arkady and Bazarov abandon Sitnikov, who declares Arkady and Bazarov “stupid idiots” (88). The two friends experience brief harmony. Bazarov mysteriously complains that it is possible for a “man to spoil his whole life” (88). When Arkady complains that this is too oblique, Bazarov declares that it is “better to break rocks on a roadway than let a woman gain control of even the tip of one’s little finger” (89).
Bazarov asks the peasant coach driver if he beats his wife, and when the driver answers yes, asks if the arrangement is reciprocal. The peasant bristles. After riding in silence, they arrive at a “small manor house with a thatched roof” where two peasants are bickering. Bazarov points out his father Vassily Ivanovich Bazarov, waiting for them on the porch, noting that his father has aged significantly.
Chapter 20 Summary
Bazarov’s father is a “tall, gaunt man with disheveled hair and a thin aquiline nose, dressed in a faded military jacket” while his mother Arina Vlasevna Bazarova is a “squat, short old woman” who embraces her son with tempestuous tears (91). Vassily is also overcome with emotion, but attempts to conceal it as he apologizes to Arkady for his wife’s display of “a woman’s weakness” (91). He invites Arkady and Bazarov to his study, while instructing his wife to prepare food. Bazarov calls his father “an amusing old man and very kind” (92), compares him favorably to Nikolai, and upbraids him for constantly apologizing to Arkady for the quality of accommodations. Father and son resemble each other, though Vassily is “constantly in motion” in contrast to Bazarov’s “casual immobility” (93).
Vassily does his best to “not fall behind the times,” so when Bazarov says that some of his medical texts are outdated, the older man placidly agrees that all thinkers eventually fall out of fashion (93). Bazarov tells his father that the younger generation doesn’t put much stock in authority. In response, Vassily praises Arkady’s grandfather, whom he knew in the military, to put himself on a more equal standing with Bazarov’s friend. Vassily describes the poor state of medicine in the provinces before he came.
At dinner, Bazarov’s parents forgo having a servant swat away the flies “for fear of being condemned by the younger generation” (95). Bazarov’s father is “blissful” in his son’s presence, while his mother “never took her eyes off her son,” afraid to ask how long he is planning on staying (95).
Bazarov is up all night ruminating about Anna, while Arkady sleeps well and finds his guest space to his liking.
Bazarov’s mother Arina is also up all night, overjoyed at her son’s return. Better suited to the olden times, she is very attached to Orthodox Christianity and peasant superstitions: she “believed the devil liked to be near water, and that every Jew carried a bloodstain on his chest […] she didn’t eat veal, pigeon, crayfish, asparagus, artichokes, or watermelon because a cut watermelon reminded her of the head of John the Baptist” (97). She contemplates any of her husband’s plans to improve his estate or the situation of the peasants with “horror” (97).
Chapters 18-20 Analysis
Bazarov’s passion for Anna shows more of his dark side. His confession of love and physical embrace resolve little: He refuses to answer any personal questions or offer intimacy, and rebuffs conversation about his plans with philosophical assertions that individuals cannot dictate their futures. Anna is passionately stirred, but also frightened, easily choosing “serenity” over whatever Bazarov offers. His passion is a dark force—his misogyny is too deeply engrained for his love to be redemptive or loving. Instead, Bazarov is clearly bitter and resentful: His conversation with the peasant about whether his wife beats him suggests the affair with Anna has left him emasculated and angry.
When Bazarov uses his romantic rejection as an excuse to leave Nikolskoe, Arkady suddenly realizes that Bazarov does not respect him—that to Bazarov, Arkady is a useful idiot like Sitnikov rather than an equal. Unfortunately, rather than driving Arkady away from Bazarov, this realization only makes him want Bazarov’s approval more. Quickly, Arkady joins in Bazarov’s bullying of the foolish Sitnikov as a way of getting back into Bazarov’s good graces.
Bazarov family home has dynamics similar to what the pair experienced at Marino: Vassily is just as emotionally attached to his son as Nikolai to Arkady, and just as fearful of the distance created by time and advanced education. However, at the Bazarovs’ house, the class differences are reversed: Bazarov’s father is anxious about Arkady’s higher social standing, while Bazarov sarcastically mocked being of lower social class than the Kirsanovs. Vassily is much more deferential to his son’s views than Nikolai. He makes effort to show his modern side, but readily admits that all thinkers fall out of fashion, even those he once respected.
Bazarov’s parents are much more traditional and less educated than the Kirsanovs. Though his mother’s superstitions are clearly wildly outlandish, the Bazarovs are simple and loving. We respond with sympathy to their attempts to concealing their hope that their son will stay longer while he is mostly dismissive and rude. Just as he does in all of his relationships, here too Bazarov struggles to receive love and affection when they are offered.
