Dr.. Hassan Madan
We are accustomed to reading discussions about the most important male and female writers in a particular country, culture, or era, and as a result, the conversation will naturally revolve around the reason or reasons that make these people not only important, but also more important compared to their other colleagues, and in the forefront of that is their most prominent literary works that This advanced status facilitated them, and the same can be said about artists, whether they were musicians, painters, or movie stars. What we are facing is something different and noteworthy, as it relates to the heroes of novels, specifically women, not to their writers. It is the subject of a poll conducted by the Russian literary service “Litrice” to poll readers about the most important female characters in Russian classical literature, which chose to coincide with the celebration of International Women’s Day.
Even those who did not have the opportunity to read Leon Tolstoy’s novel “Anna Karenina”, which is a long novel that requires patience to read, may have been able to get to know the features of the heroine of the novel “Anna” by watching the films that were based on the novel, and there are a large number of them. The unforgettable heroine belongs to… The nobility class in Tsarist Russia, and despite the fact that she is married to a man who holds a strong administrative and societal position, and despite her strong personality and ability to control her emotions and actions, she will fall in love with a young officer with a love that rebels against all factors of control and power in her personality.
Despite Anna Karenina’s fame, she did not occupy first place among the most important figures in Russian literature in the aforementioned poll, but rather came second, as she was preceded by Tatiana Larina from the poetic novel “Evgeny Onegin” by the most famous Russian poet, Alexander Pushkin, and occupied third place (36%) Margarita from the novel “The Master and Margarita” by the Russian writer of the twentieth century, Mikhail Bulgakov. Anna Karenina was not the only one of the characters in Tolstoy’s novels to be included among the five most famous characters who were crowned in the referendum. Natasha Rostova from his novel “War and Peace” also participated with her, followed in fifth place by Masha Mironova from Pushkin’s novel “The Captain’s Daughter.”
It would be curious to know what attracted readers to these female characters more than others, to find, according to the report that dealt with the results, that readers mentioned qualities such as “perseverance in the face of difficulties” (60%), and “kindness” (52%), And “selflessness” (45%). Interestingly, those who disliked classic female characters cited “humility in the face of life’s problems” (77%), “lack of diversity in performing social roles” (58%), and “women’s backwardness” (53%) as negative traits. Main.
It is okay if we conclude with this question: What would the results be if an Arab poll was held about the most important female characters in our literary fiction?
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