“Someone Else’s Wife and the Husband Under the Bed” is a short story by the 19th-century Russian writer Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky.

History of creation

Initially, Dostoevsky conceived and wrote two separate stories, “Someone Else’s Wife” and “The Jealous Husband.” On December 31, 1847, the St. Petersburg Censorship Committee authorized the publication of the story “Someone Else’s Wife,” which was published in 1848 in the first issue of Andrei Kraevsky’s Otechestvennye Zapiski magazine with the subtitle “Street Scene.” On October 31, 1848, permission was received to publish the story “The Jealous Husband,” which was published that same year in the eleventh issue of Otechestvennye Zapiski with the subtitle “An Unusual Incident.” Based on the similarity of the narrator in both works, as well as their initial connection with the story “The Christmas Tree and the Wedding”, researchers of Dostoevsky’s work believe that initially all three stories were supposed to be included in the cycle “From the Notes of an Unknown Man”, which also included the story “The Honest Thief”. Later, in 1859, while preparing for the publication of his two-volume collected works, Dostoevsky decided to combine the two stories into one – “Someone Else’s Wife and the Husband Under the Bed”.

At the same time, the first part of the new story almost completely coincides with the story “Someone Else’s Wife”. Only individual lines of the characters were slightly changed. For the second part of the new story, the story “The Jealous Husband” was significantly reworked. In particular, the scene of the argument under the bed was shortened, and frequent repetitions of individual words and expressions were eliminated. And after the author’s introduction was removed, the connection with the story “The Christmas Tree and the Wedding” was lost. The reworked story was first published in the first volume of the collection “Works of F. M. Dostoevsky”, published in 1860 by Nil Osnovskiy.

Characters

The main character of the work is a jealous husband. At the end of the story, he himself feels like he is in a vaudeville when, crawling out from under the bed, he says: “You, your Excellency, will laugh! You see a jealous husband on stage.”

Plot

Part I

A gentleman in a bekesh was waiting for a lady near one of the houses in St. Petersburg. At eight o’clock in the evening, in the middle of the street, an unknown gentleman in a raccoon coat approached him. After some confusion, the gentleman in the raccoon coat apologized for disturbing him and left. After some time, the gentleman in the bekesh again heard the voice of the gentleman in the raccoon coat. He asked the gentleman in the bekesh if he had seen a lady in a fox fur coat and a dark velvet bonnet with a black veil.

The gentleman in the bekesh replied that he had not seen one. After some time, the gentleman in raccoons again approached the young man in the bekesh and said that he was looking for a lady. The lady’s husband was standing on the Voznesensky Bridge. And he asked the gentleman in the raccoon coat to catch this lady with her lover, and the gentleman in the raccoon coat was very worried only because he was afraid of missing this lady.

The gentleman in the bekesh refused this offer. The gentleman in the raccoon coat asked the gentleman in the bekesh to tell him that he was not a lover, and the gentleman in the bekesh replied that he was a lover, but not the wives of the gentleman in the raccoon coat, to which the gentleman in the raccoon coat said, “Wives? Who told you wives, young man? I am single, that is, I am a lover myself…”. Soon the gentlemen found out that they both had acquaintances living on the third floor.

Then there was noise and laughter, two attractive girls came out of the porch, the two gentlemen rushed to them, but realized that these were not the ones they needed. Then both gentlemen went up to the third floor, where a certain Bobinitsyn lived. Noise and voices were heard in Bobinitsyn’s apartment. The door opened, and the gentleman in the raccoon fur coat fell headlong down the stairs. A man and a woman passed by the young man in the bekesh, his heart sank… He heard a familiar female voice, and then a hoarse male voice, completely unfamiliar.

The young man in the bekesh, whose last name was Tvorogov, suddenly grabbed the lady by the hand and asked: “Glafira! Where are your vows?” Glafira told Tvorogov that the man with the hoarse voice was her husband and that after the horses were brought, he would return for her. The lady rushed to the porch. Tvorogov caught up with her. Glafira’s husband Ivan Andreevich stood at the porch with the gentleman in the raccoon fur coat.

A hoarse voice was heard. A gentleman of enormous stature appeared before the group; he took out his lorgnette and looked attentively at the gentleman in the raccoon fur coat. Glafira whispered to Tvorogov: “Today at the masquerade…” Bobynitsyn muttered something through his teeth, got into his sleigh and drove away. A carriage drove up; the lady got in. The gentleman in the raccoon coat stopped; he seemed unable to move and looked senselessly at the gentleman in the bekesh. Tvorogov smiled, which was not at all witty. Then the gentleman in the raccoon coat got into the carriage; the carriage moved off; and the young man in the bekesh, frozen in amazement, still stood in place.

Part II

The very next evening there was a performance at the Italian Opera. Ivan Andreevich burst into the hall and saw Glafira. During the performance, a love note suddenly flew onto Ivan Andreevich’s head. He thought that the note was from Glafira, and was not intended for him, but for Glafira’s lover. Ivan Andreevich rushed into the foyer and read: “Today, right after the performance, in G—va, on the corner of sky Lane, in the K building, on the third floor, to the right of the stairs. Entrance from the entrance. Be there, for God’s sake.”

Ivan Andreevich came there with all the solemnity of an insulted husband. He rushed headlong into the chambers and suddenly found himself in the bedroom in front of a young, beautiful lady named Liza. Ivan Andreevich heard the steps of this lady’s husband – Alexander Demyanovich. Here Ivan Andreevich realized that he was in the wrong place, and the note was not from Glafira, and was not meant for him at all. He crawled under the bed, and Liza’s lover was already lying under the bed.

The mistress’s dog, which had been sleeping on a pillow in the corner all the time, suddenly woke up and rushed under the bed barking. The dog was climbing right at Ivan Andreevich. Ivan Andreevich managed to catch the dog, and in a fit of self-preservation, he squeezed its throat. The little dog squealed and gave up the ghost. Ivan Andreevich lay, neither alive nor dead, next to the lifeless corpse of Amishka.

And the young man caught every move of Alexander Demyanovich. Suddenly the old man came from the other side, to the wall, and bent down. In an instant, the young man crawled out from under the bed and started running. Ivan Andreevich was left alone under the bed. But soon he crawled out and explained what he was doing there and how he got there.

After this, Alexander Demyanovich and Liza calmed down, Ivan Andreyevich promised that he would buy them a new lapdog and left the apartment. Imagine his amazement when he learned at home that Glafira Petrovna had long since returned from the theater, her teeth had started to hurt, she had sent for a doctor, for leeches, and was now lying in bed and waiting for Ivan Andreyevich. Ivan Andreyevich first hit himself on the forehead, then ordered someone to bring him something to wash, and decided to go to his wife’s bedroom.

Glafira screamed: “What is this? A dead little dog! God! Where are you from… What are you doing?.. Where have you been? Tell me now, where have you been?” Ivan Andreyevich answered, more dead than Amishka: “Darling! Darling…”.

Here the story ends, and in conclusion Dostoevsky writes that jealousy is an unforgivable passion, moreover: even a misfortune!

Reviews and reviews

During Dostoevsky’s lifetime, critics paid no attention to the publication of the original individual stories, nor to the combined story “Another Man’s Wife and Husband Under the Bed.” In the first issue of “Notes of the Fatherland” for 1849, in a review of the literature for the previous year, it was only noted that the story was liked by the public. Philosopher and literary critic Nikolai Chernyshevsky wrote at the same time: “Yesterday I read “The Jealous Husband” <…> and this somewhat encouraged me regarding Dostoevsky and others like him: everything is great progress compared to what was before, and when these people do not take things beyond their strength, they are good and nice.”

After the writer’s death, literary scholar Nikolai Mikhailovsky drew attention to the story “Another Man’s Wife and Husband Under the Bed” in a review and analysis of Dostoevsky’s work published in 1882 in the ninth and tenth issues of “Otechestvennye Zapiski”. The central thesis of his review was Dostoevsky’s “cruel talent”, which is why, according to the critic, even a vaudeville work develops into a tragicomedy in the writer’s work. Mikhailovsky believed that this story could have been called a vaudeville if not for the “prolonged torment of the hero and this final perspective of Ivan Andreevich’s further torment”.

Artistic features

From a young age, Fyodor Mikhailovich was fond of theater and read