“Somebody Else’s Wife and a Husband Under the Bed” in the Context of the Poetics and Problematics of Dostoevsky’s Prose

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Author: Alexandr B. Krinitsyn
Information about the author:
DSc in Philology, Associate Professor, Department of History of Russian Literature, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Leninskie gory 1, 119991 Moscow, Russia.

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0262-5058

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For citation:
Krinitsyn, A.B. “‘Somebody Else’s Wife and a Husband Under the Bed’ in the Context of the Poetics and Problematics of Dostoevsky’s Prose.” Dostoevsky and World Culture. Philological journal, no. 1 (33), 2026, pp. 66–89. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.22455/2619-0311-2026-1-66-89
Received: 03 Aug. 2025
Approved after reviewing: 31 Oct. 2025
Published: 25 March 2026
Issue: 2026 no. 1 (33)
Department: POETICS. CONTEXT
Pages: 66–89
DOI: Visit Website
EDN:
https://elibrary.ru/SELTBD
UDK: 821.161.1.0+82.0
BBK: 83.3(2Рос=Рус)52+83
Publication Type: Research Article
Keywords: Dostoevsky, Gogol, “Somebody Else’s Wife and Husband under the Bed,” “The Overcoat,” through motive, comedy, horror, duality, symbolic space
Abstract: The article provides a comprehensive analysis of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s short story “Somebody Else’s Wife and a Husband under the Bed,” which is poorly studied relative to the rest of the writer’s work. The story is considered both in the context of Russian literature of the 1840s and in relation to Dostoevsky’s prose as a whole. This perspective allows us to speak about the techniques of Gogol’s comedy as a deep foundation of the poetics of both Dostoevsky’s early and mature work, or at least as one of its main components. Numerous motivational connections between the story and Gogol’s prose are revealed, in particular the projection of the image of a “significant person” from “The Overcoat” onto the image of Shabrin’s deceived husband. Further, such cross-cutting motifs of Dostoevsky’s work as the confessional situation, the contamination of the comic and the terrible, the experience of humiliation, the joy of “universal reconciliation” through self-abasement, and being in a closed symbolic locus (“closet,” “corner,” “coffin”) are analyzed. It is shown how, in the story “Somebody Else’s Wife and a Husband under the Bed,” the semantic-generating mechanism of the “constrained locus” is formed at an elementary level, generating “ideas” and “crimes” of a special nature. The “low” everyday and psychological motives are further symbolized through the combination of the base and the sublime. Dostoevsky seems to swing the reader between two “swing-antinomies”: (1) comic – tragic and (2) comic – terrible (demonic, criminal), following the same trajectory: from farcical and vaudeville comedy to social satire, and then, through sarcasm, cynicism, and travesty, to black humor and the macabre, and from there to the tragedy of death, despair, the abysses of evil, and impulses toward salvation in the human soul.

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“Somebody Else’s Wife and a Husband Under the Bed” in the Context of the Poetics and Problematics of Dostoevsky’s Prose

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