SOURCE: Andrew, Joe. “‘Spoil the Purest of Ladies’: Male and Female Imagery in Isaac Babel's Konarmiya.” Essays in Poetics 14, no. 2 (September 1989): 1-27.

In the following essay, Andrew discusses the interplay between male and female characters in Red Cavalry and argues that “an understanding of the female characters, their plot roles, the way they are depicted, and, indeed, what they symbolise, is critical in a broadly-based and systematic analysis of the world of war, revolution and violence” which constitutes the collection.

The purpose of this article is to examine male and female characters in the thirty-five stories that comprise the final version of Babel's Konarmiya, or Red Cavalry,¹ as well their interplay and what the masculine and feminine principles which are established signify. It may seem strange at first sight to consider female characters at all in these stories. No female character has the status of such as Savitsky...