SOURCE: Grenier, Svetlana. “‘Everyone Knew Her …’ or Did They?: Rereading Pushkin's Lizaveta Ivanovna (‘The Queen of Spades’).” Canadian Slavonic Papers 38, no. 1-2 (March-June 1996): 93-107.

In the following essay, Grenier offers an interpretation of Lizaveta's fate in Pushkin's novella.

The second paragraph of the “Conclusion” of The Queen of Spades reads

Lizaveta Ivanovna has married a very amiable young man; he is in the civil service and has a considerable fortune: he is the son of the old countess's former steward. Lizaveta Ivanovna is bringing up a daughter of a poor relation.¹

Over the last thirty years or so it has become a commonplace of The Queen of Spades criticism to infer that this paragraph, and especially its last sentence, testify to Lizaveta Ivanovna's absolutely and tediously repeating her benefactress's path. She will take the old countess's place and will doom yet another ward to become the victim of...