For what purpose does Prostakova hire teachers for Mitrofan? Mitrofanushka is a completely normal child. Raising Mitrofan by his mother as a teenager.
Superficially it seems: Prostakova, Mitrofan, Skotinin are completely uneducated, they don’t even know how to read, they live like animals, according to wolf laws, and Starodum, Sophia, Pravdin, Milon are educated people, they thought and reflected on a lot. The conclusion suggests itself: those who are uneducated are cattle by definition. But this is not entirely true, if not completely wrong.
In this play, the exception is Eremeevna, Mitrofanushka’s nurse, an ordinary peasant woman, uneducated. But she is not disingenuous at all, her thoughts are pure and she is not inferior in wisdom to Starodum (although she rarely speaks, but even from small phrases and actions this can be understood).
And what happens: education does not make people honest, merciful or kinder. Education gives knowledge and nothing more. The person himself decides HOW to use the acquired knowledge or not to use it at all. In this play, one of the central issues is not the problem of education, but the problem of attitudes towards education.
If Mitrofan really wanted to learn science, learn to read and write, then even with such bad teachers he would have achieved something. Kuteikin would have taught him to read, Tsyfirkin to count, but Vralman really would not have taught him anything, since he himself knows nothing. But Mitrofanushka himself wanted to “get married, not study,” which is why his education is just a waste of time, it becomes meaningless. Prostakova herself doesn’t know why a child needs to learn to read and write, but she hired teachers for one thing: it’s fashionable. All the teenagers have teachers in different subjects, so Mrs. Prostakova did not take tutoring from the cheapest teachers from the city (it’s just very modern to invite teachers from the city to the village, thereby making it seem to all the neighbors that the Prostakovs are seriously involved in Mitrofanushka’s education and that the Prostakovs are paying big money). And the pay is so low that Tsyfirkin and Kuteikina only had enough for new shoes, while Vralman was paid much more, he’s a German! Foreigner! How fashionable it is!
Starodum, his niece, Pravdin and Milon have diametrically opposite opinions about education; education is important to them: “Have a heart, have a soul, and you will be a man at all times. There is fashion for everything else: fashion for minds, fashion for knowledge.” Education is the key not only to personal self-improvement, but also the key to awareness of education. Education is a means of serving the Fatherland. This is how the “well-mannered” heroes of Fonvizin’s play think.
So it turns out that the attitude towards education is the correct upbringing. Mitrofan, just like Prostakova, has no upbringing at all, that’s why they don’t need any enlightenment, and it’s disgusting to them.
The topic of upbringing and education in noble families was one of the most pressing in Russia at the beginning of the 19th century. “In Russia, home education is the most insufficient, the most immoral; the child is surrounded by only slaves, sees only vile examples, is self-willed or enslaved, does not receive any concepts about justice, about the mutual relations of people, about true honor. His education is limited to the study of two or three foreign languages and the basic foundation of all sciences taught by any hired teacher,” wrote Pushkin.
One of the first to address this problem was D.I. Fonvizin in the comedy “The Minor.” From the very first remark, the author introduces us to the atmosphere of a Russian landowner's estate. We meet Mrs. Prostakova, her husband, son Mitrofanushka. In this family it gives “matriarchy”. Mrs. Prostakova, not being particularly intelligent or educated, keeps her entire family subordinate. “Before your eyes, mine don’t see anything,” Mr. Prostakov declares complacently, fully accepting the existing state of affairs. The wayward landowner gets it from the servants, Mitrofan’s nurse, old Eremeevna, and her son’s teachers, Kuteikin and Tsyfirkin.
Prostakova herself learned practically nothing. Her parents were “old people”; she and her brother “didn’t teach anything.” “It happened that good people would approach the priest, please, please, so that at least he could send his brother to school... The dead man is a light with both his hands and his feet... It happened that he would deign to shout: I will curse the child who takes over something from the infidels, and “Don’t be the Skotinin who wants to learn something,” the landowner says innocently, being fully confident in the correctness of such “education.”
Her late father “didn’t know how to read and write, but he knew how to make and maintain wealth.” Mrs. Prostakova inherited the qualities of her father: despite her complete ignorance, rudeness, tyranny, she is calculating and selfish. Having learned that her pupil, Sophia, has become a rich bride, she plans to marry Mitrofanushka to her, who, however, does not even think of resisting.
Mitrofanushka is a teenager, a lazy, clumsy fellow who is not yet sixteen years old. His favorite pastime is chasing pigeons. Mitrofan is not particularly fond of science. “I don’t want to study, but I want to get married,” he declares. Nevertheless, teachers constantly visit him: seminarian Kuteikin teaches him grammar, retired sergeant Tsyfirkin teaches him mathematics, German Vralman teaches him “French and all sciences.” And Prostakova’s son is “very successful” in science: from grammar he knows what a “noun and an adjective” are. The door, in his opinion, is an adjective because it is attached to its place. The other door, which has not yet been hung, is “for now a noun.” Mitrofan is just as successful in studying mathematics - Tsyfirkin has been fighting with him for three years, and “this little guy... can’t count three.” History and other sciences are taught to Mitrofan by the German Vralman, who previously served as a coachman for Starodum. Vralman does not bother his pupil with classes - instead of teaching him history, Vralman makes the cowgirl Khavronya tell “stories” and, together with Mitrofan, listens to her with pleasure.
Mrs. Prostakova, loving her son with all her heart, pampers him in every possible way. She is unable to instill in Mitrofan any positive qualities or concepts of morality, since she herself is deprived of them. The results of such upbringing are deplorable: Mitrofanushka is not only ignorant, but also malicious. He is cowardly and rude to his teachers. At the end of the comedy, he renounces his own mother, who has lost all rights to manage the estates. Having failed in her intention to marry her son to Sophia and having lost her estates, Mrs. Prostakova is confused and broken. Hoping to find consolation, she rushes to Mitrofanushka, and in response she hears: “Let go, mother, how you imposed yourself...”
The hero-reasoner in the comedy is Sophia's uncle, Starodum. “These are the fruits worthy of evil!” - he exclaims in the finale. This character expresses the author’s views in the comedy, arguing that a decent upbringing should be the key to the well-being of the state. Education should be at a high level, but education has no value in itself. The main goal of all human knowledge is “good behavior”, “enlightenment elevates one virtuous soul.”
The tyrant landowner, Mrs. Prostakova, her brother Skotinin, who loves pigs, the lazy Mitrofanushka - “...everything in this comedy seems like a monstrous caricature of the Russian. And yet there is nothing caricatured in it: everything was taken alive from nature and verified by the knowledge of the soul.”
Thus, the system of upbringing and education adopted by Russian noble families in the 18th-19th centuries was in many ways imperfect, vicious, disfiguring young minds and hearts, ruining destinies. Young people developed such qualities as laziness, passivity, infantilism, inability to realize their own dreams and at the same time - arrogance, a sense of superiority in relation to others. These qualities largely contributed to the failure of people in life, the fatal inevitability of an unhappy fate. In Russian literature, this theme was later developed by Pushkin and Goncharov.
“Fonvizin was created at a rather difficult time for Russia. At this moment, Catherine II sat on the throne. The empress herself described this period in the history of the country's development very negatively in her diaries. She noted that she came to power in a state in which laws were used only in the rarest cases and, as a rule, if they favored some noble person.
Already based on this statement, one can understand that the spiritual life of Russian society of this period was in decline. In his work, Fonvizin tried to draw the attention of readers precisely to the problem of educating the younger generation, on whom the future of the entire country depends.
During the period described in the comedy, a decree was issued according to which all young nobles under eighteen years of age were obliged to receive an education. Otherwise, they were assigned to military service to Her Imperial Majesty.
The heroine of the comedy Prostakova, a powerful and aggressive woman, is used to deciding everything herself. She leads her family: her husband is afraid to take a step without her command, and her son, whom she named Mitrofan, which means “close to his mother,” was raised to be an absolute lazy and ignorant.
His mother decides everything for him, she is afraid of his independence and is always ready to be there. The main thing for her is that Mitrofan feels good. But since she raised him to be a lazy person, he has a negative attitude towards education, which requires some effort and time, and does not receive it of his own free will.
The fear of losing her son because of a government decree forces the mother to take an unwanted step - to hire teachers for Mitrofan.
At first, she approaches this issue decisively, because in addition to fear, she is also possessed by a feeling of envy. She doesn’t want to be worse than others, and other noble children have been studying with teachers for a long time. She imagines that her son will go to St. Petersburg and there will seem like an ignoramus among smart people. This picture scares her, because her son will make fun of her in this way. Therefore, Prostakova does not skimp on money and hires several teachers at once.
The most not indifferent of them can be called retired soldier Pafnuty Tsyfirkin, who taught arithmetic to the teenager. His speech is full of military terms, he is constantly doing calculations. He is hardworking, he himself notes that he does not like to sit idle. He is responsible and wants to teach Mitrofan his subject, but he constantly experiences harassment from the student’s mother.
She suffers, believing that her beloved son will be exhausted from his lessons and thus creates a reason for interrupting classes ahead of schedule. And Mitrofanushka himself avoids classes and calls Tsyfirkin names. The teacher even refused to take money for the lessons at the end, because “the stump,” as he called his student, he could not teach anything.
Mitrofan is taught grammar by the seminarian-dropout Kuteikin. He considers himself very smart, says that he comes from a learned family and quit only for fear of being too wise. He is a greedy man. The main thing for him is to obtain material benefits, and not to provide true knowledge to the student. Mitrofan often misses his classes.
The most unlucky teacher turned out to be the German Vralman, hired to teach Mitrofan French and other sciences. Other teachers cannot tolerate him. But he has taken root in the family: he eats with the Prostakovs at the same table, and earns more than anyone else. And all because Prostakova is happy, because this teacher does not enslave her son at all.
Vralman believes that all sciences are of no use to Mitrofan, he only needs to avoid communication with smart people and be able to show himself advantageously in the world. It is clear that Vralman, who turned out to be a former groom, taught neither French nor other sciences to the undergrowth.
Thus, Prostakova did not hire teachers so that Mitrofan would learn science. She did this so that her son could always be with her and in every possible way contributes to this with his behavior.
For all three reasons: negligence, lack of motivation, and bad teachers. Of course, “why know, what do the cabbies do,” says Prostakova, “where they need to go.” it's the same with other sciences.
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but, having coped with one test, the hero immediately faces another - in the garrison he falls into the hands of pirates. but even here Jim does not lose his composure and self-esteem. He remains contemptuously silent, not answering John Silver's questions, and is only trying to find out what was done to his friends. the hero does not believe for a second that they betrayed him, and does not want to betray them for anything:
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Subsequent chapters tell of Chichikov’s visit to the estates of Sobakevich, Korobochka, and Plyushkin. Nastasya Petrovna ends up with Chichikov's box by accident, having lost her way. She is a rather caring housewife, but Chichikov calls her club-headed, gets angry, loses patience, but buys dead souls, especially since for her they are just goods. on Sobakevich's estate he meets a rude, base owner who is only concerned about food. at the same time, Sobakevich is a practical owner, it even occurs to him to praise this unique product. The last landowner whom Chichikov visits turns out to be Plyushkin. “It’s either a woman or a man,” Pavel Ivanovich says about him. and the essence of his life is stinginess that goes beyond all boundaries. There are sealing wax, feathers, toothpicks, rusty buckets everywhere in the house - everything that the owner sees, the owner brings into the house. N.V. Gogol called this hero a hole in humanity. However, what is Chichikov himself like? He is the son of an impoverished landowner, and from childhood he learned one thing: take care of your penny, it will never betray you. This is what Chichikov has been doing all his life. and for this purpose he visits the city n, having found out somewhere that the board of trustees is buying up peasant souls, without asking whether the peasants are alive - if only there were documents for their presence, Pavel Ivanovich is going to sell several hundred dead souls to this institution.
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A. P. Chekhov is a recognized master of short stories. Chekhov is a subtle psychologist who, with unique irony, reveals the inner world of a person. despite the brevity, and perhaps because of it, he masterfully talks about the problems of happiness and love, hoarding and indifference. In every word of Chekhov’s stories, his disgust for vulgarity and everyday life, dreary bourgeois life is evident. He was called “a master of the small form”, This is what they accused him of, because not a single great work! but in the smallest Czech story a whole world can be revealed, the world of the soul, the cosmos inside a person. Only in some of his stories is complete merging of man with the world, harmony and love achieved.
And the education of the eighteenth century is staged in the main work of Denis Fonvizin, and the development of the conflict is facilitated by the behavior of the heroes and their characteristics. "The Minor" is a brilliant comedy about pseudo-intellectuals who take lessons from the state's leading teachers, but themselves learn absolutely nothing. So was the main character, Mitrofan.
Summary. "Minor" as the best educational comedy
The Prostakov family is going to marry their only son Mitrofan to the smart and beautiful Sophia. Skotinin also has his sights set on the bride, who after the celebration wants to take possession of the village’s living creatures - pigs, of which he is a big hunter. However, Sophia does not have feelings for any of the suitors and is waiting for the third - the well-mannered and educated young man Milon. Shortly before the wedding, the girl’s uncle Starodum appears and announces a large inheritance. The Prostakovs, having heard about this, want to speed up the matchmaking, and before that they teach their son to read and write. From this moment events begin. How is the problem of upbringing and education solved in the comedy "Minor"?
Mitrofan is a minor youth who has not yet served in public service and is not distinguished by a sharp mind. During lessons, he is rude to teachers and makes fun of them, has absolutely no respect for his mother and declares: “I don’t want to study, but I want to get married!” Fortunately, Starodum and Milon appear in the village on time and are going to take Sophia away from the Prostakovs. The mother of the family never ceases to insist on her own and boasts about her son’s imaginary achievements. Starodum is convinced that Mitrofan must first of all be given a good education and upbringing: the undergrowth speaks illiterately and cannot answer simple questions. Sophia's marriage to him will never take place, since the girl gives consent to Milon. The Prostakovs remain in their village, and Starodum leaves with the newly-made bride and groom.
The problem of education in 18th century society using the example of the Prostakov family
In Russia and throughout the world it is marked by the development of scientific and philosophical thought. Salons and schools were opened, since having a good education was considered fashionable, especially among the nobles. Enlightenment did not end with knowledge of foreign languages and the ability to behave in society: a person must be able to read, write and count. and education in the comedy “The Minor” is presented in a different way: people of the older generation, such as Mrs. Prostakova, believe that education is not necessary at all. Mitrofan will not need arithmetic in life: “We have money, we’ll figure it out well without Pafnutich.” Nevertheless, Prostakova forces her son to study so that he looks decent in the eyes of the public.
Images of positive and negative heroes
"The Minor" is a classic comedy in which all the unities are observed, including the presence of speaking names. It is easy for the reader to guess that Prostakova, Skotinin and Vralman are negative characters: the first is as simple as three kopecks, the second is distinguished by his passion for cattle, the third lied so much that he forgot about his origin; Using the example of another negative character, Mitrofanushka, the author raises the current problem of upbringing and education.
In the comedy, Pravdin and Milon are the bearers of virtue. They want to rescue Sophia from the Prostakov village, and they succeed. These people were given the best education and they talk about “ignoramuses without a soul,” such as Mitrofan. The speech of the positive heroes is sublime, which is why readers still quote them.
Image of Mitrofan
The comedy "Minor" becomes interesting thanks to the atypical character of the main character. Mrs. Prostakova in her only son. She boasts of his good education, although he never learned to read and write and other sciences. Fonvizin wrote the best classic comedy, depicting the conflict of enlightenment, into which the reader can go deeper by reading the full content.
and their characteristics
Mrs. Prostakova hires three teachers for her son: Tsyfirkin, Kuteikin and Vralman. The first one is the most worthy and honest. Pafnutich Tsyfirkin takes a responsible approach to the issue of education and tries his best to teach Nedoroslya arithmetic, but experiences harassment from Prostakova and Vralman. At the end of the comedy, he refuses payment for his work, because, as he himself admits, he failed to teach Mitrofan his science.
A half-educated seminarian, Kuteikin, boasts that he comes from a scientific background, but he, too, cannot find the right approach to Nedoroslya. In four years of studying grammar, Mitrofan “will not understand a new line.” In the finale, Kuteikin demands payment not only for teaching hours, but also for worn-out shoes.
Vralman managed to gain favor with the Prostakovs with flattering speeches. The false teacher claims that it is enough for Mitrofan to know how to behave in society, and arithmetic and grammar will not benefit him. Soon Starodum exposes Vralman: he recognizes him as his retired coachman, who has begun to engage in a new craft. The problem of upbringing and education in the comedy "The Minor" is resolved in the finale: they decide to send Mitrofan to the army, since the young man is deaf to science and basic etiquette.
The meaning of the last scenes
The title of the comedy reveals the essence of Mitrofan, his negative characteristics. The minors are not only deaf to issues of education, but also show elementary disrespect for the older generation. He shocks his mother, who doted on him and did the best for him. They say about people like Mrs. Prostakova that they love their children too much. “Go away, mother,” Mitrofanushka tells her, after which the poor woman faints, and Starodum concludes: “These are the fruits of evil.” The author put a deep meaning into the ending: people who were initially deaf to science very rarely gain the desire to learn after many years, so they continue to remain ignoramuses. Lack of education also gives rise to other negative human qualities: stinginess, rudeness, cruelty.
At the end of the play, the bearers of virtue - Sophia, Milon, Pravdin and Starodum - leave the Prostakov village. “Ignorants without a soul” are left to choose the path of their development themselves: their worldview must change, or they will remain the same soulless.
