“The Meek One” is a novel, set in the 19th-C Russia, written by one of the most famous Russian writers Fyodor Dostoevsky. It has been translated to English by Constance Garnett. The edition which I have read was published in 2024 in Pakistan by Readings, and has a total of 71 pages.
Unlike other writers who give more importance to the description of outwardly things, Dostoyevsky focuses on the description of the inner world of the characters. There are only two major actions taking place in the novel: firstly a marriage between the two major characters, & second the death of the female character i.e. the wife. Both have occurred in the past & now he’s simply telling what events had taken place between the two actions. Thus, what happens inside the minds of the character, the silences, the strange looks, the loneliness, repentance & such feelings are the things that have mostly been highlighted in the novel. In simple words, it deals with human psychology & human nature.
The most interesting thing about this novel is that from the beginning, the narrator informs the readers that his wife has just recently died, & her body is still lying in the house. Nothing happens after that. The death of his wife is the end of the story, yet Dostoyevsky chose to reveal the end in the first few paragraphs of the novel. Then the narrator begins to narrate his life story, starting with his first meeting with the girl, then how did he test her character before marrying her; how did they marry & what kind of a wife did she make. He gives a detailed account of everything. And towards the end of the book, the dead body is still lying there in the house. In other words, the narrator narrates the whole story from his memory & discusses everything from the past, while the body of his dead wife is still lying in front of him.
Another quality of the narration that i found quite intriguing was that Dostoyevsky has used only the male character as the narrator, & using him, the writer not only has revealed the male character’s thoughts but the thoughts of the female character as well. Sometimes, he gives his own meaning to the smile or a certain look or any action of his wife & blindly assumes that by this action, his wife means this particular thing. In this way, we come to know about the female character’s voice as well; however, it makes the narration one sided & biased as She doesn’t rather can’t speak for herself; thus, the readers never truly know what the female actually meant by her smile or her queer look.
While reading the novel, this verse of Jaun Elia continuously kept popping up in my mind
ایک ہی حادثہ تو ہے اور وہ یہ کہ آج تک
بات نہیں کہی گئی، بات نہیں سُنی گئی
The reason for the relevance of this particular verse is the repetition of the narrator’s saying that he had maintained a certain distance from his wife and had adopted strange silence, that is to say that he had kept his inner self & his thoughts hidden from his wife & had secretly wished that his wife would understand him & his thoughts. However, this silence & the distance proves to be fatal for his wife, as well as his own mental health.