[5] Pavlova was called the "master of Russian verse" by Andrei Bely, who placed her in the same category as Zhukovsky, Baratynsky, and Fet.

[5] In nineteenth century Russia, the literature being produced "equalled that written at any place at any time in history,"[6] but most famous authors were male.

[8] Even when they admired her poetry her literary friends composed condescending memoirs, articles or private letters condemning Pavlova.

"[11][dubious – discuss] Karolina Pavlova finished her only novel, A Double Life (Russian: Двойная жизнь), in 1848.

[12] While Cecily has an undeniable, secret yearning for poetry, women poets were "always presented to her as the most pitiable, abnormal state, as a disastrous and dangerous illness.

[12] Cecily, a member of this world, has been so carefully brought up that "she could never commit the slightest peccadillo ... could never forget herself for a moment, raise her voice half a tone ... enjoy a conversation with a man to the point where she might talk to him ten minutes longer than was proper, or look to the right when she was supposed to look to the left.

"[14] She is lured into the respectable yet meaningless life of a woman of high society and into marriage by the people that are closest to her,[11] yet, her dreams, which come to her in the form of poems, have warned her.