Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (Russian: Леди Макбет Мценского уезда, Ledi Makbet Mtsenskogo uyezda) is an 1865 novella by Nikolai Leskov.
Among its themes are the subordinate role expected from women in 19th-century European society, adultery, provincial life (thus drawing comparison with Flaubert's Madame Bovary) and the planning of murder by a woman, hence it having a title inspired by the Shakespearean character Lady Macbeth from his play Macbeth, and echoing the title of Turgenev's story Hamlet of the Shchigrovsky District (1859).
The Ismailov family is introduced: Boris, the father of Zinovy, the husband of Katarina Lvovna for the past five years.
Katerina is bored in their empty home, and tired of Boris' constant orders and scolding of her for not producing any children.
She protests at first, but then gives in; after an implied sexual encounter, she tells Sergei to leave because Boris will be coming by to lock her door.
Some convenient circumstances regarding Zinovy's return shroud his disappearance in mystery, and while there is an inquiry, nothing is found and no trouble comes to Sergei or Katerina.
Everything seems to be working out for them, until Boris's young nephew Fyodor shows up with his mother, preventing Katerina from inheriting the estate.
Katerina and Sergei suffocate the boy, but a crowd returning from church storms the house, one of its members having spied the act through the shutters of Fyodor's room.
Sergei, hearing the windows clattering from the crowd's fists, thinks the ghosts of his murder victims have come back to haunt him, and breaks down.
He promises revenge, and later breaks into her cell with another man, giving her fifty lashes with a rope, while her cell-mate Sonya giggles in the background.