The Life of a Peasant Woman (Житие одной бабы, Zhitiye odnoi baby) is a short novel by Nikolai Leskov, first published in 1863's 7th and 8th issues of Biblioteka dlya chteniya magazine, under the moniker of M. Stebnitsky.
In 1924 the novel was published in Leningrad by an editor and literary historian Pyotr Bykov in a different version and under the new title, Amour in Lapotochki[1] subtitled: "An attempt at a peasant novel.
She tries to escape, gets retrieved, suffers from a mysterious mental condition people around her see as "possession" which promptly disappears as she finds herself in the home of Sila Ivanovich Krylushkin, an old man and a local herb-healer.
Meanwhile, Grigory ventures for Ukraine to make money as a labourer, Nastya returns to Prokudin's house and slowly gets back to life, still feeling apathetic and unhappy.
The two decide to run away, obtain false documents and head for the South aiming at Nikolayev, but get caught in Nezhin, a provincial Oryol Governorate town, and find themselves jailed.
[2] The novel ends with a lengthy epilogue where the narrator (judging by some personal details, none other than Leskov himself) returns to the village of Gostomlh after five years' absence.
He finds things changed here, some of them for the better, even if there's another melancholy note being struck by the news that lovely Masha, Nastya's little loyal friend, has died in the boarding house at the age of 12, of scarlet fever.
Another incident of the same kind takes place at the market square where a woman gets force-fed with a piece of soap she was trying to steal ("just to wash my baby's cloth," she sobs).
You give my motherland your warmth and bread, those sacred gifts of Heaven/ Please, dear God, impart to it some of your spiritual feeding, too..." "We firmly shook hands and kissed and parted as very good friends," thus Leskov concludes the epilogue.
Having made drastic changes, he wanted to publish it as a separate edition but failed to do this due to heavy censorship that was there [in the late 1880s].According to Bykov, Leskov has presented him the manuscript as a gift, a sign of gratitude for the Bibliography of N.S.
[2] The fact that Leskov indeed was going to make changes to his 1863 original text was indisputable, for he wrote of this very intention in his foreword to the 1867 collection called The Novelets, Sketches and Stories.
Later scholars were doubting Bykov's tale in general as well as particular details of it, like that concerning the author's reading the original text (7 printer sheets) to his friends in one sitting – only to declare his intention to re-work it.
One large piece of text has been added to the original one (part 1, chapter 8): it dealt with "strange feelings" Nastya has had on her way from the local smith's house back to that of Prokudin, - an obvious attempt to add psychological touch to the description of his heroine's mental condition.