The Poor Bride (Russian: Бедная невеста, Romanized as Bednaya nevesta) is a play by Alexander Ostrovsky, written in 1851 and first published in the No.4, 1852 issue of Moskvityanin magazine.
Later he wrote: "I've had an iron-like creative prowess when I was learning how to write, but still, after having worked for a year and a half on The Poor Bride (my second one) I came to detest it so much I didn't want to see it on stage.
The liaison between Khorkov and Marya Andreyevna served as a parallel to the unhappy relations between one of the Korsh sisters, Antonina, and Apollon Grigoryev, according to Lakshin.
In September 1852 The Poor Bride was pronounced eligible for the Maly Theatre stage, much to the credit of censor Gederstern who interpreted it as romantic drama and ignored its social undercurrents.
[1] On March 20, 1852, Aleksey Pisemsky wrote to Ostrovsky: "I've read the comedy of yours with the greatest of pleasure and found it not just equal but even superior to It's a Family Affair-We'll Settle It Ourselves.
"[4] Ivan Turgenev opined that the play failed to meet the expectations which were too high after the Family Affair, but found "its general colour very true" and "the second act beautiful from the first word to the last.
Having described in full the difficult situation Marya Andreyevna, the "poor bride", found herself in, the critic poised the question: "What this hapless creature suffers all these insults for, what keeps her in this mire?"
- and gave the answer: "It is obvious, what: she is a poor bride, she has nothing to do other than sit there waiting or go seeking for the right kind of fiancée... Modern liberals scorn this, but one would like to know - what is there left in our society to do for a young girl who fails to marry?"
According to Dobrolyubov, in his play Ostrovsky gave "the direct answer" to the most important question of the day: "why in our families a woman finds herself in a slave-like situation and why does samodurstvo [petty tyranny] hits her particularly hard.