One of Dostoevsky’s early novellas, Uncle’s Dream follows the account of an ambitious mother, Maria Alexandrovna Moskalyova, who attempts to marry off her 23-year-old daughter to an aging, frail, and forgetful old prince. The drama that unfolds follows the struggle between connivering and manipulative family members, the human obsession with vanity and pride, and the question of love in socially-arranged marriages.
Decades later, Dostoevsky wrote The Permanent Husband, a love-affair drama that is both tragedy and comedy, that follows complicated relationships, remarriages, and unrequited love.
