5 famous writers who experienced violence as a child: Voynich, Chekhov, etc

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Reading the biographies of great people, you notice one thing in common for all: whether their childhood was difficult or pleasant, but they received the support of their family. The care of parents or brothers and sisters helped them to survive serious illnesses, hunger, poverty and wanderings. And only a few biographies stand out from this series. For example, famous writers who were raised by cruel relatives.

Ethel Voynich

In the USSR, they liked to publish the writer: an anti-colonialist with a God-fighting pathos, and, most importantly, of non-noble origin. True, one book was popular - The Gadfly, exposing priests and saints and full of a revolutionary charge. The roots of this book go back to the biography of Ethel herself, although they do not repeat it.

Ethel was born in Ireland, the son of English mathematicians - Professor George Boole and teacher Mary Boole, née Everest. Her father died when Ethel was not even a year old, so her childhood passed in conditions of hunger and poverty. Finally, the mother decided to hand her daughter over to the brother of her deceased husband in foster care, simply out of fear that otherwise they would both die of malnutrition.

Mr. Boole was obsessed with taming vices, especially in little Ethel. For literally everything she received, at best, a reprimand, but more often - punishment. The girl was locked in a closet, flogged and deprived of dinner. She showed various vices. For example, gluttony: she took and ate a candy offered by some kind soul. Needless to say, at the age of eighteen, Ethel with all her heart hated the English with their English virtue and instructions colored with religious words!

This later culminated in friendship with Irish and Polish freedom fighters, as well as Russian socialists, who had endless conversations in London about the coming revolution. For one Polish rebel, Ethel even married, acquiring the name Voynich. Surprisingly, her novel, exposing Christian hypocrisy, was first published in Russia in the magazine … "Peace of God."

Maksim Gorky

The future writer lost his father at the age of three and his mother at eleven. His paternal grandfather was a man who was kicked out of the army for cruel treatment of officials, and not just kicked out, but exiled to Siberia. It is difficult to imagine what exactly he did with his soldiers - because for constant officer slaps in the face, if they surfaced at the wrong time, they were not punished so severely. The boy's stepfather beat his mother, so once Alyosha (that was the name of the writer in childhood) even almost stabbed him to death, protecting his mother. After that, the boy had to live with his mother's father, also a stern man.

In many ways, scenes of domestic violence were transferred by Gorky to his famous story "Childhood" - although it cannot be considered autobiographical and documentary. But the scene of a long brutal flogging, arranged in order to break the boy, and not just punish him - a flogging followed by an illness - the writer describes with such knowledge of the feelings of the beaten that it becomes obvious: it was she who took from life. Without a doubt, the boy was subjected to other types of punishment, and his stepfather, most likely, beat him.

Later, this seriously affected Alexei's mental health. He was unbalanced, prone to dark thoughts and suicidal thoughts and was even once excommunicated for four years for attempted suicide after he was, of course, rescued.

The Brontë sisters

And in the famous "Jen Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë, and in the equally famous "Wuthering Heights" by Emily Brontë, you can find the same motive: a little orphan girl is being cruelly treated by relatives. Jen Eyre also meets harsh treatment at the girls' charity school - mixed with exhortation from a minister-priest. Katherine, the heroine of Emily Bronte, together with her friend Heathcliff, receives all the moralizing in half with punishment at home. And it is not surprising: Emily was so anxious that she could not even live in a boarding house for girls - she became seriously ill, so she began to get all her experience at home.

When researchers of the biography of famous writers - by then already dead from health problems - turned to their father for information about their childhood, he jealously made sure that his role in their upbringing was reflected as fully as possible. After all, he really provided them with everything that was needed for the development of thought and creativity.

At the same time, his treatment of his family was overly harsh. In fits of anger, he destroyed furniture, as well as children's belongings. To prevent the children from being “corrupted,” they were fed practically nothing but potatoes - a humble food that gives a humble character - while their father ate meat in front of them. Besides, they were not allowed to wear nice clothes, nice shoes, nice toys. All this, he declared, led them directly into the embrace of vice.

When one day the girls' aunt put on one of them in elegant shoes donated by relatives - simply because the girl's ordinary shoes got wet, the father, seeing this, took the shoes and burned it. And yes, it was he who gave Charlotte to that school where children sometimes froze to death in winter and charred oatmeal was served for breakfast. Emotional problems ended up in all of his children: his son drank himself to death, Emily was prone to panic attacks, Charlotte and her other sister suffered from low self-esteem.

Rudyard Kipling

Kipling was also unlucky as a child. He was born into a loving family in India, but at the age of five he was recalled for a real English upbringing in his parents' homeland. There, relatives constantly kicked out of him the savage spirit, which, in their opinion, he brought with him from India. To do this, they decided what he likes to do (the boy loved to read books) and forbade him. When it was discovered that Rudyard was reading anyway, he was punished. Fortunately, he spent only a year with relatives - then he was sent to a school for boys. Where, of course, they flogged. But they are completely strangers.

Anton Chekhov

“I remember my father began to teach me, or, to put it simply, beat me when I was not even five years old. He whipped me with rods, tugged at my ears, hit me on the head, and, waking up, every morning I thought first of all, will they tear me up today?.. These are the words of one of the characters of Anton Pavlovich, who, no doubt, speak writer. “I could never forgive my father that he bitch me as a child,” Chekhov personally told his brother.

Anton Pavlovich's father literally tormented the whole family. He arranged ugly scenes at dinner, shouting at his wife and insulting her in front of the children. He forbade sons and daughters to run (supposedly shoes wear out), play (only fools play around), hang out with classmates (they will teach bad things) - and the purpose of the bans, it seems, was a feeling of total power, which he reveled in.

Memories of his father's cruelty haunted Anton Pavlovich all his life. Someone else's unsuccessful and loudly spoken word or gesture - and they surfaced by themselves. In addition, the writer suffered from depression by all indications. And this despite the fact that behind her father's back, the mother constantly tried to smooth out the mood that he created - she spoke affectionately with the children, patiently worked with them, told them stories. She could not completely rid them of the poison of her father's cruelty.

Unfortunately, family violence accompanies all of human history, ruining the fate of thousands or millions of people generation after generation: The ugly deeds of famous artists, which sometimes even ardent admirers of their talent do not know about.