I suggest considering Maya Ganina's children's novel “Tyapkin and Lyosha” as a “prequel” to Lyudmila Petrushevskaya's novel “Time is Night” or a “prequel” to our current life and some of the peculiarities of our “interpersonal communication”.
I often wonder why we allow relatives to insult and reproach us and often don't want to do anything to stop attacks and accusations? Where can we find the origins of voluntary victimization and inadmissible humility? Why don't our children know how to stand up for themselves among their peers and don't know how to respond to adults when they humiliate them? And why do we perceive hereditary antagonistic relationships in the family, as well as the need to tolerate “toxic” relatives, as well as the need to tolerate “toxic” relatives? I found a text of children's literature that partly helps to clarify the origins of this situation. It reflects the tradition of the era preceding the creation of the story, when parenting was shifted from the parents' shoulders to the “shoulders” of the school and the pioneer/Komsomol organization. Parents were exempt from this “duty” in order to devote their time, for example, to building an industrial plant, an apartment building and communism, writing a dissertation, articles or textbooks, rehearsing and touring.
And the same story allows us to look into the recent history of relations between children and parents, when the habit of devoting everything to an important and necessary task and a favorite profession, established during the Soviet era, continued to determine priorities in family life. It also has an extremely high concentration of mistakes that adults can make when communicating with their children and traumatizing them every day, leaving no hope of overcoming the trauma. So, recently, for the first time, I read Maya Anatolyevna Ganina's (1927-2005) novel Tyapkin and Lyosha, which was published by Children's Literature in 1977. I was touched by the title and charming illustrations by N. Goltz, which meant that I was supposed to plunge into the world of a fairy tale, the main character of which was, apparently, a girl and a forest gnome. However, what I saw in the pictures in the book did not fit the genre definition of a story in any way, and the girl suspiciously resembled a boy, and the title of the story did not include the girl's name. I suggested that the “story” might be because Mikhail Ganina's work is dedicated to the history of her contemporaries, and she often wrote off the heroines, endowing them with the typified features of a Soviet woman. I've decided to look into it. The story begins with the child's words, and then is told on behalf of his mother, who from time to time goes “into the shadows”, and then the narrator takes her place. The beginning of the story can be immediately included as a universal example in a manual for parents, which could be called “How not to talk to children” or “How not to behave with a child”. I will quote this passage in full:
Talk to me, Tyapkin whined again, putting his chin on the table. -
Mom, talk to me!
It wasn't that he was cranky or about to cry, I knew full well
that he can repeat these three words in the same tone fifty times.
Until I put my papers down and start something in a boring voice
to tell. It's like Tyapkin needs communication.
- After all, you're a terribly mediocre person, - I say, trying to do something
pee.- When I was your age, my grandfather locked me in for the whole day at
room and went to work. You would be screaming all day long. And I've been inventing all sorts of things
stories, talked to the mouse...
- You had a mouse...
- It was like it was. It's like. And when my grandfather bought me a real one
turtle, I'm tired of her because she was alive and wasn't doing what I wanted her to do.
- Buy me a turtle, - suggests Tyapkin. He's only three
years and two months, so it's hard for him to understand what it's like “as if it were... “ .-
Or a kitten.
- You'd better sit on the porch and think you have a squirrel. It's like
there is. Pretending. Try it and you'll be interested right away. Go sit on
on the porch and talk to the squirrel, play. And I have to work, otherwise we don't have to
There will be money for candy and for dresses. So I'm going to write this book and get the money
and I'll buy you a new silk dress. Go to the porch.”
The child insists on communicating with his mother, who has nothing to do with him. Mom, who went through the worst ordeal as a child (her father locked her in for the whole day), sets her stoic behavior as an example for a child who is lucky enough to write books at home, rather than having to go to work, leaving him alone. It orients the child to communicate with a fictional object — a squirrel that should replace it while working on a book. The manner of communicating with a three-year-old child is tough, straightforward, and does not tolerate any objections. And all because, like her father, she has a great excuse why she is incapable of communication: her mother needs to work to earn “money for candy and dresses.” This is an objective situation, the reason for which is honestly explained to the child. Everything seems to be very clear and predictable, as at a reporting and election meeting, but it is alarming that it is difficult to recognize a girl in a child who responds to the strange name Tyapkin and at first “was capricious and about to cry” and then “roared”, even though she was promised a silk dress. And according to the illustrations, the hero of the story is a boy who is hard to imagine wearing a dress. How did the mother “justify herself” to the readers about this?
“We, like most young spouses, were waiting for a boy, even a diaper and
We bought blue undershirts, as expected for a boy. And even though she was born
girl, we call her Tyapkin for now. Tyapkin is a scary fashionista, loves new ones
beautiful rags, but I don't really buy them. So far he has the whole wardrobe
- one woolen dress and two cotton dresses. He mainly wears a washed flicker suit or, when it's hot, in shorts.”
But this is already a crime against the nature of a child. One can still understand the desire of young people to become parents to their first son, but it is impossible to justify a mother's struggle with her daughter's feminine nature. She admits without a shadow of a doubt that she continues to see the girl born as a boy, depriving her of the opportunity to speak for herself for three years, nipping in her “bud” a coquette girl, a fashionista girl, her future femininity and self-confidence. The mother, the woman, left “one woolen dress and two cotton dresses” in Tyapkin's wardrobe and let her go for a walk in a “washed flicker suit or, when it's hot, in shorts.” The mocking intonation of this evaluative sentence is achieved by deliberately using masculine words: “Tyapkin is a terrible fashionista and loves beautiful new rags.”
A substitution takes place, and the reader does not understand whether we are talking about a boy or a girl. Such distorted ideas about children could appear in the head of a woman who either spent her whole life in poverty or was emotionally or even physically abused as a child. One might assume that she was raped as a child, and she is trying to protect her girl from possible abuse. But we will put this assumption on the back shelf. Obviously, there are historical reasons for this negative attitude towards a girl's desire to be a fashionista: for many years, people were heavily influenced by the Soviet cultural tradition, which condemned the “bourgeois passion” for fashionable clothes, flirtatiousness and dandiness. Let me give you an example from Natalia Loiko's children's novel “The other way around” (Moscow, Children's Literature, 1962). This is what the heroine, a 14-year-old girl, Ira Kasatkina, gets on the first pages of the story:
“Irochka-Kasatochka — she likes to be called that and considers herself the cutest girl in '8 B. ' She looks like a doll, not some funny, shaggy one, but an expensive one, with thick eyelashes and curly golden hair. Kasatkina's mother once said at a parent meeting: “It's not the girl's fault that she's so nice. Why say she's flirty? Everybody just likes it.” When Ira learned about her mother's performance, she was very pleased.”
You can guess that both mom and her daughter are negative characters in the story, if only because Ira doesn't look like a “funny shaggy doll”, and her mother doesn't look like her classmates' mothers, as she takes care of herself, dresses well, and in general they have a big house. The story explains all their unseemly actions by inappropriate behavior (the desire to protect their daughter, buy good things, decorate the apartment) and the inappropriate appearance of their daughter and mother. The heroine of the novel “Tyapkin and Lyosha” is touched by the very old days — “a hundred years ago or more” - when her grandfather was young and became friends with a girl who “wore lace dresses, lace pants, wore long hair with curls”, but her own aesthetic ideas were formed under the influence of this antinomy: beauty/femininity is stupidity/dishonesty. Perhaps for the same reason she refuses the girl even a comb:
“- Mom! - Tyapkin said. - Give me your comb.
- Why would you want to? - I was surprised. - You forgot, we cut you off
hairs. And you tore your dolls off a long time ago.
- I still need it.
I gave it so he wouldn't bother me.”
We have found an explanation for her maternal position, but we cannot justify the cruelty and crime against a girl who has suffered the trauma of “not accepting” her as her beloved parents gave birth to her for life. Of course, they produced it, but in three years and two months they did not have time to help her turn from a doll into a butterfly, nor did they find time to accustom her to a name that would help the child isolate himself from the world, help her love, accept herself, look at herself through the eyes of loving people. Apparently, her parents were too busy, perhaps even subconsciously avenging her for deceiving their expectations. A child who has a name instead of a name and is dressed in rags should live in the evil stepmother's house! In any case, German folk tales have taught us that a similar fate awaits a poor orphan, but never a child of his own. But Tyapkin lives with his own mother, who doesn't hesitate to admit that she hasn't had time for “him” in three years. I can't believe that Maya Ganina drew a “positive image of her mother”.
After reading this story three times, I kept hoping that the writer would create a caricature, feuilleton image of her contemporary, bringing to the point of absurdity and grotesque the busy mother she had noticed in herself and in women she knew. She must have seen these working mothers who didn't care what their children were wearing (so long as they didn't get cold), how they spent their time after school (so long as their homework was done and had lunch). Several generations of Soviet children grew up on the streets with an apartment key hanging around their necks, wasting for hours after school in the yard wearing the shabby school suits they grew out of. Maya Ganina met mothers-teachers, mothers-doctors, mothers-teachers of kindergartens, for whom other people's children were more important than their own. Even when they came home, such mothers kept talking about work and asked their children formal parental questions that they didn't expect answers to, as they were sure that their children would grow up and be fine anyway. And how could it be otherwise when schools employ such responsible teachers for whom work is the meaning of life. And these mothers could be absolutely sure that if something went wrong, they would definitely report from school, and then the factory staff of chefs could be involved in raising their strangled son, and if the team didn't help, the army would definitely make him a human being. And the girl will definitely grow up to be an economic entrepreneur, if, of course, she follows her mother's example and, like her, sees the meaning of life in her work. And dressing up and thinking about things is not worthy of a real woman who should be dressed modestly and neatly. Therefore, fashion should not be encouraged — it will not lead to good. And where can you get the money for all this when you don't have enough money for the essentials?
Maya Ganina knew very well what she was writing about, as she was one of these women. And for them — strong, often lonely, overwhelmed, not taking care of themselves, not paying attention to their children and husband — she wrote her novels and stories. Not a hyperbole or a satirical image, but the true story of a woman who is ready to “fuse” her three-year-old child so as not to interfere with her neighbors in her country house, even under the supervision of a fictional squirrel or mythical creature from the thicket, Alyosha's woodland. Tyapkin's mother's logic of behavior, which is harmful and dangerous for the child, persists from the beginning to the end of the story. Of course, the reader was touched that his mother, unlike most adults, saw the little woodman, warmed him up, saved him from death and adopted him into the family as her own. But it was also a real salvation for her. The clingy and lonely Tyapkin finally found a friend and companion and was busy playing with him. But Tyapkin's mother did not calm down and continued to multiply blatant examples of a tactless and degrading relationship between children. And from somewhere she suddenly found time to treat, feed, dress Lesha and talk to him, and find the right words to make him accept his “dissimilarity”. At the same time, she managed to contrast Tyapkin and Lesha, as is often the case when more successful siblings or friends are cited as examples for their children.
“I would like Tyapkin to have a character like yours. And you don't have to try to be like anyone else, like a boy, for example. Being the way you are is always the hardest part. Did you understand me?”
Mom says very correct and necessary words to the lumberman (although the definition of “clever creature” is more suitable for her daughter), but at the same time she always catches her child. But why should a daughter have the character of a goblin rather than the inherited character traits of her mom or, at worst, dad? Reading the story, we find that Tyapkin's mother, as it turns out, is able to speak to children in a different tone, use diminutive suffixes, and be touched by nature: flowers, mushrooms, woodpeckers. “Double standards” have often become guidelines in family and public life. “Be” one person in your family and show a completely different face to the public, not distorted by anger and contempt. It's hard to imagine that this woman, who is touching a little member of “lower mythology”, could speak so rudely to her three-year-old daughter:
“- Put on a hat,” I suggested. “Otherwise, you look like a scarecrow. Head from
a boy and a girl's torso.
- I don't like this hat, - Tyapkin said in frustration and smoothed it out with his palm
dress on my belly. - I have a beautiful dress!
- The dress is okay, - I agreed. - I just don't understand why you're so
dressed up? Please don't go anywhere from the garden; we'll go to Galina Ivanovna's children together. I'll work and let's go.”
The story establishes a strong friendship between Lesh Lesha, who grows up in a family where there are only men and no mothers, and a girl who is raised mostly by his mother, as in Soviet books and films, fathers disappear all the time — at work, sailing, on expeditions. Tyapkin and Lyosha are two lonely and asexual creatures who have experienced loneliness in their own families. They don't have clothes or toys. But Tyapkin, as befits a child from an intelligent family, has a lot of books. On the other hand, Lyosha is sure that he is a boy, and Tyapkin is in doubt, as the formation of her sexual identity has been postponed indefinitely. The relationship between both “creatures” and “men” is based on the well-known behavioral models of “women” and “men”:
“We don't have a mother! - Lesha said contemptuously and clenched his lips.- Wu
We're just grandfathers and boys at all. We don't have these... - He suddenly
I looked suspiciously at Tyapkin and asked: - Who are you? Girl or
boy? I thought yesterday, boy.
- What do you care about! - Tyapkin said angrily. - Who is is. Don't
it's your thing. Let's go away!
- I'm just like that... - Lesha said conciliatingly. - I don't know how you are
they call.
Tyapkin breathed offended, then replied:
- My name is Tyapkin. And also Lyuba.
- So you're both a girl and a boy, - Lesha guessed. - And my name is
Volodya. Boy Volodya.
- Galina Ivanovna has Volodka, - Tyapkin said. - So nasty,
He shoves all the time...”
Who will grow up from Tyapkin and what will be her female destiny? The heroine of the story writes about what happened seventeen years after the events described as follows:
“In conclusion, I must say that it hasn't been seventeen years since everything happened, even though Tyapkin has become an adult and his name is now only Anyone.”
In other words, nothing in the poor woman's idea of how to treat her daughter has changed over the years. One can only imagine what it was like for Lyuba, who tried to turn into a butterfly, but apparently couldn't. I just got my name back.
Let's imagine what the future holds for Lyuba. It is quite obvious that she will graduate and become a good specialist. Mom will definitely be proud of her and tell her friends how much time and effort she spent to make Lyuba achieve such success. And then, when they stay eye to eye, the daughter will reproach her mother for not teaching her how to be a woman, confirming her name, not teaching her how to fight for her happiness. And her mother will tell her that she is a “fool” herself, because she finds “idiots” you can't get along with. And then, having relented, she will convince the young woman that few men can fit her, and it is better to live alone than with a man who does not deserve her. But if suddenly one of the “unworthy” decides to dedicate her life to Anybody, she will quietly enjoy her happiness and endure the attacks and ridicule of her beloved man. And at work, she is likely not to apply for a new position, physically feeling her “ceiling” or quietly worrying about being “wrapped up” and ignored. She will not respond to her rude boss, reject unfair reproaches, or respond to her friends' “pranks”. Love will remain a single mother, and one day in the kitchen, sitting at a table covered with checkered oilcloth, she will convince her daughter Vera that her current boyfriend, Volodka from the next door, is “so nasty” and “doesn't suit her at all.” And my grandmother will watch all this vigilantly from her chair, commenting and giving advice in her usual manner.
And it could be the other way around, as in Heinrich Sapgir's fairy tale about a princess who, in another scenario, could be “terrible”. Tyapkin grew up and became a family tyrant and manipulator, whose husband and children don't even dare to squeak from under whose heels. She knows exactly how everyone should live and what to do. Love has become a leader and often practices shouting and boorish attacks against her subordinates. She calls her mother a lot, but she rarely meets her. You can interrupt the telephone conversation at any time, but a personal meeting with her mother always takes her back to the days when she was Tyapkin in flicker pants and was friends with Lesh.
.png)
