Summary of the book "Life and Collar" (Teffi Hope)

Before proceeding to a brief exposition of the plot of the story "Life and Collar" by Teffi Hope, it is necessary to tell a little about her herself - a wonderful creator of satirical masterpieces. As it turned out, under this pseudonym the Petersburg poet and writer Nadezhda Alexandrovna Lokhvitskaya was published. She lived a long enough, interesting and fruitful life. Hope adored Russian classics in the person of Pushkin, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Gogol. The years of her life - from 1872 to 1952. The admirer of her talent was Nicholas II himself. After the revolution, she emigrated to Europe, lived in Germany and France. The writer was buried in a Russian cemetery in Paris.

Creative features and works of Teffi

So, one of her many humorous stories is called "Life and Collar". Teffi will write it in 1910, but more on this later. Nadezhda Alexandrovna gained popularity thanks to her satirical poems and feuilletons, she was one of the permanent employees of the St. Petersburg weekly magazines Satirikon and Shipovnik. She was systematically published in such authoritative French publications as "The Link", "The Coming Russia", "Contemporary Notes", etc.

The writer Teffi was affectionately called "the queen of Russian humor" of the 20th century. However, she was not a man of trivial amusing humor. Her works lead the reader into a world of irony, diluted with sadness and witty observations of the everyday life of an ordinary person. In her literary arsenal are such works as "The Seven Lights", "Humorous Stories" in two books, "Carousel", "Smoke without Fire", "Black Iris", "Evening Day", "Silent Creek", "All About Love "," His own strangers "," Life and collar ", etc.

But already by the 30th year, Teffi began to get involved in the memoir genre. After emigration, satire and humor gradually begin to be for her in a sense useless, and then in the work she increasingly turns her attention to philosophy. Out of her pen, there are essays on the great and influential people of their epoch: Rasputin, Lenin, Kerensky, Kolontai, Repin, Kuprin, Bunin, Merezhkovsky, Meyerhold and many others.

"Life and collar" Teffi: review

Having become acquainted with this work, you might think that the fiction in it is somehow very improbable and even faked. Well, how can an inanimate object in the form of an ordinary collar completely subordinate and even change the life of its owner? And yet in real life there are still examples that clearly show that very often people are going about the circumstances. This is the main idea of the work "Life and Collar" by Taffy Hope. It was precisely these unusual circumstances that developed in the modest, honest and very weak-willed heroine of Olga, who bought herself a new collar. Since that time, it has been changed, and it has not become its own. The collar took control of her, began to control it, and her life led to a sad outcome.

In this amazing work, there is indeed some exaggeration and grotesque, which makes realism too dubious.

"Life and collar" Teffi: summary

Only a naive person thinks that he can always dominate his things. And sometimes it happens that some nondescript thing will get into his life, so everything will turn, turn over and, worst of all, not at all right.

The main heroine Olechka Rozova has been married for three years, she is a quiet, faithful and loving wife of an honest and decent person. And she is very modest and complaisant, she does not pretend to anything and is always satisfied with the smallest in life. However, she was such until she happened to be in the manufactory shop of the Gostiny Dvor and did not buy herself a starched collar with a stretched yellow ribbon.

A sharp turn

At home, she spun for a long time in front of a mirror, trying on her purchase in many ways. She tied a strip of a collar that in the front, then on the side. And then she realized that a new blouse was begging for this purchase, since the collar was not looking at all at the old one. Olechka tormented with this thought all night, and in the morning she went to Gostiny Dvor and purchased a blouse for household money. But this does not end with a brief summary. "Life and collar" Teffi fills even more intrigue.

When she tried everything on, she thought that the skirt does not fit into the style of clothing, and the collar definitely requires a skirt with folds, but there is no money for Olechka anymore. But halfway, she did not want to stop and laid a bracelet and silver. She was restless and eerie. All evening she cried, lying in bed, because the collar ordered new shoes.

The very next day she was left without a watch, but in new shoes. That same evening she, pale and nervous, stammered, asked her grandmother for money, which she allegedly had to rub off her husband with cognac, this expensive procedure was prescribed to him by the doctor. The kind granny took pity and gave money. The next day, Olga added a new hat, belt and gloves to her stylish collar.

Deception

Then she ran around the familiar begged money to buy a striped sofa. As a result, he stood at home and irritated her, her decent husband and even a thievish cook. But all this was demanded by the ill-fated collar. However strange it may be, Olya ceased to live her life and completely subordinated herself to the collar.

Continue to retell the short content of the book "Life and the collar." Teffi deliberately brings the reader to the fact that the collar, as it turned out, was sewn in an incomprehensible and confused style, and the heroine was completely baffled. "If you are English, then why do you need a yellow ribbon, what kind of debauchery," she thought. Then she resisted the collar a little, and then, as a weak and spineless creature, completely surrendered, dropped her arms and began to swim along the current that carried her away from a decent human life.

Olenka cut her hair, began to smoke and loudly laughed, if suddenly she listened to all sorts of ambiguous speeches. Sometimes she had insights about the monstrous situation, especially at night, then she began to pray and cry. Basically it happened when the collar was erased. Day by day things began to go worse and worse, and then she decided to honestly confess to her husband, but he simply did not believe it and took it as a good and good joke.

Olechka started fighting with the collar, but she could not throw it away, psychiatrists, for example, know that for those who are nervous and weak people, some such suffering and suffering are simply necessary, they will not exchange them for any health and peace.

All life is in smithereens

This does not end with a brief summary of Teffi's Life and Collar. Once the heroine and at all crossed the line permissible for a married woman, being with her collar around her neck at a party, who behaved very unleashed and forced her neck to turn left and right.

Over dinner, a young student drew attention to her, shaking her leg under the table. And already further she was with a collar and a student in a cart, where the collar wanted to kiss and enter a restaurant to drink liquor, listen to Romanians and all sorts of vulgarity. In general, Olga has returned already in the morning. Her faithful husband was waiting for her at home and opened the door to her. He looked nervous, his face pale, he held pawnshop receipts in his hands. And then the husband began to frantically ask her where she was, why she had put her things and borrowed money from friends. Olechka, thrusting her hands in her pocket, whistled loudly, which she could never do, and said: "Profukala!".

As a result, her honest husband left her and was transferred to another city. And literally the next day, the collar worker in the laundry was lost somewhere.

Now the meek and modest Olechka continues to serve in the bank and blush at the word "omnibus", because it looks like the word "hug".

Conclusion

Now you know the main idea of the book and its brief content. "Life and collar" Teffi is really an amazing piece that pushes on different thoughts, but everyone can recognize himself in Olga, and well, if only at a certain stage.