Elena Ivanovna (née Rukavishnikova)

Character Analysis

Strong Female Role Model

Nabokov paints his mother as a strong, nurturing woman. We get an idea of the full force of her role in the family by watching her with Vladimir, and then learning about the family and political upheavals and what it must have meant to keep family life smooth while her husband was in pretty much constant danger.

For example, after Vladimir finishes composing his first poem, he runs to his mother to show it off, wanting and expecting adoration. It's late in the day, but his mother is up, reading the paper, and waiting for a call from her husband to tell her he's safe. In this insecurity, his mother still takes the time to read the poem, and actually seems to care:

She was smiling ecstatically through the tears that streamed down her face. 'How wonderful, how beautiful,' she said… (11.5.4)

Tragedy Strikes

Unfortunately, once these roles and responsibilities are taken away—they leave Russia, her children are growing up, and soon after, her husband is killed—Vladimir's mother becomes a tragic character. She eventually settles in Prague, a widow of little means surrounded by a series of pet dachshunds, until her death in 1939.

Mystical & Magical

Besides fulfilling the strong, motherly role of nurturing, Vladimir's mother is also the most demonstratively spiritual of the family. Nabokov writes:

Her intense and pure religiousness took the form of her having equal faith in the existence of another world and in the impossibility of comprehending it in terms of earthly life. (2.2.5)

Her love is moored in this spirituality, and she seems to understand Vladimir more than he understands himself, and with the perspective of time, Nabokov finds this to be exceptional. Importantly, they share the condition of synesthesia, (meaning that certain sensory details come with colors or sounds), so when one day little Vladimir mentions that the colors of the lettered blocks in the nursery have colors different than the ones he sees, to his mother, "this all seemed quite normal." (2.1.4) Her own synesthesia brought her colors when she listened to music, kind of like an iTunes visualizer built into your head.

Their weird bond doesn't stop there. One day, young Vladimir is home sick and waiting for his mother to return home from buying him a present (as she did each day he was sick.) In his weakened state, he imagines his mother going to a particular stationary store to buy a pencil for him. When she returns home, he sees that he's right...sort of:

Now the object proved to be a giant polygonal Faber pencil, four feet long and correspondingly thick. It had been hanging as a showpiece in the shop's window, and she presumed I had coveted it, as I coveted all things that were not quite purchasable. (2.2.4)

(For the record, Nabokov's not interested in talking about how crazy this seems: it is merely part of his special connection with his mom.)