Character guide

Eugene Onegin

major

Also known as Onegin, Eugene

Onegin arrives in the countryside already bored by drawing-rooms old and new, a man whose heart has not yet withered but whose habits of irony and detachment make him dangerous to anyone who takes him seriously. He befriends the poet Lenski and coolly measures the rural gentry against the glitter he has abandoned. His refusal to play the roles others assign him—suitor, neighbor, friend—sets the quiet tragedy of the early cantos in motion.

Tattiana Larina

major

Also known as Tattiana, Tania, belle Tattiana, young Tattiana, VIII Tattiana

Tattiana grows up among the Larina household, strange to childhood games and drawn instead to terrible tales and moonlight walks, her soul nourished on Richardson and Rousseau. When Onegin appears she writes him a letter of unguarded confession—an act that exposes both her courage and her vulnerability in a society that punishes such honesty. Her inner life, so unlike her sister Olga's easy cheerfulness, becomes the moral center of the novel's early arc.

Vladimir Lenski

major

Also known as Lenski, Vladimir, The foaming Lenski, XXIV Lenski

Lenski is the neighborhood's eligible semi-Russian romantic, welcomed by mothers with marriageable daughters and cherished by Onegin as the one companion worth talking to. He writes verse, believes in friendship and love with a poet's whole heart, and cannot imagine that Olga might smile at another man without betraying him. His exalted temper and Onegin's cold wit are set on a collision course that the early cantos quietly prepare.

Olga Larina

supporting

Also known as Olga, Olga Petoushkova

Olga is the conventional country beauty—round-faced, rosy, fond of laughter and dancing—everything her dreamy sister is not. She loves Lenski in the uncomplicated way she loves a party, and her casual friendliness toward other young men feeds his jealous imagination. Her ordinariness throws Tattiana's depth into relief and quietly sets the stage for the crisis that will shatter the household.

Zaretski

supporting

Zaretski is the kind of man every provincial society produces: a talker, a mediator, a keeper of old scandals, and the inevitable choice when a quarrel must be settled by pistols. He brings the rituals of the duel—its etiquette, its cold formality—into the middle of a dispute that began over a dance. His presence turns private hurt into public performance, and the machinery of honor he represents does the rest.

Princess Alina

minor

Also known as Pauline, that Princess Pauline of old

Tattiana's elderly aunt and a former Moscow society belle.

Monsieur Triquet

minor

Also known as Triquet, the sagacious Triquet

A French tutor and composer who performs a couplet at Tattiana's name-day party.

Monsieur Guillot

minor

Also known as Guillot, good Monsieur Guillot

Onegin's French valet who serves as his second in the duel.

Bouyànoff

minor

Also known as Bouyànoff

A boisterous neighbor and relative of the Larins who attends the name-day party.

Poustiakova

minor

A local landowner and gossip at the Larins' party.

Gray Phillippevna

minor

The Larins' elderly nurse and confidante to Tattiana.

Pétòushkoff

minor

A minor landowner and guest at the Larins' party.

Pélagie Nikolavna

minor

A local landowner and guest at the Larins' party.

Akulka

minor

A serf girl mentioned in passing in the narrative.

The Muse

minor

Also known as Muse, LIII The Muse

The poetic muse who inspires the narrator and appears as a personified figure.

Alexander Pushkin

supporting

Also known as Pushkin, Vassili Pushkin, Alexander Sergévitch Pushkin

Pushkin writes himself into the novel as a voice—urbane, self-mocking, capable of lyric tenderness one stanza and gossipy digression the next. He presents Onegin as a companion of his own dissipated Petersburg years, lending the character a biographical intimacy that no third-person narrator could. That double presence, of poet and dandy, gives the whole work its distinctive tone: ironic, warm, and always aware that youth and its follies are passing.

Princess Helène

minor

A society figure mentioned in the context of St. Petersburg high life.

Simeon Petròvitch

minor

Also known as Simeon

A guest at the Larins' name-day celebration.