# Mary Pávlovna — The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories character guide

> Mary Pávlovna in The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories by Leo Tolstoy.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** St. Mary, Mary

**First appearance:** 0058-walk-in-the-light-while-there-is-light

## Snapshot

A devout woman whose earnest faith and remembered love for a dead tutor shape the moral atmosphere of her household and her children.

## Who they are

Mary Pávlovna presides over a home haunted by the memory of a consumptive tutor she loved, a man of gentle self-sacrifice whose ideals she still carries. Her piety is sincere but tinged with grief, and her children have absorbed both her devotion and the unspoken tenderness that surrounded his death. In the story's early arc she embodies the possibility of a faith that is lived rather than proclaimed, and the quiet cost of having loved someone the world did not quite understand.

## In the story

### [The Devil](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/leo_tolstoy_short_fiction_se/chapters/the-devil)

Eugène's mother; he consults her about an old debt, revealing his ongoing financial worries.

### [The Posthumous Papers of the Hermit, Fedor Kusmich](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/leo_tolstoy_short_fiction_se/chapters/the-posthumous-papers-of-the-hermit-fedor-kusmich)

Referenced as 'Mary Narishkin,' a former lover who left him, adding to his torment.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/leo_tolstoy_short_fiction_se/characters/marya_pavlovna
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/leo_tolstoy_short_fiction_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/leo_tolstoy_short_fiction_se/characters