Just as "Poverty Is No Crime" shows the influence of the Slavophile
movement, "A Protégée of the Mistress" (1859) was inspired by the great
liberal movement that bore fruit in the emancipation of the serfs in 1861.
Ostróvsky here departed from town to a typical country manor, and produced
a work kindred in spirit to Turgénev's "Sportsman's Sketches," or "Mumu."
In a short play, instinct with simple poetry, he shows the suffering
brought about by serfdom: the petty tyranny of the landed proprietor, which
is the more galling because it is practised with a full conviction of
virtue on the part of the tyrant; and the crushed natures of the human
cattle under his charge.

The master grim, the lowly serf that tills his lands;
With lordly pride the first sends forth commands,
The second cringes like a slave.
--_Nekrasov._

Despite the unvarying success of his dramas on the stage, Ostróvsky for a
long time derived little financial benefit from them. Discouragement and
overwork wrecked his health, and were undoubtedly responsible for the
gloomy tone of a series of plays written in the years following 1860, of
which "Sin and Sorrow Are Common to All" (1863) is a typical example. Here
the dramatist sketches a tragic incident arising from the conflict of two
social classes, the petty tradesmen and the nobility. From the coarse
environment of the first emerge honest, upright natures like Krasnóv; from
the superficial, dawdling culture of the second come weak-willed triflers
like Babáyev. The sordid plot sweeps on to its inevitable conclusion with
true tragic force.

Towards the end of his life Ostróvsky gained the material prosperity that
was his due. "There was no theatre in Russia in which his plays were not