Leo Tolstoy’s works raise the issue of essential elements of feminism despite that fact that they are based on realism. “Tolstoy's ideas on nonviolent resistance had a profound impact on such pivotal 20th-century figures as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.” (“Leo Tolstoy”, n. d. para.1). Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) is a Russian novelist, a profound social thinker and one of the greatest writers of realistic fictions of all times. His last novel, Resurrection, published in 1899, is said to have recorded in artistic form the Reresurrection of a fallen men. The book is the last of his major long fictions published in his lifetime. Tolstoy had intended the novel as an exposition of the injustice of man-made laws and the hypocrisy of the institutionalized church. The novel also “explores the economic philosophy of Georgism, of which Tolstoy had become a very strong advocate towards the end of his life” (“Resurrection”, n. d., para. 1). Resurrection is the great imaginative synthesis of Tolstoyism Edmonds, [1]. “Tolstoy is indicting the whole of modern society in Resurrection” Troyat [2]. In the view of Simmons [3], Resurrection outsold Anna Karenina and War and Peace. Despite its early success, today Resurrection is not as famous as the works that preceded it.    

The novel, Resurrection records the story of a nobleman named Dmitri Ivanovich Nekhlyudov, who seeks redemption for a sin committed years earlier. When he was a younger man, at his Aunts' estate, he fell in love with the ward of his aunt, Katyusha (Katerina Mikhailovna Maslova). Then he goes to the city and becomes drunkakd. He returns two years later and rapes Katyusha, leaving her pregnant. She is then thrown out by his Aunt and faces a series of unpleasant events, before she ends up working as a prostitute, going by her surname, Maslova. Nekhlyudov visits the prison in Siberia ten years later and finds Maslova imprisoned for murdering a torturing client. He feels dismayed by the injustice and suffering in the world. He gives up his property to his peasants and he follows Katyusha into exile, planning on marrying her. But she refuses him and falls in love with another man. This is a story of Maslova’s resistance to androgenic exploitation. She has infinitely been reduced to such deplorable plight which has created enough ground for feminist thinking. Rosemary Edmonds [1] iterates, “Tolstoy sets himself to reproduce in artistic form the Resurrection of fallen man” (p. 16). But it is not the Christian conception of Resurrection and; it is the moral regeneration of protagonist that he describes. 

All the shocking events that occur in the novel provoke a researcher to analyze the text from feminist perspective. The chief research question that lies beneath the survey is how the intended acts of silence can become a weapon for protesting male domination. The rationale of the paper lies in probing the cause of the protagonist’s silence and its impact on those who try to subjugate her.

The methodology of this research is textual as constructed and guarded by circumference of feminist approach. Apart from the making the intensive study of the text, Resurrection, as the primary resource, the methodological tools are also drawn from different feminist theories, especially about the condition of the females in the patriarchal society. For the collection of the related materials, articles on Resurrection from the library, websites and magazines are taken as secondary sources.

Feminism is a women’s movement which emerged in the late 1960s. “Feminism a specific kind of political discourse; a critical and theoretical practice committed to the struggle against patriarchy and sexism” [4,5]. Feminist theory encompasses work in a variety of disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, economics, women’s studies, literary critics, art history psychoanalysis and philosophy [6]. Ruth [7] comments, “Patriarchy is probably the oldest forms exploitation of one part of population by another” (p. 57). Beauvoir [8] in her book, The Second Sex criticizes the tendency of the patriarchal society to socialize women as inferior beings saying, “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” (p. 29). Virginia Woolf [9] went ahead and asked women to have their own room and money if they wanted to write fiction. Creativity is an individual and independent entity of a natural gift which belongs to neither male nor female [10]. Some feminists consider men’s control of land and nature as responsible for the oppression of women and destruction of natural environment [11]. Socialist feminism argues that “women’s liberation can only be achieved by working to end economic and cultural sources of women’s oppression” (Ehrenriech, n. d., para. 1). Showalter [12] advocated Gynocriticism is more creative act because it establishes woman as genius and intellectual one and challenges Rousseauestic anti-feminist belief that women cannot equate to men in intellect and creativity. Postmodern feminists also emphasize the social construction of gender and the discursive nature of reality [13].

The feminist approaches mentioned above are useful tools to examine how the protagonist of Tolstoy’s novel, Resurrection, Maslova struggles to resist against the marginalization of women challenging the deep-rooted patriarchal norms and values through the weapon of silence. The limitation of the study lies in the extensive investigation of the text with making any comparative study of this novel with other novel. 

Review of Literature

Many critics have researched Resurrection through different aspects. There are some critics who have commented on its theme, characterization and narrative technique. Saunders [14] estimates the novel, Resurrection in such words: “It's a shocking and impolite book, seemingly incapable of that last-minute epiphanic updraft or lyric reversal that lets us walk away from even the darkest novel fundamentally intact” (para. 1). Leon [5] analyzes that “both novelists, Doestovsky and Tolstoy reveled some understanding of Russian Society: Dostoyevsky, of the lower stratum; Tolstoy, also the upper classes” (p. 286). Leon [5] further argues that society predominates rather than an individual in Resurrection. Resurrection is an expression of an integral contemplation of the world; a propagation of Tolstoy’s faith and moral ideals, portraying Russia as he saw her, within the bounds in which he was capable of experiencing her Edmonds [1]. Some critics comment that Tolstoy, in Resurrection, has expressed his gospel of the brotherhood of men, all devoted to teaching his ideas. In the view of Canning [16], “Tolstoy tried his utmost to model his life on his teaching, to make it simple and to adjust it to the life of the peasant” (p. 131). It is the story of a man tormented by the injustices of the world about him, who is at the same time tortured by his own self-indulgence Aldiss [17]. Solnstev [18] observes, “The author’s idea in this novel was to locate the Russian aristocrat, Nekhlyudov and the common Russian people in the person of Katyusha Maslova face to face” (p. 157). Tolstoy gives us “a vivid picture of a class in Resurrection”[19]. 

Commenting on the characterization of the novel, Troyat [2] remarks that “one feels here the juxtaposition of one very real person going through the moral crisis of another one and the other one is the aged Tolstoy” (p. 569). Resurrection has characters that are one-dimensional and that as a whole the book lacks Tolstoy's earlier attention to detail, but by this point, Tolstoy was writing in a style that favored meaning over aesthetic quality (Simmons, n. d.). According to Volkova [20], every literary work, Tolstoy used to say, is a letter from the author to his unknown friends; a book should pass the same way as the letters – through many cities and villages (p. 92).

Though so many critics have approached the text from various perspectives, they have not noticed the role of silence displayed by women in the novel from the feminist perspective. Hence, this article aims to explore on the research gap oriented to study the silence that can be triumphant over male dominated established social rules and regulation. This research focuses on deconstructing dominant male’s patterns of thought while reconstructing female experience previously unnoticed by the reviewers and critics.

In many cases, silence functions more than a part of nonverbal communication. Cixous [21] argues that “silence can disrupt oppressive language and logic” (p. 256). The silence, in Tolstoy’s Resurrection, is multivalent which not only conveys the horror of sexual violence upon an innocent lady, Maslova but also her strong resistance on it. It also articulates the unarticulated issues by which the victim, the protagonist Maslova arrives at her decision at the end. Though Maslova is born free she was caught by her mother's anger, brutally betrayed by her lover, bore birth-pang which perished her, was enslaved and was silenced by the abuse of her surroundings. When Nekhlyudov was a younger man, at his Aunts’ estate, he fell in love with their ward, Katyusha (Katerina Mikhailovna Maslova), who was a goddaughter to his Aunt. Then he went to the city and became a drunkard and gambler. He returns two years later to his Aunts’ estate and rapes Katyusha, leaving her pregnant. She is then thrown out by his Aunt and faces a series of unpleasant events, before she ends up working as a prostitute, going by her surname, Maslova. Ten years later, Nekhlyudov sits on a jury which sentences the girl, Maslova, to prison in Siberia for murder by poisoning a client who beats her. He realizes that below his aristocratic world, there is a much larger world of cruelty, injustice and suffering. He decides to give up his property to his peasants and he follows Katyusha into exile, planning on marrying her. On their long journey into Siberia, she falls in love with another man and Nekhludov still chooses to live as part of the penal community, seeking redemption.Men assault Maslova’s sphere, harass and follow her day and night, strike and shake and throw themselves at her, whether it be the police officer or male prisoners, Sometimes she speaks through imagery. She is speaking being silent and this silence is in the form of protest against Nekhlyudov. Postmodern feminists react against the social construction of gender and the discursive nature of reality [13]. Maslova also reacts against the social construction of gender by means of silence.

Moi [4] regards that patriarchy has developed whole series of feminine characteristics such as sweetness, modesty and subservience. The nexus of abuse Maslova’s mother went through was later followed by her daughter. Thus, her mother, having previewed the situation inclined to unsuckle the wanted one, Maslova. The same thing happened to Maslova. It shows that the defenseless history of women is not new. Maslova’s mother who was a dairy worker had been bound to be a bed partner of her landlord and compelled to give birth to the unwanted children who would die very soon. Her mother died leaving her daughter defenseless against the masculine violation in the world not very different from what she went through. Rather her daughter, Maslova’s position proved even more vulnerable. She bore a child, which was nothing but a hindrance as she had been to her mother: “For, with that night everything changed and the unborn child became nothing but an encumbrance” (p. 175). 

Maslova could not confide with anyone about what happened because she had the least power to tell. Perhaps, her silence was something imposed upon her by status created by society. Because status bestows power on those who have it, that power often results in authority and in power over others. Reflecting on silence, Black and Stone [22] argue “Privileging is the term that is used to acknowledge that the person in authority has the power to view situations from his/her perspective and this all adds up to silencing” (p. 243). And Nekhlyudov bought her silence by thrusting an envelope containing a hundred rouble notes into her bodice. She sensed of impending disaster when she knew the sudden stirring inside her body that she was pregnant. Maslova’s feeling of doom further stemmed from the fact that Nekhlyudov would not come. She knew “he had deserted her, having had his pleasure of her and outraging her feelings” (p. 177). She begins a life of degradation where she has to undergo every kind of exploitation. Nekhlyudov loses his identity as her lover from that day on. 

Marxist feminism’s foundation is laid by Engels who claims that a woman’s institution of family as it exists is a complex system in which men command women’s services [23]. Nekhlyudov views Maslova as a sexual commodity only, not as a human being. So, there is a vast discord between what his conscience has called for and the life he is leading. The distance is greater than Nekhlyudov believes he is leading. But Maslova senses it distinctly. Nekhlyudov treats her as if she is born to be subjected and she should always be subjugated to him. Many women, once subjected to such “terrible, ungovernable animal passion” (p. 89), come to know every design that the oppressors want to capture them and thus want to avoid their sweet swears and promises. Maslova also could not believe that his sacrifice is not altruistic.

Beauvoir [8] claims that gender is a myth created by patriarchal society to dominate female. Nekhlyudov and all other males are guided that their tradition that prospers by mitigating women’s sphere. The whole patriarchy wants to sacrifice women at the altar of “animal passion” (p. 89). This is where the true foundation of patriarchy resides. But this tower of power however proves to be unstable and insecure as Maslova dares to reject Nekhlyudov through her silence. Nekhlyudov is the central character of Resurrection and has consumed more space in the narrative but he cannot be a lover who can win the heart of his beloved. Moreover, he is a “seducer” (p. 25) and “first betrayer” (p. 27) who marvels and achieves “a certain satisfaction at having accomplished his object” (p. 84). Although Nekhlyudov says Maslova “You are dearer to me than a sister” (200), he does not consider Maslova’s feelings and what would become of her. Maslova is both stunned and silent “deserted her, having had his pleasure of her” (p. 177) and wounded within. Nekhlyudov never makes the necessary effort to look for her. Therefore Nekhlyudov, for her, is a man she had once roved him with a pure love, a rich gentleman who has now shattered her dream.

A woman often responds to male violence with silence. Maslova was disgusted with him but could not express her disgust in language, for she understood the inadequacy of language to carry her emotion. She could not communicate the incommunicable hatred. Poverty of language is at the heart of victim’s inexpressiveness. Maslova’s refuses to marry Nekhlyudov by the end because she thinks marriage is a holy union; and this commitment to truth, as she feels, is lacking between her and Nekhlyudov. Real happiness thereby is not possible in forced union. Further, Nekhlyudov is not a lover but he is a deceiver. Nekhlyudov is too much emotional and he lacks morality. Maslova is “calm enough” (p. 218). He, though immoral, wants to be forgiven and loved again. Meeting her in Siberia, he says, “Katusha, dear Katusha, I came to ask you to forgive me, but you have not told me. Have you forgiven me? Will you ever forgive me?” (p. 199). Nekhlyudov uses sweet language and tries to compel her to operate according to his desire. He tries to persuade her to do the operation. He uses the weapon of language as a means of persuasion. This rhetoric use of polite speech, “dear Katusha” (p. 199) is the sharp patriarchal weapon which he again intends to use to control her: “calm yourself”’ (p. 218). Tyson [5] says: 

The belief that men are superior to women has been used, feminists have observed, to justify and maintain the male monopoly of positions of economic, political and social power, in other words, to keep women powerless by denying them the educational and occupational means of acquiring economic, political and social power. (p. 84)

Nekhlyudov takes himself as a superior being. Maslova had never expected to see him again and certainly not at that time of imprisonment in Siberia. And so, his reappearance startles her into remembering things she never thought of then. Her only possible response is her own silent rage. However, the unspeakable rage against him begins to find a place within her. The first moment brings back to her dimly that new wonderful world of thoughts which has been revealed to her by the charming young man who has loved her and whom she has loved; and then she remembers his incomprehensible cruelty and the whole long chain of degradation and suffering which had followed before that enchanted happiness. And, Maslova feels sick at heart. But not being strong enough to analyze it all, she rids herself of her memories, flinging over them the veil of a dissolute life. In the first moment she is associated to the man sitting beside her with the young man she had once loved, but then finding that that had been too painful, she had stopped connecting him with that youth. Then that well-dressed, well-groomed gentle man with the perfumed beard had no longer been the Nekhlyudov she had been in love, but only one of those men who made use of a creature like herself when they needed them and whom creatures like herself had to make use of in their turn as profitably they could. Maslova is silent, reflecting how she could best make use of Nekhlyudov. Therefore, she is “not listening to him but looking first at his hand, then at the warder” (p. 199).

The male attempt to deny women the educational and occupational means of acquiring economic, political and social power [5]. Nekhlyudov tries to do the same. Maslova is not listening to what Nekhlyudov wants her to offer him. The general concept may be that if she is not listening then she must be talking or if she is not talking then she must be thinking. But Maslova’s role generally evokes curiosity to the traditional readers because all the time she is looking. She is looking again not at Nekhlyudov rather she is looking first at his hand, then at the warder, which indirectly speaks the voice of rejection. Maslova has nothing to listen since she already has listened to their voices as well as their practices. She has experienced their onslaughts upon her physically as well as mentally. She looks upon Nekhlyudov as a subject who looks upon an object, dispassionately. A woman who is silent is an addressor and at the same time she is the subject. She is the subject and a man who is loquacious becomes a deaf addressee, who receives only, therefore, becomes an object. Thus, male power upon her seems to be a tentative kind. Subjects always act and control rather than are controlled and acted upon. Thus, her position deconstructs historical hierarchization that woman is always on the side of passivity. Maslova threatens culture. It becomes possible through her silence.

On the other hand, from the outset, Maslova senses the false note in Nekhlyudov's repentance. And anyway, what good could his repentance do her? It could not rehabilitate her. Nor can she bring herself to compromise and make use of him as companions: “What for? Don’t be a fool! If he marries her she’ll be rolling in money” (p. 256). But instead of using voice to reject the offer, she is using silence as the medium of resistance. The world of words shrinks so long as the world of silence reins her prior situations. Thus, Nekhlyudov comes to represent all that Maslova hates. Even Nekhlyudov seems to regret for he thinks he has done something wrong to her. 

Nekhlyudov, in the novel, lacks proper interpretive strategies to unravel Maslova’s motive. The Russian philosopher, Bakhtin [24] deems that an ethical response to another’s suffering begins when we enter into their world in order to experience their pain. But lacking familiarity with her life within which her gestures are signs, Nekhlyudov can neither read nor comprehend the meanings of her disdainful and aggressive gesture. The inaccessibility of language produces both silence and bodily gestures. It is women’s experience that is alien to men, remains always imaginary from the male point of view. Showalter [12] rightly judges that “men do not know what is in the wild; it is female ethics enacted in secret, so it is unspoken” (p. 367). The relationship between men and women in Resurrection is not that of conjugation rather this relationship is rooted in the lifelong subjugation of woman and men are prospering upon it. While male torture female by subjecting them to every kind of humiliation, inhuman degradation and suffering of all sorts of exploitation, women counter it through non-verbal resistance.

Silence as a Form of Verbal Violence

Silent communicative acts conveying either emotional or propositional content accompany the meaningful facial expression or gestures, although Maslova’s silence also acts are not accompanied by any visual cues. Maslova can not mention man’s oppression directly, so she does not speak against domination, but she engages in speaking against domination and monologism and her wishes are shown as cloaked in various activities. Mary Wollstonecraft [10] opines:

Women are subjected by ignorance to their sensations and only taught to look for happiness in love, refine on sensual feelings and adopt metaphysical notions respecting that passion, which lead them. Shamefully to neglect the duties of life, frequently in the midst of these sublime refinements, they plump into actual vice. (p. 328)

Maslova is also subjected by the male members of her society thinking that she is ignorant. The violence inflicted upon Maslova comes to the reader not through her voice but through her gestures, bodily expressions and through the words of others. Thus, she does not speak directly of abuse. Her face suddenly “puckered up with pain. She said nothing and only lowered her eyes” (p. 520). She is paralyzed with grief. Handley [25] thinks that “pain is characterized by its unsharability and it dismantles the victim’s capacity for language therefore the capacity to represent that pain to other” (p. 140). The power of silence resides in transforming such pain. Silence is there because it has perilous revelation: the eruption of aggression, the strength of a woman under a triple or quadruple oppression.

The existing institutions which control women’s lives and language have affectedly silenced them, but cannot forcibly close their eyes. This reflects the unvoiced story of their suffering, the sparks of suppressed anger signaling their potential for bringing about change, “the change that had taken place in her was reflected in her looks” (p. 477). Such eyes of the oppressed are potentially danger for the oppressor. In this novel, Maslova draws attention with her eyes to the systematic brutalization of the innocence by the central figure of patriarchal authority and an embodiment of patriarchal limitation and manipulation. She also demonstrates the importance of claiming the body as a site of resistance against oppression. The “malicious look” (p. 254) and “tightly clasping her small hands” (p. 254) and the “trembling lips” (p. 254) of her signify her protest against a system that strictly censors her voice. Maslova’s silent and malicious look registers her silent defiance of the established order. Thus, Maslova uses language indirectly to imply and suggest. Real communication happens between them with her eyes, therefore, “her Tears communicated themselves to him” (p. 219) and talks through her body. 

Nekhlyudov wants to inquire what is besetting inside her mind which has constantly disinclined to give the appropriate cause beside her indifference. He contemplates, “What’s going on in her mind now?” (p. 318). Maslova is concealing in words but can be interpreted or read distinctly in her facial expression and gestures. Nekhlyudov drives her into silence by demanding that she should speak in their dialects of possession. Maslova rather rejects him by her bodily expressions. Woolf [9] believes that women could freely develop their artistic talents if they achieved social and economic equality with men.

This marginal voice, pregnant as it is with meaning, represents the centrifugal force which threatens to disrupt authority and liberate alternative voices which patriarchy has deliberately tried to suppress. What is unsaid and unheard in Maslova’s voice can be deduced through her malicious look and trembling lips. Where her voice becomes superfluous her gestures avail. She uses her eyes to notify her message and uses them to communicate what she is really wanting. She has used limited verbal discourse to tell the truth she relays through her glances:

‘I recall it so as to make amends and atone for my sin, Katusha’, he began and was on the point of saying that he wanted to Marry her but he met her eyes and read in them something so terrible, So coarse and revolting, that he could not go on. (p. 200)

Tyson [5] argues that men assume themselves as superior to women to justify and maintain the male monopoly of their economic, political and social positions. But Nekhlyudov is horrified realizing that he is losing his superiority. He has stopped making use of language. Her eyes tell all. He has nothing more to say for he has understood the dimension of her hate for him. Possibly Maslova would have spoken if she had not been burdened with grief and coercion. Now Maslova has no more poetic throat. Hence a victim uses the language of silence to communicate. Her silence stance is much more than his speaking self; this gives Maslova more power which Nekhlyudov fears. And this is why, Robin Morgan deems that the silence may well be mightier than the told or voice. Nekhlyudov’s verbal speech becomes but a shadow while remaining present and her silence gains a presence whilst, by its very nature, manages to remain silent. Maslova’s gesture of rebellion cuts through all the intersecting structure of domination and oppression. Maslova speaks “after moment’s silence” (p. 66) and soon “relapses back in to silence” (p. 144); she scarcely “opened her mouth” (p. 108). Again she “stopped with her mouth open” (p. 218) and could not speak. Maslova’s act is an isolated gesture of rebellion. She reappropriates her body and claims her silence as a prerogative, thus defeating a traditional patriarchal strategy of imposing control. Maslova takes control of her public representation, her literal representation hence moves beyond control.

Maslova’s method is to invent through her silence different versions of the speaking self and to dramatize the devastating effects of the type of cultural interpretation that dangers her real personae. Maslova’s speaking persona is eventually subordinated to her silent persona that rejects speech. The superintendent of the prison where she is captivated says, “In the ordinary way Maslova's a quiet woman” (p. 229). Thus, Maslova preserves all the authority and influence of being a woman by leaving her speech extant but annihilating the speaking role before others can corrupt it. Maslova seems to have been profoundly aware of the moment threatening to reduce the power and meaning of her speech. The longer she becomes silent, the more meaning and commitment she gathers.

Nekhlyudov uses language as a medium, says what he means, but she is silent and does not say what she means, rather she acts. Thus, silence is acted. Maslova is more active than Nekhlyudov although she seems “secretive and ill-disposed” (p. 476). The silence, Maslova adopts, is multivalent. So, it is not her subservient posture rather her active role launched against oppression. So, her silence is not silence but is dynamite that has active existence and is compelling power to subvert the male sovereignty. Maslova, from a position of ostensible silence, powerlessness, actually operates with power. Thus, she shakes the very foundation of patriarchy still reigning woman’s slavery. Maslova was helped not by her speech but by her silence. She characterizes outwardly a quiet woman but she is committed to her decision when Nekhlyudov proposes to marry her, “I have made up my mind to marry you” (p. 218), where she showed her disgust through her face and her angry eyes. After a while:

‘Why should that be necessary?’ she said, scowling angrily.

‘I feel I must do so before God’.

‘What has God got to do with it? You're talking nonsense. God? What God? You ought to have thought of God when you,’ she said and stopped with her mouth open. (p. 218)

Maslova has no voice with whatever she may have to say about him. This absence, in fact, is a representation of that female voice which has been so effectively silenced. She actually chokes up and cannot revive all that she had experienced and finally comes to seal by her silence, a particular form of signifier that is called pregnant silence. Thus, by resuming silence she is stressing silence because through it she sees she could render her experience. Maslova she had ceased the status quo. “Everybody lived for himself only, for his own pleasure and all the talk about god and righteousness was an illusion” (p. 177), she muses which added her doubts. Before those terrible nights she had believed in God and believed in what other people did, too, but she was convinced that all they said about God and goodness was just in order to cheat people. Moi [4] argues that patriarchy has developed the feminine characteristics such as sweetness, modesty, subservience, humility. Maslova seeks to escape voice and talks in silence by pushing away the traditionally feminine to assert a narrative actively engaging to create more space for critical reception. In this terrain of silence, her narrow world has widened and it is no longer constrained by timidity. The text not only reveals how she has been silenced in society but also how she has created ingenious methods for inserting her collective resistance. Nekhlyudov presses on her that she should not remain stubborn in her decision and give assent to him about his marriage proposal, “you must decide” (p. 520). But, Maslova sets aside these pressures and says, “Oh, let me alone! There is nothing more to be said” (p. 520). Again she is confronted by a compulsive situation, an insidious tyrannical ideology behind male cannon, which is devouring her. Maslova comes under the most extreme pressure. Fearing that she was hearing the voice of compulsion once again and forced by a monolithic world order in which she refused to participate, she chooses finally to silence herself, but not before leaving a powerfully moving record of a woman's search for selfhood through the reincarnation of the past in the present.

Tolstoy dramatizes Maslova's reluctance and incapacity to communicate her bitter experience. Nekhlyudov drove her into silence through his multifaceted forms of domination but later demands that she must give her assent or must decide about his proposal in his language of possession. But, silence is not the language of possession. So, sensing his losing the battle, Nekhlyudov wants Pavlovna to say whether Maslova will marry him or not. For Maslova, even his presence is troublesome. So, Pavlovna says Nekhlyudov, “And at the same time your presence agitates her” (p. 518). Thus, the violence, inflicted upon Maslova’s life and her agony comes to us through the words of other, of her female friend. Maslova is using someone else for her expressions. It is also an indirect way of projecting her voice out in the world and an indirect way of speaking against the establishment.

Modern women do not aspire to internalize the role of the second sex, the other [8]. Maslova is a modern woman in Beauvoirean term. Maslova is most of the time spoken of, she is addressed, is talked rather she talks, addresses and speaks. But now Maslova is not only spoken of, her silence speaks if she is not seen speaking. She thinks that in such very act lies her survival because a woman who keeps creative silence has power and a woman with power is feared and not made victim, as had been before, repeatedly.

Maslova rejects any decorative form of the traditional feminine. Tyson says, “Feminism is the movement started by the feminists for the sake of gaining equal rights and identity to women” (p. 84). Maslova speaks for gaining her rights and identity in a male-led society. Maslova’s persona of a silenced woman following her renunciation is a final figure of the woman hero, a matter of celebration. Although Maslova is silent, she has greater moral and spiritual stamina than the nobleman, Nekhlyudov. Maslova most clearly establishes her position by setting herself as an inarticulate figure, but substantiallyi an articulating woman in opposition to the patriarchy. By choosing breakage from Nekhlyudov, instead of choosing so-called luxurious life, Maslova conflates with her companions the limiting cultural forces she denounces. Maslova's rejection of speech is not a rejection of a self but a creation of a distinct identity because she is never limited to the discourse of the private heart. Maslova speaks at once with a voice of authority and a voice of rebellion, elevating herself. Maslova finds herself in a position of authority, ripe with opportunity to discard Nekhlyudov. She emerges finally with a voice and begins to speak boldly to Nekhlyudov of her regret that she was no more a commodity and she would not let him make use of her spiritually as he had done physically, nor would she allow herself to be an object for any magnanimity on his part. She has taken a major step toward healing the physical and psychic wounds by altering her self-image as victim to that of survivor. Maslova sees the absurdity of that sort of ecstatic love of his and while it flatters her it also scares her. But it seems to her that it is nothing else than ordinary sexual feeling on his part, although it is masked. At the conclusion of the text, Resurrection, Nekhlyudov again wants to pursue her even if his presence was not favorable to Maslova. Nekhlyudov says,“I will not say good-bye, I shall see you again” (p. 553). But she just whispers almost inaudibly, “Forgive me” (p. 553).

The novel, Resurrection forces the readers to engage in an active dialogue because silence makes its presence felt during its absence. Maslova does not accept even after his another meeting; rather her whisper wants to terminate his desire. It was their final encounter before they parted. She does not assent; her final decision is not stated. Her silence works as decision when the proposal has lasting impact. So, Maslova’s critical voice demurs, erases leaving silence in place of misstatement. Maslova’s silence is crucial to the understanding of her voice. Her silence within the novel relates to very awareness of self to berevolutionary within her from the moment of her desertion. Through silence, Maslova could best take revenge on him and therefore, it is silence and also breaking silence. Maslova redefines her silent posture, now as the female power to annihilate patriarchy. Thus, readers are left knowing that her silence exists, but exists as a reaction and resolution and speaks for equal position. Maslova's repudiation of his proposal seems to reject the way the world speaks.

Tolstoy’s novel, Resurrection contains an alternative model of interpretation in which patriarchy is notably refuted and in which Maslova’s act of affirming her own presence is central. Significantly, the novel places the agency of revolutionary change in a woman who has been receded so far from the margins of the socioeconomic matter. Resurrection is a demonstration of cultural enforcement of expectation and also about women encountering social and cultural enforcements and seeking ways to outmaneuver them. Resurrection presents a capsule order in which male privilege is waning. It explores in some detail the specific implication of this exploitative system against woman. Maslova suffers because she is poor and because she is woman. She literally comes out of an unrelieved darkness to revolt or to deny Nekhlyudov. Resurrection is filled with and founded upon silences, which speak as profoundly as the actual text about language and power. Maslova's stories are not only the stories of being victimized but also of survival and strength, resistance and renewal. The research scholars interested to explore the text from other various aspects of post modern feminist criticism can take this research paper as a reference.

Acknowledgment

For the preparation of the current research, no any agency and organization funded the researcher. The author has made his own sincere efforts in accumulating the primary and secondary resources.

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