The Plight of Women in Alexander Kuprin’s Yama (The Pit): Social Decay and Personal Despair

Abstract

This article examines the female characters in Alexander Kuprin’s Yama (The Pit) within the social and institutional conditions that shaped sex work in late Imperial Russia, treating the brothel as a closed microsociety that reflects the period's social inequalities and power relations. The study aims to reveal the social, economic, and moral structures that shape the characters’ lives. It combines textual and interpretative analysis within a qualitative literary-sociological approach. The theoretical framework draws on Pierre Bourdieu’s forms of capital to examine the characters’ positions through the economic, cultural, and social resources they possess or lack. Catherine Hakim’s concept of erotic capital is used to explore how physical attractiveness affects women’s positions and the value attributed to them within the brothel. At the same time, Lidiya Ginzburg’s approach provides insight into their inner experiences. The findings show that the female characters are represented as part of a broader social system in which unequal access to resources limits their positions and possibilities for action. The value attached to the female body is temporary and fragile, while limited economic and social resources constrain attempts to leave the system. Thus, Yama combines literary representation with social analysis, revealing how structural inequality, economic dependence, and unequal power relations shape women’s lives beyond individual circumstances.