Pushkin's Tales of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin are five in number, and four of them ("The Shot," "The Blizzard," "The Stationmaster," and "The Lady-Peasant") belong to the same literary species. The narrative features binding this quartet of stories together are, in the main, conventional. Each relates—among other things—the story of a young man who, having won the affections of a beautiful woman, overcomes some obstacle (or series of obstacles) which threatens their union, thereby paving

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... way to, or consolidating, a mariage d'amour at the end of the tale. All of which is to say that embedded in each is one of the oldest of all plots, the "successful courtship."