On November 27, writing about Lermontov's A Hero of our Time, I found it offensive that Azamat trades his sister for a horse. I found fault with Lermontov for employing what I judged to be a fraudulent plot device. I've since read Amjad Jaimoukha's The Chechens (2005) where the following appears: "In Ingush society, a man had the right to give away his sister in marriage without her consent." (The Ingush, like the Chechens, are a subset of the Vainakh.) What appears to be a bit of crudeness in A Hero of our Time might in reality be an accurate representation of nineteenth-century Caucasian society. Apologies to Lermontov.
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