Overlooked by Alexis Everett '24

more clearly through the image of Psyche” (Gogol 364). It is highly unlikely that a twelve-year-old girl looks as sophisticated and developed as a goddess, however, her mother wants to see her in this light which is why she is tricked that the portrait of Psyche is actually her daughter. Psyche is the beauty standard she wants her daughter to live up to to be popular in society. Embodying a goddess is literally impossible which is why I think Gogol chose Psyche to represent the beauty standard. The mother should be content with the reality of her daughter’s looks, but she is so used to seeing the most beautiful and ideal women portrayed in high art that she deems her daughter’s flaws as unacceptable and feels the need to hide them through showing her daughter as a goddess.

In the end, Chartkov realizes the superficiality in his art and suffers knowing he failed in staying true to the nature of his subjects creating false realities. I believe he ultimately died of guilt. He regrets wasting his talent becoming “the fashionable painter” because he realizes he never dared depict anything unusual or uncomfortable even if that meant sacrificing the accuracy of the image. He wishes he had shown his society the realities of poverty and the simplicity of his servant Nikita while he had the chance. He was swayed by society into painting only what they wanted to see for a profit after his encounter with the landlord who wouldn’t buy his honest art. These paintings failed to demonstrate the larger issues within Charkov’s society like his former ones did. Instead, they depict society as elite members only turning a blind eye on greater issues. The elite represent a relatively small number of people in most societies, so only letting them be represented in areas such as art is unfair. If societies choose to neglect issues such as poverty in their cultures then the problems will never be addressed and could possibly worsen. In painting a young girl, Chartkov captures the ideal beauty standard paying the price of disregarding nature and reality. He excludes certain tones and small blemishes for the mother to see her daughter in the light she wishes to see her in. Creating an ideal beauty standard though art leads to a false perception of what beautiful can be. This can result in ordinary people feeling the need to change themselves because their features may not be portrayed in high art portraits. Chartkov is just one example of a “fashionable painter.” Throughout the entire history of art, kings, castles, and beautiful women have dominated paintings. Art like this is a major contributor to the issues around poverty and beauty standards we have in our own societies.

Works Cited Gogol, Nikolai. The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol. Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, Vintage Classics, 1999.

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