Abstract
There have been numerous and extensive discussions of the role of ‘слухи’ [gossip] in
nineteenth-century Russian literature; usually gossip was viewed as a formative force be-
hind plot dynamics, and as the launching point for grotesque narrative effects. This article
attempts to frame different perceptions of gossip, treating it in its specific relation to the
subject of ageing and as a contributive factor to the development of the Russian realist
tradition. This paper proposes a new approach to the reading of gossip by examining how it
functions in the nineteenth-century Russian genre of the ‘society tale’. It emerges there as a
witch’s spell, in which ageing heroines choose gossip as their defense mechanism in
response to physiological and psychological changes within and around them.