Margarita (Master and Margarita)

Margarita (Russian: Маргар́ита) is a fictional character from the novel The Master and Margarita by the Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov.

Description

The only things known from the novel is that her name is Margarita Nikolayevna and she is 30 years old. She is a very pretty moscovite, strong and resolute. She is a housewife residing downtown Moscow and is married to some famous and rich military engineer, whom she doesn't love and has no children. She lives in a large apartment and has help (Natasha, who later becomes a witch). She falls in love with a writer who she called Master (an honorary rather than domination nickname), joins Woland's entourage and performs the role of the Queen and host of the Satan's Ball, until she finally leaves the world as a witch together with Master to the place of their last refuge.

Most Bulgakov scholars believe that the main prototype for Margarita was Elena Bulgakova, the third and last wife of the writer, whom he called "My Margarita.^[1] The love between the two main characters is described in the novel as follows: "Love leaped out in front of us like a murderer in an alley leaping out of nowhere, and struck us both at once. As lightning strikes, as a Finnish knife strikes! She, by the way, insisted afterwards that it wasn't so, that we had, of course, loved each other for a long, long time, without knowing each other...".

References