Pushkin said that some readers would condemn Tatiana—they would call her impulsive or unseemly. But those readers weren’t being truthful. What they really meant was that Tatiana wasn’t strategic. She didn’t know how to play games. “The coquette reasons coolly; Tatiana in dead earnest loves and unconditionally yields.” I loved Tatiana, because she didn’t hide what she felt, and I loved Pushkin for calling out the kind of people who conflated discretion and virtue.
