Michaela Magdalena Juklova, University of California, San Diego, University of Warwick
This essay explores the sexual politics of Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, with a special focus on the female heroine Margarita. Despite her dynamic nature, suffering and display of bravery that supersedes many of the male character’s in the novel, she is denied the agency that she deserves based on her gender. Her main weapon that she uses to combat this unfair situation is her sexuality, which brings her not only to her Master, whose novel she adopts as a child and towards whom she acts in a motherly manner, but also to Woland. I argue that Margarita was a witch before she met the supernatural characters from Woland’s troupe and before she symbolically bathed herself in the ointment given to them. Because of her sexuality and internalized child-like behavior, she is an attractive character and hence she is both feared by and attractive to men. While it is never explicitly mentioned in the novel that she has sexual intercourse with Woland in order to save her beloved master, I argue that the textual evidence points towards this act, as she in some ways replaces Woland’s previous helper, Hella. This situates her in a position of a "holy whore" character, a kind of Dostoevskian prostitute. By being seen as this, Margarita provides a much needed female character similar to that of Mary of Magdala for the biblical Yeshua chapters of the book, which are missing a female element.