Content Warning: This section of the guide features discussion of graphic violence and death.

Pyotr gains consciousness five days later. Maria is sat his bedside watching over him. Pyotr asks Maria to marry him. She responds, “Take care of yourself, if only for my sake” (34); Pyotr is elated she has expressed love for him. Maria worries that Pyotr’s parents would not consent to their marriage. Pyotr writes to his father to ask for his consent to the marriage. Pyotr asks for Shvabrin to be released from confinement, where he had been held since the duel, and they reconcile.

Some time later, Pyotr receives a response from his father. In very strong words, his father rejects the proposal of marriage and tells him that news of his wound had caused his mother to “fall ill with grief” (36). Savelich also receives a strongly worded letter chastising him for not informing Pyotr’s parents of his wounds. Pyotr realizes that Shvabrin must have written his parents to tell him about the injury in the hopes that it would result in Pyotr’s being sent away from the fort so Shvabrin could have Maria to himself. Maria tells Pyotr she will not marry him without his father’s consent.