In a review of the books of the prolific fiction writer M. I. Voskresensky, Dobrolyubov creates the image of a narrator - an “old joker”, revealing the main feature of Voskresensky’s fiction - the banality of the content, the lack of artistic discoveries. However, by this time Voskresensky’s literary reputation had long been established and Dobrolyubov’s appeal to his works was caused not so much by the need to determine the measure of their artistic merit, but by the desire of the critic to point out - in connection with the content of one of the works under review - the problem of women’s inequality.