 In "Libertinage in Russian Culture and Literature," Alexei Lalo stated that "[Nagródskaia] may have felt the need to represent the continuum of heterosexual and homosexual love and shifting gender identity more completely and insightfully than her contemporaries Zinovieva-Annibal or Verbitskaya did" and described the novel as "a more modern—and modernizing—literary phenomenon that many diverse researchers ... have taken it to be.