How much land does one need

The younger sister, a peasant married to Pahom, asserts this conviction to her elder sister, a more affluent woman married to a merchant and living in a city. In her defense of peasantry, the younger sister disrupts pervasive notions that wealth is synonymous with security and safety. She recognizes that the elder sister lives in "better style"—that she has more access to glamorous material possessions and experiences. However, she claims that the upper class is very "likely to lose all you [they] have...our [the peasants’] way is safer," meaning that wealth is not a guarantee of stability. Instead, more comfort and security lies in peasantry, where individuals have fewer possessions to lose. The younger sister's comparison of the two milieus expresses the futility of chasing upward mobility: because status and wealth can abruptly be taken away from people, individuals are powerless in constructing and maintaining their own trajectories within punitive, unpredictable, and prevailing socioeconomic class structures. Moreover, her belief in the upper classes' instability foreshadows Pahom’s devolution into greedy and exploitative landowner—who indeed loses all he has.