Excerpt from "What is Oblomovitis?" by N. A. Dobrolyubov
“In their attitude toward women all the Oblomovs behave in an equally disgraceful manner. They are totally incapable of loving and they have no more idea about what to seek in love than they have about what to seek in life in general. They are not averse to philandering with a woman as long as she seems to them to be a doll moved by springs; nor are they averse to enslaving a woman's heart... why not? This pleases their gentlemanly natures exceedingly!
But no sooner does the affair become in any way serious, no sooner do they begin to suspect that they are dealing not with a doll, but with a woman who may demand that they should respect her rights, than they turn tail and fly for their lives. The cowardice of all these gentlemen is amazing!
Onegin, who was able "early in his life to disturb the hearts of hardened coquettes," who sought women "without ardor and deserted them without regret," showed the white feather in front of Tatyana, showed it twice—once when he took a lesson from her, and again when he gave her a lesson. After all, he liked her the moment he set eyes on her, and had she loved him less deeply he would not have permitted himself to adopt that tone of stern mentor toward her.
But he saw that he was playing with fire and began to talk about his spent life, his bad character, about her falling in love with somebody else in future, and so forth.
Subsequently, he himself explains his conduct by the fact that "noticing the spark of tenderness in Tatyana, he did not wish to believe in it," and that
"His bleak and barren freedom
He did not wish to lose."
With what beautiful phrases he covered up his own cowardice!"
—> Belinsky, Chernyshevsky, and Dobrolyubov: selected criticism by Matlaw, Ralph E.