Heading out for the territories: The end of Spring Torrents

So Ivan Turgenev's novella Spring Torrents really takes a big turn toward the end and makes us rethink our perceptions throughout the whole work - quite an authorial trick, and a good one. For 100 pages or so we'd been with this young Russian traveler, Sanin, as the meets the beautiful working class Italian girl, Gemma, while traveling through Frankfort and falls madly in love with her, defends her honor when she's insulted, which leads her to drop her insufferable fiance and become engaged to Sanin. He seems a total good guy, a little bit lonely, a little sad - and this seems to be a story of virtue rewarded: he recognizes what a wonderful person Gamma is, and is willing to sacrifice some of his wealth and social status to marry her and join her loving but near-destitute family. To do so, he has to sell his estate back in Russia, which leads him to a school acquaintance - hardly a friend, in fact another insufferable character, Polozov - who says his wealthy wife may want to buy the estate. And that's when everything changes: Sanin goes to see Madame P., is amazed by her beauty and her strength of character, and she seduces him - leading him to break off relation with the good and virginal Gamma and follow Mme P. to Paris. Though Turgenev tells us little about the aftermath, we does tells us it was disastrous and that Sanin regretted this mistake for the rest of his life. So there must be other stories and novels - though I can't think of any offhand - about the beautiful seductress triumphing over the innocent and virginal - and doing so just to flaunt her power, just because she can, just to be mean. Usually, though, in such stories, the guy is shown as weak-willed, a dupe, or not so innocent himself - but Turgenev goes to great length build our sympathy for Sanin, to show him to be of strong character. So what happened? Had we misread his character? Yes, I think so - for as we look back, we wonder: did we miss some clues? What kind of guy drifts into a new city and falls in love instantly and becomes engaged within a few days? He may not be weak willed but he's impetuous, and perhaps his love for Gemma was not so profound as he had thought. He's perhaps an innocent, too. The novella ends with his making contact with Gemma (today, FB would do the trick in a few minutes) - who had settled happily into a married life in NYC - and planning to sell his possessions (the estate again?) and move to America: head out for the territories - perhaps to try to ruin someone else's life. He lives a dream, not a reality.