What happens in Chapter 20 of The Master and Margarita?
Chapter 20 opens with Margarita in her apartment, feeling despondent and missing the Master, who has been gone since his disappearance. Her gloom is interrupted by the unexpected arrival of Azazello, Woland's red-haired demon henchman, who appears uninvited and hands her a small golden box of cream, claiming it’s a gift from a foreign consultant she met briefly. Although suspicious, Margarita, in her desperation, is convinced to undress and apply the cream all over her body. The change is immediate and remarkable: her skin glows, her body feels younger and lighter, and she discovers she can fly. She tests this new ability by floating around her room, then catches her reflection in the mirror—she looks beautiful, wild, and completely transformed. Azazello calls her with further instructions: at midnight, she is to fly out of the window, naked, and head to a gathering. Before she leaves, Margarita writes a farewell note to her husband, realizing she is leaving him for good. In a burst of joy, she smashes a neighbor's flat in a mischievous act of supernatural vandalism, then leaps from the window into the Moscow night, broom in hand, feeling exhilarated and free.
Analysis
Bulgakov crafts Chapter 20 as a pivotal transition between Margarita's stifling domestic life and the novel's full embrace of the fantastical. The cream serves as a sharp alchemical metaphor: transformation isn't something given but something actively applied, a conscious, physical act that involves Margarita in her own change. Bulgakov makes sure this process isn't passive—she strips, she rubs, she chooses—and the chapter becomes an exploration of female agency reclaimed through the grotesque.
The tonal shift is executed with precision. The chapter starts in the dreary atmosphere of Soviet domestic hardship—the communal apartment, the dutiful husband, the stifling respectability—and culminates in ecstatic liberation. Bulgakov employs the mirror as a classic uncanny device: Margarita's reflection reveals not horror but the fulfillment of desire, turning the Gothic tradition on its head.
The destruction of the neighbor Timofei Kvashnya's flat provides a crucial comic interlude that also serves as social commentary. Margarita's vandalism is joyful rather than spiteful; Bulgakov takes aim at the petty informers and bureaucratic conformists of Soviet society without stopping to preach. The broom—folkloric, Slavic, and Witch-coded—anchors the scene in Russian literary tradition, even as the act of flight points toward freedom.
The farewell note to her husband represents the chapter's quietest and most heart-wrenching moment: a solitary act of honesty in a life filled with performance. Bulgakov allows it to resonate without commentary, trusting the reader to grasp its significance alongside the exhilaration that follows.
Key quotes from Chapter 20
“She rubbed it in harder, and it began to melt, and Margarita looked at her hands and saw that the cream was disappearing into her skin, and her skin was beginning to glow.”
Bulgakov describes the moment the magical cream takes hold, marking the physical threshold of Margarita's transformation from ordinary woman to witch.
“Invisible and free! Invisible and free!”
Margarita's internal exclamation as she realises the full scope of her new powers, encapsulating the chapter's central thematic release.
“She sat down and wrote a note to her husband, quickly and without corrections.”
The spare, unadorned sentence that precedes Margarita's departure, its very plainness underscoring the finality and honesty of her farewell.
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Create an accountSign inVocabulary in Chapter 20
- henchman
- A loyal follower who carries out the dirty or dangerous work of a more powerful person without question. Azazello acts as Woland's enforcer, delivering threats and magical gifts on his master's behalf.