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| Mikhail Nesterov (1862-1942). Lonely woman |
Continuing our journey with Dostoevsky, to meet the
marginalized and humiliated, I would like, now, to mention some women. They are
'secondary' characters which appear in two of the great novels of maturity.
First, Sofya Ivanovna “possessed by devils” ["la Hurleuse"] and “Stinking”
Lisaveta, in The Brothers Karamazov, then Maria Timofyevna Lebiadkina,
“the Cripple” in Devils, The mere mention of their nicknames indicate
the contempt they suffer. But, as in contrast, the writer highlights the
richness of heart and soul – and even the beauty – of these scorned and
ridiculed women.
Let us begin with Sofya Ivanonvna, “possessed by
devils”. She is the second wife of the patriarch Fiodor Pavlovitch Karamazov.
An orphan who “grew up in the house of a general’s
widow, a wealthy old lady of good position, who was at once her benefactress
and tormentor”. Without insisting, the
narrator tells to have heard “that the orphan girl, a meek and gentle creature,
was once cut down from a halter in which she was hanging from a nail in the loft,
so terrible were her sufferings from the caprice and everlasting nagging of
this old woman, who was apparently not bad-hearted but had become an
insufferable tyrant through idleness” (1). The rest of
the story tells us that she was married to the old Karamazov after the death of
the first wife of the latter. She undergoes the hardships and humiliations
imposed by this debauchee, who does not fear to bring prostitutes in the
matrimonial home. Sofya finds however a considerable support at the old servant
Grigori. As very often, in our author’s books, it is simple and humble people
who show the most beautiful qualities of heart. So, Grigori “took the side of his new mistress. He championed her cause,
abusing Fyodor Pavlovitch in a manner little befitting a servant, and on one
occasion broke up the revels and drove all the disorderly women out of the
house”. Obviously, it is not difficult to
imagine the suffering born by this poor woman. As a result of this terrible
suffering, “this unhappy young woman, kept in terror from her childhood,
fell into that kind of nervous disease which is most frequently found in
peasant women who are said to be ‘possessed by devils’. At times after terrible
fits of hysterics she even lost her reason”. It is that Sofya
Ivanonvna, “possessed by devils”, who will give birth to the second and third
brothers Karamazov: Ivan and Alexey (Aliocha). “When
she died, tells the narrator, little
Alexey was in his fourth year, and, strange as it seems, I know that he
remembered his mother all his life, like a dream, of course”. Knowing the
quality of soul of Aliocha, we suspect how much, still a child, he had
perceived the kindness, the love and also the suffering of his mother. As for
the brave servant Grigori: “His sympathy for the unhappy wife had become
something sacred to him, so that even now, twenty years after, he could not
bear a slighting allusion to her from any one, and would at once check the
offender”.
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| Ilya Repine (1848-1930) A poor girl |
The figure of “Stinking” Lizaveta is even stranger.
She appears for the first time in the novel when the servant Grigori – him
again – discovers her whereas she has just given birth to a baby in Karamazov’s
garden. This gardent, surrounded with a solid fence, is closed at day fall. One
night, Grigori, alerted by his wife who said she had heard as a child crying
from the outside, gets out and perceives groans coming from the small shed
which, at the back of the gardent, shelters baths. “Opening
the door of the bath-house, he saw a sight which petrified him. An idiot girl,
who wandered about the streets and was known to the whole town by the nickname of
Lizaveta Smerdyastchaya (Stinking Lizaveta), had got into the bath-house and
had just given birth to a child. She lay dying with the baby beside her...” Thanks to the care of Grigori and his wife, the child is
saved, but Lizaveta dies the next day. To the reader, who wonders why this poor
person climbed the fence of the Karamzov’s garden to deliver, the narrator
supplies elements of explanation, but remain, as usual, on the mode of the
hypothesis. An evening of binge and drinking bout, Karamazov and his companions
had discovered Lizaveta sleeping, stretched out along a hedge. One of the jolly
fellows had then asked a question of the most cynical: “Whether any one
could possibly look upon such an animal as a woman, and so forth.... They all
pronounced with lofty repugnance that it was impossible. But Fiodor Pavlovitch,
who was among them, sprang forward and declared that it was by no means
impossible, and that, indeed, there was a certain piquancy about it, and so on...”
The narrator tells us nothing more about it, but lets us know that “five or
six months later, all the town was talking, with intense and sincere
indignation, of Lizaveta’s condition, and trying to find out who was the
miscreant who had wronged her. Then suddenly a terrible rumor was all over the
town that this miscreant was no other than Fiodor Pavlovitch.”
But who is this Lizaveta? She responds quite well to
the image of what the Russian Orthodox tradition called the "fools in
Christ": men – more rarely women – who engage in strange behaviors, living
like tramps and witnessing through their wise "madness", the real
madness of the world cut off from God. By the mouth of his narrator, Dostoevsky
gives us a moving description of Lizaveta: “This
Lizaveta was a dwarfish creature, “not five foot within a wee bit,” (...) Her
broad, healthy, red face had a look of blank idiocy (...) She wandered about,
summer and winter alike, barefooted, wearing nothing but a hempen smock. Her
coarse, almost black hair (...) was always crusted with mud, and had leaves,
bits of stick, and shavings clinging to it, as she always slept on the ground
and in the dirt (...) Many people in
the town, especially of the tradespeople, tried to clothe her better, and
always rigged her out with high boots and sheepskin coat for the winter. But,
although she allowed them to dress her up without resisting, she usually went
away, preferably to the cathedral porch, and taking off all that had been given
her – kerchief, sheepskin, skirt or boots – she left them there and walked away
barefoot in her smock as before (...) In fact, every one seemed to like her;
even the boys did not tease her (...) She would walk into strange houses, and
no one drove her away. Every one was kind to her and gave her something. If she
were given a copper, she would take it, and at once drop it in the alms-jug of
the church or prison. If she were given a roll or bun in the market, she would
hand it to the first child she met.”
What a contrast between the innocence and
the generosity of the poor Lizaveta and the calculating perversity of her
rapist! About Smerdyakov – whose name means "stinking" – the strange
figure, half-witted, half-scoundrel, whom becomes the child born of rape, he
will be the instrument of some kind of terrible immanent justice by being the
assassin of his parent, the old man Fiodor Karamazov.
Devils, written by
Dostoevsky in 1871, is probably his darkest novel. Surprisingly prescient of
the events that would take place in Russia, it stages characters imbued with a
Promethean nihilism, whose only real plan is to destroy a society considered
retrograde. Dandies at a loose end, bourgeois and aristocrats, seduced by the
"new ideas", plot and intrigue in an almost collective frenzy. It is
in this context that the novel's main character, Nikolai Stavrogin woould have
married Maria Timofyevna Lebiadkina, the "Cripple", sister of a retired
captain, a drunkard and an amateur poet.
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| Ivan Kramskoy (1837-1887) The blue shawl |
This poor lame woman is a dreamer, kind of a mystic.
The narrator – who, in this novel, speaks in the first person – visits her. Quite
and serene in the midst of the miserable and sordid environment where she live,
“mademoiselle Lebiadkina” amazes her
visitor: “At some time, perhaps in early youth,
that wasted face may have been pretty; but her soft, gentle grey eyes were remarkable
even now. There was something dreamy and sincere in her gentle, almost joyful,
expression (...) Strange to say, instead of the oppressive repulsion and almost
dread one usually feels in the presence of these creatures afflicted by God, I
felt it almost pleasant to look at her from the first moment, and my heart was
filled afterwards with pity in which there was no trace of aversion”(2). Her drunkard of brother beats her,
and she is subject to nervous crises after which “she
forgets everything that's just happened (...) She's an extraordinary person for
dreaming; she'll sit for eight hours, for whole days together in the same
place.” She recounts memories of
the monastery where she would have formerly stayed, and evokes a child she
would have had once. But is all this only daydreaming? Anyway, her narrative
expresses a simple and moving faith. The circumstances in which Nikolay
Stravogin would have married “the Cripple” are particularly dark, and the
novelist makes nothing to clear them up. Stavrogin’s mother, Varvara Petrovna
herself, wonders if they are really married. Having met the unfortunate in a
church service, she took her home. She questions her son: “Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, she repeated, rapping out her
words in a resolute voice in which there was a ring of menacing challenge, I
beg you to tell me at once, without moving from that place; is it true that this
unhappy cripple – here she is, here, look at her – is it true that she is...
your lawful wife?” Nikolai says nothing,
smiles, kisses the hand of his mother, crosses the room and goes to Maria
Timofyevna: “– You should not be here, Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch said to her
in a caressing and melodious voice; and there was the light of an extraordinary
tenderness in his eyes. He stood before her in the most respectful attitude,
and every gesture showed sincere respect for her. The poor girl faltered impulsively
in a half-whisper: – But may I... kneel down... to you now? – No, you can't do
that. He smiled at her magnificently, so that she too laughed joyfully at once”.
Dostoevsky entitles this chapter of the book: “The subtle serpent”,
a title that appoints, of course, the elusive and disturbing Nikolay Stavrogin.
We shall never know if it is by some perverse challenge that he married the “Cripple”
or if he really felt for her true compassion. No character at Dostoevsky, is
totally bad (nor totally good). Anyway, in this context of intrigue and lies,
this poor woman without malice or falsity is like a little light, humble,
flickering, but how comforting.
It is the genius of Dostoevsky to succeed in giving
life to such characters, paradigms of the disorder and the darkness that
inhabit the human heart, but also models of a humanity whose goodness is
preserved in spite of the mud and the perversity into which it is plunged. Of
course, it is not easy for you to make a clear idea from some snippets. That is
why I recommend you to read fully Dostoevsky’s great novels. You will not
regret it!
Fiodor (the other one...)
(1) All quotations are from Ebook #28054, The
Brothers Karamazov, tranlated by Constance Garnett,
www.gutenberg.org.
(2) All quotations are from Ebook #8117, Devils
(The Possessed), translated by Constance
Garnett, www.gutenberg.org.
