The Psychological Novel links Pyotr Stepanovich’s outrageousness and Stavrogin’s mental and marital states not to Society, but to the ways they dominate Shatov’s and Kirillov’s wildly different modes of thought; Lizaveta Nikolayevna’s, Darya Pavlovna’s and Marya Ignatyevna’s wildly different kinds of desire; Varvara Petrovna’s and Stepan Trofimovich’s social existence; and each other’s dreams of an anti-utopia, which somehow become contagious enough to infect the youth of the town and many of their servile elders. The Psychological Novel turns into an exploration of domination and
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