The Idiot - Part 1

[Zulfiya]

Geoffrey wrote: "D. has his characters say what another writer would have written from the author`s exposition. "

I agree - the voice of the narrator is never strong, but I think it is deliberate.

[Zulfiya]

Xan Shadowflutter wrote: "Meanwhile she turns down the Prince, the one person in that room who might ever understand her. That's what I mean by soul-damaged, and, yes, I question whether she is redeemable. "

I actually think that Natalia Filippovna is the most mature character in the novel so far. She is insightful and passionate. She rejects Myshkin only because she will taint him by her past and present. Fallen women, as in Crime and Punishment, according to Dostoevsky are often better than other people around them with money, ranks, and social position.

[Madge UK]

The donkey is a reference to Christ's ride into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, when he was proclaimed Messiah. Because he rode a humble donkey and not the horse of a warrior king, it became a symbol of humility and peace.

[Hippystick]

I'm just wondering about the letter The Prince received from the solicitor. Earlier he talks about his calligraphy skills and how he learned to copy another person's handwriting. Now he comes up with a letter from a solicitor saying he's inherited a fortune and someone else confirms that it is written n the solicitor's handwriting. Is something going on here? Or am I (the seasoned crime reader) barking up a tree that doesn't exist?

[Madge UK]

Remember the Prince is Christlike so is unlikely to use his calligraphy to forge anything. D. uses calligraphy like he uses phrenology, to explain people's characters. He was a great draughtsman and doodler himself and his manuscripts are full of calligraphic doodles and little drawings. (Google Dosteovsky calligraphy Images.)

[Elsbeth]

Madge wrote: "Remember the Prince is Christlike so is unlikely to use his calligraphy to forge anything. D. uses calligraphy like he uses phrenology, to explain people's characters. He was a great draughtsman an..."

Wow, that is great, I didn't know that - some of them are pretty good!

[Hippystick]

Madge wrote: D. uses calligraphy like he uses phrenology, to explain people's characters."

Ah I see, thanks.

[Renee]

I agree with Zulfiya. Nastasia Filipovna does seem to have a maturity that the other characters don't. If she seems difficult in many scenes, she has reason to be so. Trotsky has behaved abominably, and now schemes to get her off his hands by paying someone to marry her. (Even while the general plies her with pearls.) She's alternately objectified and vilified by everyone around her. And most of their own behavior (at least, the men) is despicable. Yet, she is intelligent, well-educated, and intuitive enough to see each of them for what they are. However, without any power within the social and patriarchal constructs to change things.

What she could do, she has done, by frightening Totski into, at least, making some sort of plan for her future, now that he's done with her. And, she does seem determined to heap as much shame and discomfort onto the manipulators around her. Still, it's all bound to be sound and fury in the end. What are her true options? Accept her purchased marriage proposal, knowing that she then becomes the property of a husband who intends to treat her badly? (Both Rogojin and Gania have indicated that they will take her money and disrespect her for want of a better term.) Become the mistress if someone else, going from liaison to liaison until her looks give out?

The Prince, with his unforeseen inheritance, is the only genuine option. And in refusing him she shows herself to be far better than any of those around her, despite their money, position, power. (Even, if she covers her actions with laughter and misdirection.)

Running off with Rogojin, while self-destructive, gives her a little more time to be somewhat independent, somewhat master of her fate.

[Renee]

I'm still thinking about Nastasia Filipovna. When she turns Myshkin down, she suggests that to accept him would ruin him. I have to wonder how many levels this comment has. Certainly, any standing she might have had in society has been taken from her via Totski, and any man who marries her would be seen as lowered in status for having done so. Additionally, it's possible she may truly believe herself to be unworthy of a good man's love, because if her relationship with Totski. Many young women, who have been abused, blame themselves. Dostoyevsky may have picked up on this in the behaviors he observed around him and made it part of Nastasia's character.
It's hard to say at this point in the novel.
Dostoyevsky does not seem to portray her as degraded by her company. (Certainly, Pirnce Myshkin doesn't view her as such.) Still her choice to go off with Rogojin and his crew seems (while perhaps the choice of independence and flying on the face of the Totski crowd.) self-destructive. I wonder if on some level Nastasia truly feels she has no value and deserves no better. I see her as so tragic and wonderfully complex.

[Geoffrey]

Despite her flurried display of amour propre, Nastasia`s self esteem is indeed extremely low. She, by wrecking revenge on Totski and others, is desperately trying to upgrade that self esteem. And in having such a low self-esteem, she sees that she would be ruining the Prince by marrying him. Yes, Renee, we are in agreement on this one. She is desperately trying to become a whole person, an independent woman deserving of true respect.

[Renee]

Hmmm. I don't know that she's trying to earn respect. I would say that she recognizes that is unlikely in her time and circumstance. I would say she is gripping her independence with both hands because she has not met anyone on whom she has been able to rely. And that she is, at the same time, filled with disgust for the people around her... Yet, she feels undeserving of better company. For example, she regards Gania with derision, but doesn't transfer that revulsion to his mother and sister. In fact, she lists preserving them from her company as one of the assets in her refusal to marry him.

[Xan]

Natasha is suffering and self-destructive. Can the Prince save her? So far he has failed to do so. There is a struggle here between good and evil underscored by the intellectual and spiritual conflict between a suffering, unkind world and a loving god. 'D' is a Christian, but he is not so devout that he does not question whether Christianity can "save" man.

Look at how rotten the men are who court Natasha. Totsky has used her. Now he needs to get rid of her. The incident involving the camellias says a lot about the general. Ganya is a man of greed not integrity, and Rogozhin craves Natasha but does not respect her. He throws a 100K down on a table in front of everyone. How disrespectful. All these suitors, and not a single one who gives a hoot about her. They are rotten, selfish people.

The only decent one, the only one who cares about her, is the one not invited -- Prince Mishkin -- and she turns him down in favor of the one who publicly and openly disrespects her the most. Now that's self-destructive.

But Natasha's self-destructiveness turned outward becomes a taunting cruelty. She enjoys hurting people a little too much. How does one explain the pleasure she derives in embarrassing Ganya's father in front of his family. What is he other than a humiliated man whose best years have left him behind and who finds a little solace in the stories he tells. They make him feel important. He's harmless. So why delight in embarrassing him?

This is a too well-planned and a too structured novel for this scene to be incidental to the story. Every word, every phrase, every scene is there for a reason. If we see Natasha enjoying the old man's discomfort, it's because D wants us to see that. Natasha is complicated, interesting, and suffering, but she is also cruel. I'm not sure how mature she is.

[Abby]

In the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation, Pevear's introduction states that Dostoevsky is very careful about the names he gives the characters and that Nastasya is a diminutive for Anastasia, which in Greek, means resurrection. Her last name, Barashkov, comes from the Russian word for "lamb." I'm trying to keep this info in mind while examining the character's development.

[Renee]

Thanks, Abby. That's very interesting.

[Geoffrey]

I am most struck by the Prince`s character in its similarity to Alyosha`s in THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV. Howevern, Alyosha when it comes to step forward when aware of impending danger, shirks his spiritual allegiance to his brothers and goes elsewhere to tend his spiritual flock.
There`s a passage in THE IDIOT, page 326 in my Signet Classic, that reads "He had suddenly a terrible longing to leave evrything here and go back where he had come from, to some remote solititude, to leave at once without saying goodbye to anyone.....he decided at once that it was impossible to run away.....that there were problems before him that he now had to solve or at least do everything he could to solve them".

And so that`s the decision he makes unlike that,faced with a similar predicament, Alyosha flees from the familial dilemma.

It does surprise me that BROTHERS KARAMAZOV was the last book D. wrote and did not come before the Idiot for the above stated reason. It would have made more sense had he first written of the consequences of not acting as in Alyosha`s case, and then the Prince`s more pro-active involvement.