Female Archetypes in Dostoevsky's Novels
Dostoevsky was fascinated with the status of women in Russian society and explored this theme through various portrayals of female archetypal figures in his novels ("Gospel" 111). Often these characters are seen as counterpoints to his male protagonists, who use them as repositories for their own suffering, sins and revelations (Murav 49). Rather than being the centres of their own lives, they are instead “either candidates for sacrifice or scandalmakers” (O’Dwyer de Macedo 201).
The fallen woman
A motif that is used in almost every one of his novels, the figure of a woman who has fallen from grace and then is redeemed through either their role in helping a protagonist discover his own faith or purpose. The outcomes of these women’s involvement in these narratives are varied.
Nastasya Filippovna
Although Nastasya Filippovna is the centrepoint of The Idiot's whole narrative, around which all the other characters revolve, she has less actual lines and scenes than most of the other major players in the book (Young 28).
Although she is not technically a prostitute as she was forced into mistress-hood by her abuser and keeper Totsky, in the eyes of nineteenth-century Russian society she was nonetheless a fallen woman. The Prince loves her, and therefore she is elevated in the eyes of the community that surrounds them. But she cannot reconcile her own sins to accept his love. In an act of self-sacrifice, she throws herself instead at the murderous Roghozhin; the move is suicidal, and at his hands, she “...leaves as a corpse” (Murav 51).
Liza (The Underground Man)
Liza is a prostitute who the Underground Man encounters in a brothel after a night of shame and humiliation. He has been painfully rejected by his peers, and uses Liza's vulnerable position in society to lift his own ego and self-worth (Analysis 66). She is the only person in his life who sees through his bluster and caustic attitude to the pain and unhappiness beneath, and offers him salvation in her love and acceptance. He refuses this and attempts to humiliate her in return, but she refuses his offer of payment and leaves with the upper hand (Analysis 69).
Sonya Semyonovna Marmeladova
Sonya Semyonovna Marmeladova is the iconic fallen woman and "pure prostitute" portrayed in Crime & Punishment (Analysis 91). Her stepmother Katerina Ivanovna Marmeladova forces her into prostitution to help provide for the family, and it is through Sonya's pure, self-sacrificing and forgiving nature that Raskolnikov eventually finds salvation; she accepts him when he confesses his crime, and commits to follow him and wait for his redemption (Analysis 91).
The suffering mother
The background—and often the foreground—of Dostoevsky's stories are populated with women who are tortured by their very state of what makes them most holy: their motherhood. These suffering Madonna/Mother of God types were for Dostoevsky associated with the essence of the “Russian Spirit” ("Gospel" 116). In nineteenth century literature, the Mother of God was a popular motif in literature (Harrison 86). It is notable to observe that in Russian Orthodox iconography, Mary was represented most often as the Mother of God and protector of souls (Gaal 44).
The suffering mother and Mother of God figure is a main theme of The Brothers Karamazov (Knapp 31). The Ivan and Alyosha Karamazov are borne of a suffering mother, and in an early scene we see suffering mothers who come to the elder Zosima for blessings and comfort; Zosima himself references this “maternal grief” when he says: “Such is the lot of mothers on earth” (Dostoevsky 62).
Sofia Ivanovna
One of the most potent images of the suffering mother (among many) in The Brothers Karamazov, is the mother of Ivan and Alyosha Karamazov, Sofia Ivanovna, as Alyosha remembers her from his early childhood. In his memory she kneels, shrieking and crying, before her icon of the Mother of God, and holds the two-year-old Alyosha up to the icon and into the rays of the sun coming through the window. (Dostoevsky 23). Her husband, Fyodor Karamazov, goaded and abused her into insanity, likely causing her early death.
Pulcheria Alexandrovna
Rodion Raskolnikov and Avdotya Romanovna's mother in Crime & Punishment. She struggles with the reality that she will soon be rendered useless on society's terms, when her daughter is married and her son no longer needs her. Her undying love of her murderous son and refusal to see the truth eventually contributes to mental breakdown and death (Analysis 100).
Katerina Ivanovna (Crime & Punishment)
Another suffering mother in Crime & Punishment. Ivanovna is driven to madness by her guilt and inability to mother her children, and the fury she feels at what she sees as her unjust fall from her noble upbringing (Analysis 105). She is finally redeemed when she rises to Sonya's defence when her stepdaughter is accused of theft, and dies in her arms (Analysis 109).
Motherless daughter
The mother/daughter relationship is examined from many angles in Dostoevsky's novels (Analysis 125). Characters such as Nastasya Fillipovna, Sonya Semyonovna, and Liza from Notes from the Underground (Analysis 66) are all significant characters who, due to their lack of maternal guidance, have fallen prey to abusive and manipulative men in their lives (Analysis 268).
Nastasya Filippovna
When Nastasya Filippovna's parents die in a fire when she is a child, she is noticed by landowner Totsky and raised to be his concubine. Due to this early abuse while she was an orphan with no protectors, she spent her life under the thumb of men who controlled her and a society that viewed her as a "fallen woman."
Katerina Ivanovna (The Brothers Karamazov)
Although Katerina Ivanovna had better chances in The Brothers Karamazov, as she was raised in a proper family and educated, she was still treated poorly by the older females in her family who were anxious to marry her off. (Analysis 255) With little female support in her life, she is doomed to confuse self-sacrificial love with self-interested pride, which will be her undoing; her sacrifice goes hand in hand with enormous pride. (de Macedo 202)
Works Cited
Briggs, Katherine Jane. How Dostoevsky Portrays Women in His Novels: A Feminist Analysis. Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2009.
Briggs, Katherine Jane. “Dostoevsky, Women, and the Gospel: Mothers and Daughters in the Later Novels.” Dostoevsky Studies, New Series, vol. 13, 2009, pp. 109–20.
de Macedo, Heitor O'Dwyer. Clinical Lessons on Life and Madness Dostoevsky’s Characters. Routledge, 2018, pp. 200–21, www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781351014557/clinical-lessons-life-madness-heitor-dwyer-de-macedo-agn%C3%A8s-jacob.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Andrew R. MacAndrew. The Brothers Karamazov : A New Translation by Andrew R. MacAndrew : Introductory Essay by Konstantin Mochulsky. Bantam Books, 1970.
Gaal, Katalin. Iconic Representations in Dostoevsky’s Post-Siberian Fiction. 2013, www.proquest.com/docview/1372292032/fulltextPDF/6EF4B0EA81B24E28PQ/1?accountid=14656.
Harrison, Lonny Roy. Archetypes from Underground : Notes on the Dostoevskian Self. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2016.
Knapp, Liza. “Mothers and Sons in The Brothers Karamazov: Our Ladies of Skotoprivonevsk.” A New Word on the Brothers Karamazov, edited by Robert Louis Jackson, Northwestern University Press, 2004, pp. 31–52.
Murav, Harriet. “Reading Woman in Dostoevsky.” A Plot of Her Own: The Female Protagonist in Russian Literature, edited by Sona Stephan Hoisington, Northwestern University Press, 1995, pp. 44–57, archive.org/details/plotofherownfema0000unse/page/n5/mode/2up.
Young, Sarah. Dostoevsky’s The Idiot and the Ethical Foundations of Narrative Reading, Narrating, Scripting. Anthem Press, 2012.