The Idiot
Of the many characters we see in Dostoyevsky's novels, few of the principal characters are female. However, in one of his more famous novels, , we find perhaps one of the strongest female characters of most nineteenth-century literature, if not of Europe, then at least of Russia. Nastasya Filippovna, a proud, yet exploited woman, is by far one of Dostoyevsky's most intriguing characters. She has an instantaneous and dramatic affect on the characters surrounding her. Nastasya Filippovna has been systematically destroyed by her surroundings. She finds she is unable to survive in the society of her time. Valued by men only for her beauty or her possessions, feared by jealous women, ...
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of Nastasya Filippovna is her beauty. Her great beauty overwhelms even the Prince, who at first we may believe is not inclined to notice sensuality of women. Looking at her picture he calls her "astonishingly pretty"; he notes her "exquisite simplicity," her "dark, deep eyes" (31). Even from her youth Nastasya Filippovna's beauty has caused her to become the object of men's sexual desires. There are three men who are particularly dominant in Nastasya Filippovna's life prior to the arrival of the Prince: Afansy Ivanovich Totsky, Gavrila Ardalionovich (Ganya), and Parfion Semyyonovich Rogozhin.
Totsky is the first of the three men to become enchanted with Nastasya Filippovna. Living on Totsky's land with a German family, the orphaned Nastasya Filippovna developed into a "delightful little girl of about twelve, a clever little thing, winsome and spirited"(42). Apparently she was also already showing "promise of extraordinary beauty; in this regard Afansy Ivanovich was an ...
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to speak to Nastasya Filippovna in her own terms, this change would indeed be sudden. His condescension and objectification of Nastasya Filippovna is apparent in his treatment and his expectations of her emotional, intellectual, and mental capacities. He found in front of his a "new" woman. A woman who:
… knew and comprehended a great deal, so much in fact, that it was a
matter of profound astonishment whence such knowledge could
have proceeded and how could she have worked out such precise
formulations for herself (44).
It is his "new" and resentful woman with whom Totsky must deal now. Totsky finds himself face to face with a young woman who he thought he had ...
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"The Idiot." Essayworld.com. June 21, 2007. Accessed April 25, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/The-Idiot/66795.
"The Idiot." Essayworld.com. June 21, 2007. Accessed April 25, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/The-Idiot/66795.
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