Who He Is
Piotr Petrovich Luzhin, court councillor and rising lawyer, is the fiancé of Avdotya Romanovna Raskolnikova. His dramatic importance is medium, and its weight lies in his function: it is he who states the theory of Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov without historical disguise, in chapter V of Part Two, and it is in that chapter that the argument of the mirror between the two is set up. He reappears outside his own arc every time the subject is rational self-interest and utilitarianism.
Trajectory
He enters the book through the letter from his future mother-in-law, in chapter III of Part One, and the sentence she attributes to him already says what he looks for in a wife:
муж ничем не должен быть обязан своей жене, а гораздо лучше, если жена считает мужа за своего благодетеля, a husband should owe nothing to his wife, and it is much better if the wife regards her husband as her benefactor.
He appears in person in chapter V of Part Two, upright, with lilac gloves in hand, and sets out, in the manner of a newcomer, what he takes to be modern economic science, with the serenity of someone repeating a respectable commonplace:
Наука же говорит: возлюби, прежде всех, одного себя, ибо все на свете на личном интересе основано, Science, for its part, says: love, above all, only yourself, for everything in the world is founded on personal interest.
The protagonist's answer, still in the same chapter, does not dispute the premise. It does what he knows how to do best: it takes the consequence as far as it goes.
А доведите до последствий, что вы давеча проповедовали, и выйдет, что людей можно резать…, But follow to its consequences what you were preaching a moment ago, and it will turn out that people may be put to the knife...
In chapter II of Part Three, a note from him demands that the brother not be present at the meeting with the fiancée and the mother.
In chapter II of Part Four, Dunya's break takes place before everyone, at the moment it becomes clear that she will not pay the debt he expected from her.
In chapter III of Part Four, when the engagement falls apart, the narrator says plainly what he had been looking for:
девице благонравной и бедной (непременно бедной), очень молоденькой, очень хорошенькой, благородной и образованной, очень запуганной, чрезвычайно много испытавшей несчастий и вполне перед ним приникшей, такой, которая бы всю жизнь считала его спасением своим, благоговела перед ним, подчинялась, удивлялась ему, и только ему одному., a girl of good conduct and poor (certainly poor), very young, very pretty, noble and educated, very frightened, who had suffered an extraordinary number of misfortunes and had entirely submitted to him, one who would regard him all her life as her salvation, would worship him, obey him, marvel at him, and only at him.
Humiliated, he sets up the accusation of theft against Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladova on the occasion of the Marmeladov funeral rites. In chapter I of Part Five he calls her to his room and gives her ten rubles in secret, with Lebezyatnikov as a witness in the next room and the money in plain view on the table.
In chapter III of Part Five he accuses her before the whole house, after the hundred-ruble note has been slipped into her pocket, in order to discredit Raskolnikov by proxy. The threat he makes before this already announces the method:
дело тем только и кончится. В противном же случае принужден буду обратиться к мерам весьма серьезным, тогда… пеняйте уже на себя-с!, the matter will end just with this. Otherwise I shall be forced to resort to very serious measures, and then... you will have only yourself to blame!
The affair collapses in public, in the same chapter, and he leaves the house half an hour later, while the cost falls on Sonia and on Katerina Ivanovna Marmeladova, who was thrown out of the house by Amalia that same afternoon.
Themes Embodied
The doctrine of chapter V of Part Two is rational egoism in its drawing-room version: if each one takes good care of his own interest, the whole prospers, and individual charity only gets in the way. The novel places this speech before the reader knows Raskolnikov's article, in chapter V of Part Three, and this order is what sets up the protagonist's response.
Luzhin is the cheap mirror. The two doctrines start from the same place, that the general benefit justifies the particular cost, and the difference between them is not one of principle but of courage and scale. He would never kill anyone, and that is precisely why he is useful: he shows that the theory of the extraordinary man does not need greatness to work, only well-articulated self-interest. When Raskolnikov dismantles him, he is dismantling himself out loud, and does not notice.
What he seeks is not a wife but perpetual gratitude. He wants a woman poor enough to owe him everything, as the sentence in the letter already announces (chapter III of Part One), and the narrator confirms it when the engagement falls apart (chapter III of Part Four).
The frame-up of Sonia (chapter III of Part Five) is a complete defeat that costs him no punishment at all. It is worth marking the symmetry: he is unmasked before witnesses, precisely the ground on which Dunya decides and on which Raskolnikov will end up confessing. The novel seems to treat the public square as the place where things get settled, for good and for ill.
Divergent Readings
Luzhin admits two readings. In the common one, he is the villain, and the question remains why the novel is harsh with him and tragic with Raskolnikov, if the doctrine of the one is the doctrine of the other without the courage. In the other, he is not a villain but the probable fate of anyone who adopts the theory without having the sickness the protagonist has, and then the question becomes what changes in the reading when the difference between the two is the sickness, not the doctrine.
Relationships
- Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov: the mirror without greatness, and the only character who hears his own theory from outside and does not recognize himself in it.
- Avdotya Romanovna Raskolnikova: the fiancée who breaks it off, and the motive for his revenge.
- Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladova: the victim of the frame-up, and the witness he chooses badly.
- Arkady Ivanovich Svidrigailov: they are two rungs of the same ladder, Luzhin with the theory without greatness, Raskolnikov with the theory and the greatness, Svidrigailov with no theory at all, only appetite.