Pulcheria Alexandrovna Raskolnikova

Who She Is

Pulcheria Alexandrovna Raskolnikova is the mother of Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov and Avdotya Romanovna Raskolnikova, a widow who lives on a small pension and has placed all of the household's hopes in her two children.

What she wants is to see her son graduate and her daughter safe, and to stay close to both: that is why she accepts Dunya's marriage to Pyotr Petrovich Luzhin, who can give Rodya a job, and why she moves to Petersburg as soon as the fiance proposes it.

What she fears is losing her son to what he hides: a year and a half earlier he wanted to marry the landlady's sick daughter, who had no dowry, and she says he would have stepped over any obstacle, and what she sees in him after the crime frightens her.

What she knows is only what the letter and her own eyes tell her, and the text leaves open whether what blinds her is loving too much to ask or avoiding what she may already guess: she softens what the fiance says, is certain her son will be one of the first in the world of learned men, and almost never asks where he is.

She dies of a nervous illness at the close of the book, two weeks after falling ill, without anyone having told her the truth.

Trajectory

In chapter III of Part One she exists only as a letter, two closely written pages in which she tells her son what she had hidden for two months: the harassment of Arkady Ivanovich Svidrigailov toward Dunya, the slander in town, and the engagement to Luzhin, which Dunya accepted after a night of insomnia and prayer. About the groom, she repeats what he said at their second meeting and warns that she softened it in writing:

Raskolnikov reads it weeping and finishes pale, with a wicked smile, and the letter is what puts his theory under urgency in the next chapter.

In chapter III of Part Two the money she sent through the merchant Vakhrushin reaches her sick son, and it is with this money that Razumikhin dresses him again. In chapter VII of Part Two she and Dunya have been waiting on the sofa for an hour and a half, after Nastasya told them he had run off sick and delirious, and they throw themselves on him, and he faints.

In chapter I of Part Three the son wants them far away, rejects the thanks she offers Razumikhin, and she is frightened by his fixed stare; it is Razumikhin who stops her from spending the night in her son's room. In chapter II of Part Three, wounded, she tells Razumikhin what frightens her about her son, the plan to marry the landlady's daughter, who is sick and has no dowry, and says what no mother wants to say:

She shows Razumikhin the note from Luzhin she received that morning, does not know how to ask her son not to come, and on the way mentions having dreamed of Marfa Petrovna. In chapter III of Part Three she breaks the tense silence by telling of Marfa Petrovna's sudden death in the bath, and, according to her daughter, she crossed herself on the stairs out of fear of him. In chapter IV of Part Three, on leaving, she confides to her daughter a premonition: since Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladova came in, she has had the impression that the central point is here.

In chapter II of Part Four, flustered, she tells Luzhin that she has understood what he meant by his remark about marrying a poor girl, exclaims her son's name when he tells her he seated Sonia beside them, and complains that the fiance writes like someone giving orders and that, since the two of them gave up everything to come, they are almost in his power. In chapter III of Part Four, once the first shock has passed, she thanks God and within five minutes is laughing; she fears the new life but agrees to stay in Petersburg; when her son announces that he wants to be left alone, she begs him to make peace with them.

In chapter I of Part Six she falls ill from waiting in vain for her son. In chapter VII of Part Six, he arrives dirty and soaked from the night, and she receives him in tears of joy, without asking for explanations, talking about his article, which she has read three times. He asks her, with an open heart:

He says goodbye by kneeling and kissing her feet, and she blesses him, senses that a fatal hour is approaching, and does not ask.

In chapter I of the Epilogue she falls ill at the very start of the trial, with a nervous condition that borders on insanity. Dunya and Razumikhin take her to a nearby town, and she receives from them the story of a private and distant mission of her son's. She never asks anything about it; she has her own version of his departure, in which she saw him say goodbye weeping, and she repeats to everyone the two accounts that Razumikhin tells her of the student's generosity. She blesses her daughter's marriage with joy, but becomes even more sad and anxious; she tidies Rodya's room because he said he would return in nine months, falls ill at night, and dies in two weeks:

Themes Embodied

Pulcheria is both the origin of the money and the origin of the motive. Her small pension, the engagement of Dunya to a man who can give her son a job, and the money she sends at great cost, as her son himself acknowledges when he asks forgiveness for giving it to the widow Marmeladov, are the concrete matter of the crime as much as the theory is. It is her letter that makes her son see his sister sold, and it is her money that he gives to the family of the drunkard. This makes Money and Wealth a family matter before it becomes a matter of theory, and the mother pays the price without knowing what she is paying for.

Her second service is to be the mother whom the book keeps outside the secret until the end. She softens the fiance's remark, sees a brilliant future in her son, does not ask, and only in the delirium of her death do the words that escape her show that she suspected the terrible fate of her son far more than anyone had imagined.

Her silence has two readings, and the text supports both: a mother's protection, unwilling to confirm what she guesses, the same logic of the lie that Dunya and Razumikhin tell her, or the real ignorance of someone who loves too much to read. The question her son asks her in chapter VII of Part Six, whether she would love him as now, whatever happens, sounds like the only confession he manages to make to her, and the scene shows her answering with the same joy as before, without asking.

Relationships

• Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov: the son she loves too much to question, and to whom her letter gives the intimate motive for the crime.
• Avdotya Romanovna Raskolnikova: the daughter whose engagement she accepts, whose break with Luzhin she follows in confusion, and with whom she shares, at the close of the book, the silence about her son.
• Pyotr Petrovich Luzhin: the future son-in-law she describes in her letter as a solid businessman, whose phrases she softens, and who makes her feel almost in his power.
• Dmitry Prokofich Razumikhin: who takes charge of the family on the night of the reunion and, at the close of the book, takes them to a town near the trial.
• Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladova: the young woman in whom she senses the premonition of the central point.