Who She Is
Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladova, Sonia, is the daughter of the first marriage of the retired civil servant Marmeladov, pushed onto the yellow ticket of prostitution because her consumptive stepmother and the stepmother's three young children had nothing left to eat (chapter II of Part One). She lives in a rented corner room in the crooked building of the Kapernaumovs (chapter IV of Part Four), hands over to the family everything she earns, and is the counterpart of Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov in the novel: the only person he confesses to before any authority, and the only one who does not argue with him. Her axis is three scenes: the reading of Lazarus (chapter IV of Part Four), the confession she receives and refuses to absolve for free (chapter IV of Part Five), and the Epilogue (chapter II of the Epilogue).
Her entry into the story of the crime did not come from the original project. Sonia was born from the fusion of Crime and Punishment with a parallel Dostoevsky project called The Drunkards, a fusion documented in the drafts by Joseph Frank.
Trajectory
In chapter II of Part One she exists only as her drunken father's account in the tavern, and from that scene comes the sentence that defines the condition of the whole family:
Понимаете ли, понимаете ли вы, милостивый государь, что значит, когда уже некуда больше идти?, Do you understand, do you understand, my dear sir, what it means when there is nowhere left to go?
Though absent, she already serves as an argument: in chapter IV of Part One, Raskolnikov reads his mother's letter and concludes that his sister's marriage to Luzhin is the same sale Sonia made, only dressed up as a marriage:
мы, при случае, и нравственное чувство наше придавим; свободу, спокойствие, даже совесть, все, все на толкучий рынок снесем., we, when the occasion arises, also crush our moral feeling; liberty, peace, even conscience, everything, everything we carry off to the flea market.
In chapter VII of Part Two she appears in person for the first time, dressed as a prostitute, just in time to hear from her run-over father the request that closes his life:
Соня! Дочь! Прости!, Sonia! Daughter! Forgive me!
In chapter IV of Part Three she enters Raskolnikov's room to invite him to the funeral, is introduced to his mother and sister, and of everything she says in the scene, the line that stays is the one that gives back what he did for her family:
Вы нам все вчера отдали!, You gave us everything yesterday!
As she leaves, she is followed in the street by Arkady Ivanovich Svidrigailov, who in the gallery of the building introduces himself as a neighbor across the hall:
Он мне жилет вчера перешивал. А я здесь, рядом с вами, у мадам Ресслих, Гертруды Карловны. Как пришлось-то!, He altered a waistcoat for me yesterday. And I'm right here, next to you, at Madame Resslich's, Gertrud Karlovna's. What a coincidence!
On the night of chapter IV of Part Four is the scene that organizes the character. Raskolnikov goes to her room for a last visit and subjects her faith to a relentless interrogation about what will become of the children:
Да, может, и бога-то совсем нет, Yes, maybe there's no God at all.
Then he bows down to the floor and kisses her foot:
Я не тебе поклонился, я всему страданию человеческому поклонился, It wasn't to you that I bowed, I bowed to all human suffering.
And he asks her to read the resurrection of Lazarus, from the New Testament that Lizaveta brought her. She reads trembling, and what weighs in the scene is the way the text gets into her:
The Gospel enters the page in long passages, read aloud, and no one discusses it in the scene: Raskolnikov, who argues with all the other characters, listens to the reading in silence, without interrupting, because what it answers is not an argument but the account of a dead man coming out of the tomb. The Epilogue returns to this book: the Gospel that Raskolnikov finds under his pillow is the same one from which Sonia read him the resurrection.
That same night comes the proposal she does not yet know how to interpret:
Мы вместе прокляты, вместе и пойдем!, We are cursed together, and together we shall go!
In chapter III of Part Five she is first a victim: Luzhin accuses her of theft, with a hundred rubles he himself slipped secretly into her pocket, in order to discredit Raskolnikov in front of the family and win back Dunya's favor:
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 one who defends her in public is the stepmother who pushed her into the street:
Глупые вы, глупые [...] да вы еще не знаете, не знаете, какое это сердце, какая это девушка! Она возьмет, она! Да она свое последнее платье скинет, продаст, босая пойдет, а вам отдаст, коль вам надо будет, вот она какая! Она и желтый-то билет получила, потому что мои же дети с голоду пропадали, себя за нас продала!.., Foolish you are, foolish [...] you still don't know, don't know what kind of heart this is, what kind of girl she is! She would take it, she would! Why, she'd take off her last dress, sell it, go barefoot, and give it all to you if you need it, that's what she's like! She even got the yellow ticket because my own children were starving, she sold herself for us!..
Hours later, in chapter IV of Part Five, she receives the confession of the murder and does the only thing the novel allows her to do, which is neither to forgive nor to denounce, but to prescribe a rite:
Поди сейчас, сию же минуту, стань на перекрестке, поклонись, поцелуй сначала землю, которую ты осквернил, а потом поклонись всему свету, на все четыре стороны, и скажи всем, вслух: «Я убил!» Тогда бог опять тебе жизни пошлет, Go now, this very minute, stand at a crossroads, bow down, first kiss the earth you have defiled, and then bow down to the whole world, on all four sides, and say to everyone, aloud: "I killed!" Then God will send you life again.
At the end of the same scene he refuses. She offers him the cypress cross, and he postpones.
In chapter VI of Part Six, on Svidrigailov's last night, she receives from him the receipts for the three orphans and three bonds totaling three thousand rubles, with the instruction to keep them only for herself. He justifies the money by the fate he foresees for Raskolnikov:
У Родиона Романовича две дороги: или пуля в лоб, или по Владимирке., Rodion Romanovich has two roads: either a bullet to the forehead, or the Vladimirka.
At the last meeting, in chapter VIII of Part Six, she takes the two crosses out of the drawer and does what she agreed with him during the confession:
Sonia places on Raskolnikov's chest only the cypress cross, the one for ordinary people, and keeps the copper one, which she exchanged with Lizaveta Ivanovna. In Part Five he had refused the cypress cross, saying it would be better later, and she had agreed to give it to him when he went to suffering, so the scene fulfills the agreement; the cross of the victim stays with the woman who will accompany him.
Her instruction is what he repeats by heart in the street:
Поди на перекресток, поклонись народу, поцелуй землю, потому что ты и пред ней согрешил, и скажи всему миру вслух: „Я убийца!“, Go to a crossroads, bow down to the people, kiss the earth, for you have sinned against it too, and say to the whole world, aloud: 'I am a murderer!'.
The kiss of the earth he performs in the square is obedience to her:
Он стал на колени среди площади, поклонился до земли и поцеловал эту грязную землю, с наслаждением и счастием., He knelt in the middle of the square, bowed down to the ground, and kissed that filthy earth, with delight and happiness.
In the same chapter, she follows him from a distance, hidden behind a stall, and is in the courtyard of the police station when he hesitates.
In chapter I of the Epilogue she goes to Siberia on her own, with Svidrigailov's money, and writes every month to Dmitry Prokofich Razumikhin, through whom passes all the information that reaches Petersburg. In chapter II of the Epilogue the convicts react to the two of them in opposite ways, and the book draws from this its conclusion about the theory:
The prison makes, without any speech, the demonstration the novel owed to the theory: among convicts guilty of far worse crimes, the one accepted by all is the woman who never formulated an idea, and the one hated is the only man who arrived there with a system explaining why he was right.
The novel's turn happens with her on stage and without a single word spoken:
Их воскресила любовь, сердце одного заключало бесконечные источники жизни для сердца другого, Love resurrected them: the heart of one held endless sources of life for the heart of the other.
At the close of the same chapter, the last object in the book is her Gospel, the same one from which the reading of Lazarus came.
Themes Embodied
Sonia's function in the architecture of the book is to be the only character who does not operate through argument, and this is why she is the only one who survives the novel intact. Luzhin, Svidrigailov, Porfiry, and Raskolnikov himself contend with theses, and each is dismantled by his own; she has no thesis to be dismantled. The novel builds her deliberately at the exact point where the theory of the extraordinary man should work best: a life that the theory would call useless and wasted, sold so the family can eat (chapter II of Part One), and makes of that life the axis of everything. This is the harshest refutation of the doctrine precisely because it is not a refutation.
What she offers Raskolnikov is not forgiveness, and reading it that way flattens the scene: she demands a public rite, with witnesses, at a crossroads, and his refusal is not only a murderer's pride but also lucidity, because performing the rite would mean admitting that she is right and the theory is not. That is why his confession in Part Five (chapter IV of Part Five) is an inverted confession: it hands over the fact and holds back the gesture, and why the square of Part Six (chapter VIII of Part Six) is the moment he yields halfway and stops.
She is also the structural counterweight to Svidrigailov: the two hear the same confession, one through the wall (chapter V of Part Five) and the other face to face (chapter IV of Part Five), and the book sets them side by side in Part Six to sketch the two possible exits, the bullet and the Vladimirka (chapter VI of Part Six), with her being the only reason the second exists.
Relationships
- Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov: he confesses the double murder to her before any authority (chapter IV of Part Five), and she prescribes the public rite he refuses and then carries out halfway (chapter VIII of Part Six).
- Arkady Ivanovich Svidrigailov: her wall neighbor (chapter IV of Part Three), who hears the whole confession, as he reveals to Raskolnikov (chapter V of Part Five), and from whom she receives the money that supports her in Siberia (chapter VI of Part Six).
- Marmeladov, her father, whose tavern monologue introduces her to the reader and to Raskolnikov himself before she enters the scene (chapter II of Part One).
- Katerina Ivanovna, the consumptive stepmother who pushed her onto the yellow ticket (chapter II of Part One) and who defends her publicly against Luzhin's accusation of theft (chapter III of Part Five).
- Lizaveta, the second victim of the crime, to whom Sonia read the resurrection of Lazarus (chapter IV of Part Four) and with whom she exchanged crosses: Lizaveta's copper cross stays with Sonia (chapter VIII of Part Six).