Money and Wealth

The Theme in the Work

In the novel money is the pressure that sets the crime in motion and the measure by which almost everyone reads one another. Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov lives in a cubicle he owes to his landlady and on an interrupted education; the marriage of Avdotya Romanovna Raskolnikova to Pyotr Petrovich Luzhin is read by him as a sale; Luzhin loves money because it makes him equal to those above him; Arkady Ivanovich Svidrigailov uses it as power and, in the end, as a legacy. But the book refuses money as an explanation: the old woman's is left under a stone uncounted, Raskolnikov tells Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladova that he had not even decided whether he would take the money, and the explanation by poverty, which the court of the Epilogue adopts, is the one the novel calls into doubt by keeping Dmitry Prokofich Razumikhin on stage.

In Chapter III of Part One, his mother's letter reports that Luzhin, at their second meeting, said that a husband owes nothing to his wife and that it is much better for the wife to see in her husband her benefactor. Pulcheria Alexandrovna Raskolnikova quotes the phrase as a rough trait of a frank man and warns that she softened it in the writing.

In Chapter IV of Part One, Raskolnikov concludes that Dunya accepts Luzhin to help her brother and mother, as Sonia sold herself for her family, and refuses the sacrifice:

In the same Chapter IV of Part One, the narrator portrays Razumikhin, whose poverty is the same and who lives it without humiliation, supporting himself alone:

In Chapter VI of Part One, the sum that a student works out in a tavern gives Raskolnikov language and number for what he was thinking: kill the old woman, keep her money and devote it to the common good.

In Chapter VII of Part One, Raskolnikov fills his pockets with the old woman's jewels and watches without unwrapping anything. The next morning, in Chapter I of Part Two, he stuffs everything into the hole in the wallpaper and realizes that he counted only on money and did not prepare a place for objects. In Chapter II of Part Two, after hiding everything under a stone, the question he asks himself measures how much the plan was calculation:

In Chapter V of Part Two, during a visit to the sick man, Luzhin expounds the doctrine of self-interest as if it were science: the whole caftan, rather than torn in half, and the economics that teaches that whoever acquires for himself acquires for everyone.

In Chapter VII of Part Two, Raskolnikov gives the twenty rubles he has to the widow of Semyon Zakharovich Marmeladov, a gesture that in practice contradicts Luzhin's doctrine and the arithmetic of the crime. In Chapter III of Part Three, when he asks his mother's forgiveness for having given the widow all the money she had sent, he justifies himself with a thesis:

In Chapter I of Part Four, Svidrigailov asks Raskolnikov for a meeting with Dunya, at which he would offer ten thousand rubles to ease the break with Luzhin, and answers the insult with the argument that serves any suspicious charity:

In Chapter III of Part Four, on the stairs, the narrator enters Luzhin's head after the break and says what he loved and prized most in the world:

In Chapter I of Part Five, Luzhin checks bundles of bonds and notes on the table while provoking Lebezyatnikov, and in Chapter III of Part Five the hundred-ruble note he had slipped secretly into Sonia's pocket, to accuse her of theft, falls at his feet. Money serves him as a weapon, and the weapon fails in public.

In Chapter IV of Part Five, in telling Sonia what led him to the murder, Raskolnikov discards money, his mother and humanity and arrives at a formulation with no external end:

In Chapter V of Part Five, Svidrigailov promises to pay for the funeral of Katerina Ivanovna Marmeladova and to shelter the three children, and justifies the money with the question Raskolnikov himself asked Sonia:

In Chapter VI of Part Six, on the last night, Svidrigailov hands Sonia the receipts for the orphans and three bonds totaling three thousand rubles, leaves fifteen thousand to his fiancée, and justifies the money to Sonia by the fate he foresees for Raskolnikov:

In Chapter I of the Epilogue, the court hears Raskolnikov give the cause of everything: the bad situation, the poverty, the helplessness, and the desire to establish his career with at least three thousand rubles he expected to find on the dead woman.

Money does three things in the book, and none of them is to explain the crime. It measures people, in Luzhin's account in Chapter III of Part Four, where whoever has no money owes gratitude. It promises power, which is what the arithmetic of Chapter VI of Part One offers and the purse not examined in Chapter II of Part Two contradicts. And it becomes a legacy, when Svidrigailov spreads it on the last night in Chapter VI of Part Six and his money sustains Sonia in Siberia, as Chapter I of the Epilogue tells. Razumikhin, as poor as Raskolnikov, is what prevents the easy explanation.

Who Embodies It

Luzhin is money as the value of a person. In Chapter III of Part Four, the narrator says that in secret he dreams of a poor wife, without fail, very young and frightened, who would see him as her salvation all her life.

Svidrigailov is money as power and, in the end, as farewell. In the gestures of Chapter V of Part Five and Chapter VI of Part Six (Katerina's burial, the orphans, the money for Sonia, the fiancée), the text does not decide whether they are the remorse of someone who held the secret as a weapon or the settling of accounts of someone taking leave.

Marmeladov is money that drains away. In Chapter II of Part One, after recovering his job, he steals the key to his wife's chest, takes what was left and drinks for five nights in a row. Katerina, in Chapter II of Part Five, spends about ten of the twenty-odd rubles of Raskolnikov's on a funeral wake no one asked her for.

Sonia is money that goes away: she hands over to the family everything she earns. In Chapter IV of Part Three, on seeing the poverty of Raskolnikov's room, she lets slip that he gave them everything.

Where It Appears

• Part One, Chapter II: Marmeladov says he stole the key to his wife's chest and drank the money, and that Sonia, when he went looking for her, gave him the last thirty kopecks without reproach.
• Part One, Chapter III: His mother's letter says that Luzhin, Dunya's fiancé, said that a husband owes nothing to his wife and that she should see in him her benefactor.
• Part One, Chapter IV: Raskolnikov concludes that Dunya accepts Luzhin to help her brother and mother, as Marmeladov's daughter sold herself for her family, and the narrator compares his poverty with Razumikhin's.
• Part One, Chapter VI: Raskolnikov recalls a student's sum in a tavern, kill the old moneylender and use her money for humanity, which gives him language and number for the plan.
• Part One, Chapter VII: After the crime, Raskolnikov fills his pockets with the old woman's jewels and watches without unwrapping anything, and flees down the stairs without looking at what he took.
• Part Two, Chapter I: The next morning, Raskolnikov stuffs the purse and jewels into the hole in the wallpaper and realizes that he counted only on money and did not prepare a place for objects.
• Part Two, Chapter II: Raskolnikov hides the jewels and the purse under a stone in a courtyard and asks himself how, having acted consciously, he did not even look at what he took.
• Part Two, Chapter V: Luzhin expounds the doctrine of the whole caftan, according to which each must love himself first, and Raskolnikov confronts him with what he had told his fiancée about rescuing her from poverty.
• Part Two, Chapter VII: Raskolnikov gives the twenty rubles he has to Marmeladov's widow, for the funeral, promises to return, and afterward feels that life has come back.
• Part Three, Chapter III: Raskolnikov tells his mother that he gave Katerina Ivanovna all the money she had sent and says that, to help, one must first have that right.
• Part Three, Chapter IV: On seeing the poverty of Raskolnikov's room, Sonia lets slip that he gave them everything, and the phrase changes the attitude of his mother and sister.
• Part Four, Chapter I: Svidrigailov asks Raskolnikov for a meeting with Dunya, at which he would offer ten thousand rubles to ease the break with Luzhin, and mentions that Marfa Petrovna left him three thousand.
• Part Four, Chapter III: The narrator shows Luzhin, after the break, attached to the money that makes him equal to those above him and to the fantasy of a poor, young, grateful wife.
• Part Five, Chapter I: Luzhin checks bundles of bonds and notes on the table, gives Sonia ten rubles as a donation and secretly prepares the accusation against her.
• Part Five, Chapter II: Katerina Ivanovna spends about ten of Raskolnikov's twenty-odd rubles on a funeral wake no one asked for, and the guests she wanted to impress do not come.
• Part Five, Chapter III: Luzhin accuses Sonia of stealing a hundred rubles, but the note falls from her pocket, and Lebezyatnikov says he saw Luzhin slip it there in secret.
• Part Five, Chapter IV: Raskolnikov tells Sonia that the old woman's money was not the motive: the jewels and the purse stayed under a stone, and he had not even decided whether to take the money.
• Part Five, Chapter V: Svidrigailov promises to pay for Katerina's funeral, to place the three children in institutions at fifteen hundred rubles each, and to pull Sonia out of the mire.
• Part Six, Chapter VI: Svidrigailov hands Sonia the receipts for the orphans and three bonds totaling three thousand rubles, leaves fifteen thousand to his fiancée and foresees for Raskolnikov the bullet or the Vladimirka.
• Epilogue, Chapter I: In court, Raskolnikov gives as his cause poverty and the desire to count on at least three thousand rubles from the dead woman, and miscalculates what was in the purse.

Where the Readings Diverge

The explanation by poverty is the reading that the court of Chapter I of the Epilogue adopts when it accepts the passing disturbance and the defendant's poverty. The novel contradicts it from two sides. From within, Raskolnikov tells Sonia, in Chapter IV of Part Five, that his practical reasons were something else. From without, Razumikhin, on stage since Part One, has the same starting data and does not reach the same conclusions; in the reading that treats him as a control variable, he is the one who keeps poverty from explaining the crime.

The Chapter I of the Epilogue itself records that Raskolnikov did not know how much was in the purse and miscounted even the objects, and the text sustains two readings: he never counted the theft because money was not what moved him, or he could not bear to look at what the crime had yielded him.

The two readings of the uncounted purse do not compete: never counting it serves as well the thesis that money was a pretext as the one that holds the theory demanded contempt for it. What the book fixes is the fate of the rest: the purse stays under a stone, and the money that circulates in the story passes through the hands of whoever gives it: Raskolnikov to the Marmeladovs in Chapter VII of Part Two, Svidrigailov to Sonia in Chapter VI of Part Six.