The Theme in the Work
In Demons the family is almost never what blood makes it. It is what someone invents and then collects on. Varvara Petrovna Stavrogina invented Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky, who in turn educated her son, Nikolai Vsevolodovich Stavrogin, as if he were his own, and fathered Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky, the son he forgot and who comes back to collect. Mothers and fathers rule through dowries, allowances, wedding dates, and a letter kept in a little box, and the children answer with the question no one can answer, which is whose they are. The few bonds without debt appear late and last briefly: that of Ivan Shatov with the boy born in his house lasts one day, because he is killed on the night of that same day.
In Part One, Chapter I, the chronicler tells how Varvara Petrovna made Stepan into a son, a creature of her own, and was the first to believe in the invention.
что стал наконец для нее ее сыном, ее созданием, даже, можно сказать, ее изобретением [...] Она его выдумала и в свою выдумку сама же первая и уверовала, that he had finally become for her a son, her creation, even, one might say, her invention [...] She invented him, and she was the first to believe in the invention she made.
In Part One, Chapter II, as she marries her ward Darya Pavlovna Shatova to her friend, Varvara declares that everything depends on the young woman's will, though she has already settled on the husband, the dowry, the allowance, and the day.
Я эгоистка, будь и ты эгоисткой. Я ведь не неволю; всё в твоей воле, как скажешь, так и будет., I am selfish, so be selfish too. I am not forcing you; everything depends on your will, and whatever you say will be done.
On the same morning, Stepan asks why desperate socialists are so attached to property, without knowing that he is describing the son who is about to arrive.
почему это все эти отчаянные социалисты и коммунисты в то же время и такие неимоверные скряги, приобретатели, собственники, и даже так, что чем больше он социалист, чем дальше пошел, тем сильнее и собственник…, why is it that all these desperate socialists and communists are at the same time such incredible misers, acquirers, proprietors, and even to such a degree that the more of a socialist one becomes, the further one goes, the stronger a proprietor one is...
In Part One, Chapter IV, Marya Timofeyevna Lebyadkina tells the story of a son whom she does not know whether existed, and says what makes her weep most.
и всего больше я плачу о том, что родила я его, а мужа не знаю, and I weep most of all that I bore him and do not know his husband.
In Part One, Chapter V, in the salon, Varvara asks her son Nikolai the question she had never asked, and he answers her by kissing her hand. Then Pyotr reads his father's letter aloud, and it is he, not his mother, who exposes Stepan; Varvara is the one who sends him away.
правда ли, что она… законная жена ваша, is it true that she... is your lawful wife?
In Part Two, Chapter IV, Pyotr reduces twenty years of his father's life with him to a single word, and when his father asks whether he is or is not his son, he returns the doubt.
ты был приживальщиком, то есть лакеем добровольным, you were a hanger-on, that is, a lackey of your own free will.
Но скажи же мне наконец, изверг, сын ли ты мой или нет? — Об этом тебе лучше знать, but tell me at last, monster, are you my son or not? You should know that better than I do.
In Part Three, Chapter V, Marie returns to Shatov pregnant, the child is born, and the man who spent the book preaching a God he does not have says there is nothing higher in the world.
Тайна появления нового существа, великая тайна и необъяснимая, Арина Прохоровна, и как жаль, что вы этого не понимаете! [...] Было двое, и вдруг третий человек, новый дух, цельный, законченный, как не бывает от рук человеческих; новая мысль и новая любовь, даже страшно… И нет ничего выше на свете!, the mystery of the appearance of a new being, a great and inexplicable mystery, Arina Prokhorovna, and what a pity that you do not understand it! [...] There were two, and suddenly a third person, a new spirit, whole, complete, as is never made by human hands; a new thought and a new love, it is even frightening... And there is nothing higher in the world!
The family in the book is a system of inventions that are collected on. Varvara invents Stepan, Stepan educates a pupil and fathers a son, and to all of them she offers, above all, words, and they come back, one with a mask for a face and the other with the bill in hand. The debt changes currency with each generation: money with Pyotr, silence with Nikolai, obedience with Darya. What the novel does not offer is a family in which someone fathered without inventing, and that is why the only bond that asks nothing, that of Shatov with his son, is also the only one that lasts a single day and does not survive what comes after.
Who Embodies It
Varvara Petrovna is the family as power: she educates, supports, decides marriages, keeps letters, and forgets nothing. In Part Two, Chapter V, she gives Stepan the allowance and the list of twenty years of grievances in the same meeting, and the two exchange accusations in words that came from others. Stepan is a father and a dependent at the same time, the son of a patroness and the father of two young men who do not listen to him. Pyotr is the son who collects, and Nikolai the son who lets himself be collected from and does not answer. Shatov is the only one who cares without inventing: he covers Marie with his own greatcoat, runs for a midwife, and receives as an honor the name Ivan that Marie gives the boy.
Where It Appears
- Part One, Chapter I: Varvara Petrovna invented and has supported Stepan Trofimovich for over twenty years, and he writes her up to two letters a day while living in the same house.
- Part One, Chapter II: Varvara Petrovna marries her ward Darya Pavlovna to Stepan Trofimovich, fixes the dowry, the allowance, and the day, and says that everything depends on the young woman's will.
- Part One, Chapter IV: Marya Timofeyevna says she weeps more for having given birth without knowing her husband than for having lost the son.
- Part One, Chapter V: Pyotr Stepanovich reads aloud the father's letter, which says he marries because of other people's sins, and Varvara Petrovna orders Stepan out of her house.
- Part Two, Chapter III: Gaganov demands a duel at any price out of hatred for the insult done to his father four years earlier.
- Part Two, Chapter IV: Pyotr calls his father a hanger-on and returns his question about paternity with the answer that he ought to know better.
- Part Two, Chapter V: Varvara Petrovna offers Stepan Trofimovich three thousand rubles a year to live far from her, and the two exchange twenty years of accusations.
- Part Three, Chapter V: Marie returns to Shatov pregnant, the boy is born in his house, and she insists that the boy be named Ivan.
- Part Three, Chapter VII: Stepan Trofimovich asks to see Petrusha, and Varvara Petrovna tells the doctor that she has no son.
- Part Three, Chapter VIII: Marie and the boy die of the cold and of the panic of the morning she enters Kirillov's annex.
Where the Readings Diverge
The thesis of the first chapter says that liberal fathers fathered nihilist sons, and the book can be read as proof of that filiation: Stepan, who never did anything, fathers Pyotr, who does. But the text also supports another reading, in which there is no filiation in either sense, and what one sees are fathers who do not recognize what they fathered and sons who do not recognize to whom they owe anything. Gaganov, in Part Two, Chapter III, wants the duel over an insult made to his father four years earlier, which makes him a son who acts out of loyalty to his father, unlike almost all the others. At the end, Varvara Petrovna, when the doctor tells her that she has a son, answers that she has none, in Part Three, Chapter VII, and the chronicler says it was as if she had prophesied.
Varvara's phrase at Stepan's bedside closes both readings at once. If filiation is the thesis, she denies the son the thesis assigns to her, and the account has no creditor left. If there is no filiation, she says out loud what the book has shown all along: that her son, since the slap, was a stranger she kept trying to reinvent. The text does not choose, but the ending of Nikolai in Part Three, Chapter VIII points to one side: the mother, who was going to leave with him, goes up to the attic and finds him hanged.