The Theme in the Work
The work's love is the love that the underground man does not know how to give. Part One hardly speaks of it: in ch. V of Part One he admits that he wanted to fall in love by force, twice, and suffered for real with jealousy, all out of boredom. Part Two will show the rest, and what it shows is an attempt to love in which every gesture of tenderness becomes a gesture of power.
The pattern is drawn before Liza appears. In ch. III of Part Two, when recounting the only friend he had at school, he says that when the other gave himself to him wholly, he hated him at once and pushed him away, as if he needed him only in order to defeat him.
но когда он отдался мне весь, я тотчас же возненавидел его и оттолкнул от себя, — точно он и нужен был мне только для одержания над ним победы, для одного его подчинения, but when he gave himself to me entirely, I hated him at once and pushed him away from me, as if I had needed him only to defeat him, only to subdue him.
With Liza the same mechanism repeats on a larger scale. In ch. V of Part Two he likes her as soon as he sees her, serious and naive, and would have hated her had she smiled. In ch. VI of Part Two he invents the picture of marriage for love, with the quarrel that ends in reconciliation and the baby that bites the mother's breast, and she tells him he speaks as if from a book. In ch. VII of Part Two she runs to fetch a medical student's letter, a respectful declaration of love, proof that the sermon does not describe her in full. In ch. VIII of Part Two, after the days of waiting, the daydream with which he calms himself is this: he would save Liza, educate her, realize that she loves him, and restrain himself out of delicacy, so as not to exercise despotism over someone who owed him gratitude.
ты моя, ты мое созданье, ты чиста, прекрасна, ты — прекрасная жена моя, you are mine, you are my creature, you are pure, you are beautiful, you are my beautiful wife.
The scene of ch. IX of Part Two reverses everything. Liza answers his confession with an embrace, and he, after weeping, on lifting his head feels something different from what he expected: the shame before her turns into a desire to dominate her, almost like revenge. Ch. X of Part Two gives the rule behind it.
Во-первых, я и полюбить уж не мог, потому что, повторяю, любить у меня — значило тиранствовать и нравственно превосходствовать, In the first place, I could no longer even love, because, I repeat, to love for me meant to tyrannize and to be morally superior.
And he gives the price: he says he conceived of love as a struggle that begins in hatred and ends in moral submission, and that only later he understood that Liza had come to love him, because for a woman, in love, lies the whole resurrection, all salvation and all rebirth. The ending comes with the return of the money and the corner where he stops.
The book, here, does not give the ending of the love that saves, like Sonia's love for Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment. Liza leaves, and the narrator never finds her again.
Who Embodies It
Liza, who in ch. IX of Part Two responds, by the narrator's reading, to what he feels and not to what he does, and who acts without asking anything in return in the letter, the embrace and the banknote. The underground man, who embodies love as tyranny. The school friend (ch. III of Part Two) and Olympia, whom he imagines beside Zverkov (ch. V of Part Two), appear only as memory and as imagined scene.
Where It Appears
- Part One, ch. V: The underground man says he wanted to fall in love by force, twice, and suffered for real with jealousy, all out of boredom, because inertia crushed him.
- Part Two, ch. III: The underground man recounts that when the only school friend gave himself wholly to him, he hated him at once and pushed him away, as if he needed only to defeat him.
- Part Two, ch. V: The underground man likes Liza as soon as he sees her, with her serious and naive face, and says he would have hated her if she had smiled.
- Part Two, ch. VI: The underground man describes to Liza marriage for love, with quarrels that end in reconciliation and a baby that bites the breast, and she answers that he speaks as if from a book.
- Part Two, ch. VII: Liza runs to fetch a medical student's letter that declares love to her with respect, and shows it to the underground man after hearing the worst about herself.
- Part Two, ch. VIII: The underground man dreams of saving Liza, educating her and being loved by her, and restraining himself out of delicacy, to the point of calling her his creature and his beautiful wife.
- Part Two, ch. IX: Liza answers the underground man's confession with an embrace, and he, lifting his head, feels a desire to dominate her, almost like revenge.
- Part Two, ch. X: The underground man says he could no longer love, because for him to love meant to tyrannize and feel morally superior.
- Part Two, ch. X: Liza returns the five-ruble note the underground man had pushed into her hand, and he runs after her to throw himself at her feet, but stops at the corner.
Where the Readings Diverge
The work's love can be read in two ways. On one reading, Liza's gesture is the moral center of the book: Joseph Frank sees in her final gesture, returning the money, the only intact dignity in the whole text and the exact mirror of the narrator's incapacity to love without dominating. On the other, everything known of Liza's love comes from the narrator, who in ch. IX of Part Two attributes to her the understanding that he was unhappy, and in ch. X of Part Two admits that he could not have imagined her gesture.
The text does not allow the question to be closed. What the scene fixes is the contrast between the narrator, who loves by dominating, and Liza, whose gesture asks for nothing in return; and the book ends before saying what she did with what she received.