Katerina Ivanovna

Who She Is

Katerina Ivanovna, Katya, is the noble fiancee of Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov, daughter of the lieutenant colonel who commanded the battalion in which Mitya served, and the woman whom Alyosha describes as beautiful, proud and domineering, with noble aims and a pride that does not yield (ch. III of Book III, ch. X of Book III). When her father got into trouble for lack of money in the battalion's cashbox, she went to Mitya in secret, knelt down to the floor and returned with the money without having been touched, which created between the two a debt of gratitude that she later turns into a mission (ch. IV of Book III). In Moscow, adopted by a rich relative, she receives a dowry of eighty thousand rubles and writes to Mitya offering herself in marriage (ch. V of Book III). The novel uses her to test a form of fidelity that declares itself as virtue and that Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov diagnoses as love for one's own offence (ch. V of Book IV). She ends the book by handing the court the letter that condemns Mitya, dissolving in remorse and placing Ivan's escape plan in Alyosha's hands (ch. V of Book XII, ch. I of the Epilogue).

Trajectory

In ch. IV of Book III, told by Mitya, the debt is born: the lieutenant colonel is in trouble, money is missing from the battalion's cashbox, and the young lady from the institute, informed by her sister, comes in secret to the quarters of the young ensign. Mitya says what she was at that moment:

She bows to the floor, in the Russian manner, and leaves with the money, without having been touched:

In ch. V of Book III, when her father dies and she goes to Moscow, she writes Mitya a note in pencil and then a letter in which she offers herself in marriage:

Mitya, who describes her as a formally betrothed and blessed bride, tells Alyosha, when he assures him that she loves him and not Ivan, what he thinks of her:

It was she who entrusted him with three thousand rubles to send to her sister in Moscow, and it is for that sum that Mitya considers himself a thief. In ch. X of Book III, in her house, Mitya's message, sending his regards and saying he will not return, she reads as the bravado of someone who has decided and been frightened by it:

She makes Grushenka come out from behind the curtain and kisses her hands, but Grushenka, asking for her little hand to even the score, raises it to her lips and does not kiss it:

Katerina screams and Alyosha holds her, and she suddenly understands that Mitya told the other woman what happened on the fatal day. She asks Alyosha to come back and not to condemn her. In ch. IV of Book IV, Madame Khokhlakova whispers to Alyosha that she loves Ivan and convinces herself that she loves Mitya:

In ch. V of Book IV, in the drawing room, before Alyosha and Ivan, she declares that she will never abandon Mitya, even if he marries the other woman:

When Ivan says he may leave for Moscow tomorrow, she cries out that she is glad and, soon after, explains why, and Alyosha, as one who throws himself off a roof, tells her what he sees:

She calls him a little holy fool, and Ivan, answering her with a sincerity Alyosha had never seen in him, says that she kept him at her side for an endless revenge, and that she loves only Mitya, and more and more, in proportion to his offences:

She returns with two hundred-ruble notes and asks Alyosha to take them, on behalf of Mitya's fiancee and not on his own, to Captain Snegiryov, whom Mitya pulled by the beard in the street. In ch. V of Book XI, on the eve of the trial, she loses control in front of Ivan and Alyosha and says that an hour earlier touching Mitya seemed to her like touching a reptile, and that he is still, for her, a man. In ch. VII of Book XI, she opens a drawer and places before Ivan the document, the letter Mitya wrote drunk in a tavern, promising to return the three thousand rubles and, if no one gives them to him, to split his father's head open.

In ch. IV of Book XII, in court, she first testifies in Mitya's favour: she tells of the visit to the young officer, the bow to the floor, the five thousand rubles. In ch. V of Book XII, after the scene with Ivan, she hands the letter to the president, shouts that the monster is Mitya and that Ivan is ill, says that Mitya only wanted to marry for the inheritance, and that she has the honour of being Ivan's only friend:

The narrator intervenes to say that she did not lie, that she believed what she said, and that years of hatred leaked out in an hour:

In ch. XIV of Book XII, when the jury returns a guilty verdict, Mitya rises with open arms and cries out to her:

In ch. I of the Epilogue, five days later, she takes in Ivan, who has fever, into her house, pale, and tells Alyosha what she feels:

Alyosha tells her that Mitya is calling for her, that he does not ask for reconciliation, only that she appear at the door:

In ch. II of the Epilogue, at the hospital, before Mitya, she says that love has passed, but that what has passed is dear to her to the point of pain:

When Grushenka enters the room, Katerina whispers to her to forgive her, and Grushenka, with a voice poisoned by rancour, replies:

She promises to save him, runs out, and later tells Alyosha that she said "forgive me" because she wanted to punish herself to the end, and that she will not go to Ilyusha's funeral, but she sent flowers, and the money from the Snegiryovs will not be lacking.

Themes Embodied

Katerina enacts a pride that disguises itself as virtue: her fidelity to Mitya is born from the debt of honour in the episode of the five thousand rubles, not from a spontaneous love (ch. IV of Book III), and she herself seems to need his offence in order to sustain the role of martyr (ch. V of Book IV). Ivan's diagnosis, that she loves Mitya in proportion to his offences, is the key the novel uses to tell her apart from Grushenka: Grushenka disarms herself before someone who does not judge her (ch. III of Book VII), while Katerina keeps the letter that condemns her own fiance and uses it when pride gives way to hatred (ch. VII of Book XI, ch. V of Book XII). The theme she carries is that of Guilt, measured against the pride that hides it.

What she wants is to be the god of Mitya, and the book offers her the same role inverted, to be the executioner (ch. V of Book IV, ch. V of Book XII). What she fears is losing the virtue she has given herself, and that is what makes her cry out that she is glad when Ivan speaks of leaving (ch. V of Book IV). What she knows is accurate about others and inaccurate about herself, and the moment when she learns is the Epilogue, when she says that it was she who prepared the court scene (ch. I of the Epilogue). Where she is wrong is in taking duty for love, and love for duty. The scene of the letter in court is the inverted mirror of Grushenka's onion: the calculated gesture that condemns, against the minimal gesture that saves.

Divergent Readings

The book places within her three opposing diagnoses of her love. Mitya reads her as someone who loves her own virtue (ch. V of Book III). Alyosha reads her as someone who loves Ivan and convinces herself that she loves Mitya in a nadryv (ch. V of Book IV), and Madame Khokhlakova reads her as someone plotting to make the right brother choose her (ch. V of Book IV). Ivan, the most interested of them, says she kept him at her side for an endless revenge for Mitya's offences, and that in fact she loves only Mitya. None is refuted, and the Epilogue scene, in which she says that love has passed and that what has passed is dear to her, leaves all three standing (ch. II of the Epilogue).

Readings differ on whether Katerina is victim or executioner. For those who read her love as virtue, she sacrifices herself and is betrayed; for those who read it as revenge, she uses Mitya and Ivan to punish herself and them. The book sustains both, and that is why the courtroom scene is narrated so that the reader cannot tell where one ends and the other begins (ch. V of Book XII). Against the victim reading, it is worth noting that she chooses what to keep silent in her first testimony (ch. IV of Book XII); against the executioner reading, that after the trial she looks after Ivan and promises to save Mitya (ch. I of the Epilogue, ch. II of the Epilogue).

Relationships

• Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov: the fiance bound by a debt of honour, whom she hands over in court and yet visits before leaving (ch. IV of Book III, ch. V of Book XII, ch. II of the Epilogue).
• Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov: the man who loves her without saying so, and whom she calls her only friend, and whom she takes into her house when he collapses (ch. V of Book IV, ch. V of Book XII, ch. I of the Epilogue).
• Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov: the confidant to whom she sends the two hundred rubles for the captain, and to whom she tells the truth of the court (ch. V of Book IV, ch. I of the Epilogue).
• Grushenka: the rival, who humiliates her in her own drawing room and to whom she begs forgiveness at the hospital (ch. X of Book III, ch. II of the Epilogue).