Lise Khokhlakova

Who She Is

Lise Khokhlakova is the fourteen-year-old daughter of Madame Khokhlakova, a rich widow with easy tears, and her legs have been paralysed for half a year, so that she is carried in a wheelchair (ch. III of Book II). Her mother swears that the elder cured her with the Thursday prayer, and Zosima answers, more soberly, that she is still in the chair (ch. IV of Book II). She is a childhood friend of Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov, who used to carry her in his arms when she was little, and she is the one to whom Alyosha promises marriage (ch. IV of Book IV, ch. I of Book V). She secretly writes a love letter to him behind her mother's back and, the next day, treats it as a joke (ch. XI of Book III, ch. IV of Book IV). What she wants is to be taken seriously and, at the same time, to be destroyed: she tells Alyosha that she wants someone to torture her and abandon her, and what she fears is her own laughter, which makes her seem ill-bred in front of the one she loves (ch. XI of Book III, ch. III of Book XI).

Trajectory

In ch. IV of Book II, in the room of the gallery where the elder receives the ladies, she laughs at Alyosha, who blushes, and when she looks at him he returns her gaze against his will. Zosima asks her why, and she answers, almost in tears:

She declares herself and proposes marriage, once the law allows it, in the letter from ch. XI of Book III, which Alyosha finds in his pocket at night. The declaration is short and repeated:

And she comments on the very act of writing:

In ch. IV of Book IV, when Alyosha arrives with the finger bitten by the stone-throwing boy, Lise takes charge of the scene: she sends for water, ice and bandages, scolds him as one who has rights over him, and demands the letter back, which she sent as a joke and spent the night regretting sending. Alyosha treats the letter as a proposal and answers in order: leave the monastery when the elder dies, study, wait for the legal term. Lise, who expected mockery, finds herself taken seriously:

Before her mother, who returns, she turns everything into mockery and says that he wants to marry, "is that not laughable?" On the way out she dismisses him, telling him not even to pass by on the way back, and ends up calling him a monster, and in ch. V of Book IV, through the door, she asks why he has been promoted to an angel.

In ch. I of Book V she receives him, embarrassed at having laughed, and weeps on hearing about the captain's hut and the trampled banknotes. She asks whether there is contempt in predicting that the captain will accept the money, and Alyosha answers that there is not, that he had already thought of it on his way here:

She confesses with her eyes closed that the letter was written in earnest, kisses his hand three times, calls him cold and bold, and the two agree on what each will do when married, half joking and half promise. When she notices his sadness, Alyosha suddenly tells her what he tells no one:

In ch. II of Book XI the mother tells Alyosha that Lise returned the engagement to him, that Ivan visited her alone six days earlier and that, four nights ago, right after Alyosha's visit, she had her first fit of screaming: she hates Ivan, beats the maid in the morning and an hour later kisses her feet. In ch. III of Book XI, three days later, she receives him in her chair, thinner, with a feverish gaze, and says she is glad to have refused him. She says what she wants:

She tells the story, read in a book, of a four-year-old boy nailed to a wall, an old slander taken there as fact, and confesses what she feels when she imagines it:

Alyosha answers that the man acted honestly, that he despises everyone because he believes in no one, and that she is included, and she says that this is good, clings to Alyosha, asks him to save her and says she only wants his tears, and that the others should crush her. She pushes him towards the door and puts in his hand a note for Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov, to be delivered at once, under threat of poisoning herself. When he leaves, she opens the door a crack, puts her finger into the gap and slams it shut with all her force:

In ch. V of Book XI Ivan tears up the note without opening it and throws the pieces to the wind, with contempt for the little devil of under sixteen who already offers herself, and Alyosha defends her as a sick child. In ch. X of Book XI Ivan says that he said something ugly about her and lied, that she pleases him. In ch. III of the Epilogue the flowers in the coffin of Ilyusha Snegiryov were sent in the morning by her and by Katerina Ivanovna.

Themes Embodied

Lise says aloud what the adults around her practise without saying: her mother lives on fits of emotion that forgive everything (ch. II of Book XI), and Alyosha himself admits that there are moments when people love crime. She, who has no power at all, names without pretext the desire for Suffering: she wants to be tortured and wants to do evil in silence, until she is found out (ch. III of Book XI). The theme she carries is that of Guilt without crime, the wish to be punished for an evil not yet committed, and the novel makes her weep for the real child who suffers, Ilyusha (ch. I of Book V), before she tells the story of the compote.

The confession of the compote is made to a man she does not name and to Alyosha, and in both cases she wants to see in the other the contempt she thinks she deserves. The first laughs, and she feels that being despised is good; the second tells her that the man despises everyone because he believes in no one, and she clings to him and soon drives him out with the note to Ivan (ch. III of Book XI). The gesture of the finger in the door says what the conversation did not say: she punishes her body for what she has just said and for having pushed Alyosha out.

Divergent Readings

The book gives Lise readings from those around her, and none is refuted. Alyosha admits that the desire is real and places it at the bottom of everyone:

The mother, who knows her from inside the house, reduces everything to the fit of emotion that excuses whatever is done:

On Alyosha's reading, the wish to burn the house is an adolescent crisis, like an illness, and it passes. On the mother's reading, everything Lise does has an excuse, and the broad pardon dispenses with the deed, which is the opposite of what the daughter asks. Against both, the text gives Lise her first scene without pose, the one with the finger in the door (ch. III of Book XI), and what appears there is the punishment of herself, which she had asked of others. None of the readings explains the note to Ivan, which the text leaves closed and which Ivan tears up without opening (ch. V of Book XI).

Relationships

• Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov: the childhood friend whom she calls a monster, cold and an angel, to whom she writes the letter (ch. XI of Book III), to whom she confesses the wish to be destroyed and whom she asks to save her (ch. III of Book XI), and who defends her against Ivan (ch. V of Book XI).
• Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov: the visitor whom she hates after the five-minute visit (ch. II of Book XI), to whom she writes the note and from whom she receives contempt (ch. V of Book XI).
• Katerina Ivanovna: the neighbour in the next room in ch. IV of Book IV and in ch. V of Book IV, whom Lise's mother wants to see married to Ivan, and who sends flowers to Ilyusha's coffin together with her (ch. III of the Epilogue).
• Ilyusha Snegiryov: the boy whose story moves her in ch. I of Book V; she sends him flowers at the funeral (ch. III of the Epilogue).