Who She Is
Nastasya Filippovna Barashkova is the daughter of the retired officer Filipp Alexandrovich Barashkov, orphaned as a small child after the fire that killed her mother and drove her father mad, taken in by Afanasy Ivanovich Totsky, a rich neighbor, who at twelve gave her a governess and lessons and at sixteen installed her in the little house at Otradnoe, where he visited her every summer for four years (ch. IV of Part One). When she learned he was going to marry, she went alone to Petersburg to stop the wedding, and for five years now she has lived in an apartment paid for by him, with a reputation as an unapproachable beauty. The novel presents her before giving her a voice: Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin sees her portrait in the house of General Ivan Fyodorovich Epanchin, in ch. III of Part One, and already there, before a sheet of paper, he formulates the question that will accompany her through the four parts:
Удивительное лицо! [...] Лицо веселое, а она ведь ужасно страдала, а? [...] Это гордое лицо, ужасно гордое, и вот не знаю, добра ли она? Ах, кабы добра! Все было бы спасено!, an astonishing face! [...] The face is cheerful, and yet she suffered terribly, didn't she? [...] It is a proud face, terribly proud, and yet I do not know whether she is good. Ah, if only she were good! Everything would be saved!
What she originally is, she herself says in ch. IV of Part One, when Totsky and the general propose marrying her to Gavrila Ardalionovich Ivolgin and Totsky offers her seventy-five thousand rubles: she accepts the money and refuses the meaning it would have.
если она и принимает теперь капитал, то вовсе не как плату за свой девичий позор, в котором она не виновата, а просто как вознаграждение за исковерканную судьбу, if she now accepts the capital, it is by no means as payment for her disgrace as a girl, for which she is not to blame, but simply as compensation for a crippled fate.
Trajectory
In ch. IV of Part One, the Petersburg scene that changed Totsky's life is told by her with a laugh:
ну хоть для того, чтобы мне только посмеяться над тобой вволю, потому что теперь и я наконец смеяться хочу, if only so that I can laugh at you to my heart's content, because now I too, at last, want to laugh.
And the narrator gives, through Totsky's own eyes, what makes her dangerous:
Ничем не дорожа, а пуще всего собой (нужно было очень много ума и проникновения, чтобы догадаться в эту минуту, что она давно уже перестала дорожить собой, и чтоб ему, скептику и светскому цинику, поверить серьезности этого чувства), Настасья Филипповна в состоянии была самое себя погубить, безвозвратно и безобразно, Сибирью и каторгой, лишь бы надругаться над человеком, к которому она питала такое бесчеловечное отвращение, setting no value on anything, and least of all on herself (it took a great deal of intelligence and insight to guess, at that moment, that she had long ago ceased to value herself, and for him, a skeptic and worldly cynic, to believe in the seriousness of that feeling), Nastasya Filippovna was capable of ruining herself, irrevocably and hideously, with Siberia and hard labor, provided she could outrage the man for whom she felt such an inhuman repulsion.
In ch. VIII of Part One she appears uninvited at the Ivolgins' house, takes the prince for a lackey and throws him a fur coat. In ch. IX of Part One she mocks Ganya's family and, with a newspaper, exposes General Ivolgin's story. In ch. X of Part One, when Varvara Ardalionovna Ivolgina calls her shameless and the prince takes Ganya's slap in his sister's place, he rebukes her, and she admits the act:
А вам и не стыдно! Разве вы такая, какою теперь представлялись. Да может ли это быть! [...] Я ведь и в самом деле не такая, он угадал, and aren't you ashamed? Is it really like you just showed yourself? Can it be! [...] I am really not like that, he guessed it.
At the birthday party, in ch. XIV of Part One, she refuses the engagement arranged with Ganya by asking the prince, whom she met that very morning, whether she should accept it:
За… за кого? [...] Н-нет… не выходите!, for... for whom? [...] N-no... do not marry!
And she explains to Totsky and the general why the stranger's word is worth more than theirs:
А князь для меня то, что я в него в первого, во всю мою жизнь, как в истинно-преданного человека поверила. Он в меня с одного взгляда поверил, и я ему верю., and the prince, for me, is the one in whom I, for the first time in my whole life, believed as in a truly devoted man. He believed in me with a single glance, and I believe in him.
In ch. XV of Part One, Parfyon Semyonovich Rogozhin comes in with his gang and puts the hundred thousand rubles on the table, and she repeats the price aloud:
Во сто тысяч меня оценил! [...] Да неужто ты меня в свою семью ввести хотел? Меня-то, Рогожинскую!, He valued me at a hundred thousand! [...] Did you really mean to bring me into your family? Me, the Rogozhin woman!
Minutes later the prince asks her to marry him and reverses the condition she herself set:
Возьмете как есть, без ничего! [...] Возьму, Настасья Филипповна… [...] Я вас честную беру, Настасья Филипповна, а не Рогожинскую, will you take me as I am, with nothing! [...] I will, Nastasya Filippovna... [...] I take you as an honorable woman, Nastasya Filippovna, and not as Rogozhin's woman.
In ch. XVI of Part One the news of the prince's inheritance arrives; for a moment she announces that she will marry him, and then refuses him, naming herself with the worst word:
Я Тоцкого наложницей была… Князь! тебе теперь надо Аглаю Епанчину, а не Настасью Филипповну [...] Вот так-то вы все: или с бесчестными, или с честными женщинами знаться, — один выбор!, I was Totsky's concubine... Prince! Now what you need is Aglaya Epanchina, not Nastasya Filippovna [...] That's how you all are: either you deal with dishonored women or with honorable ones, it's only one choice!
She confirms that she dreamed of a man like him during the five years at Otradnoe:
Разве я сама о тебе не мечтала? Это ты прав, давно мечтала, еще в деревне у него, пять лет прожила одна-одинехонька; думаешь-думаешь, бывало-то, мечтаешь-мечтаешь, — и вот всё такого, как ты воображала, доброго, честного, хорошего и такого же глупенького, что вдруг придет да и скажет: «Вы не виноваты, Настасья Филипповна, а я вас обожаю!», did I not dream of you myself? You're right about that, I have dreamed for a long time, even back in his village; I lived alone for five years; one thinks and thinks, dreams and dreams, and it's always someone like you, good, honest, kind and just as silly, who suddenly comes and says: you are not to blame, Nastasya Filippovna, and I adore you!
Before leaving with Rogozhin, she throws the packet of a hundred thousand into the fire and challenges Ganya to pull it out with his bare hands:
Видишь ты эту пачку, в ней сто тысяч! [...] Как только огонь обхватит ее всю, — полезай в камин, но только без перчаток, с голыми руками [...] Вытащишь — твоя, все сто тысяч твои!, Do you see this packet? There are a hundred thousand in it! [...] As soon as the fire takes hold of the whole of it, climb into the fireplace, but without gloves, with bare hands [...] Pull it out, and it's yours, the whole hundred thousand is yours!
And she takes leave of the prince with a sentence that is at once a tribute and a justification:
в первый раз человека видела!, for the first time I have seen a human being!
In the six months that follow, told by rumor in ch. I of Part Two, Rogozhin finds her and loses her twice in Moscow, and she runs away for the third time almost from the altar. In ch. II of Part Two, hidden in Lebedev's house, she hears from him his interpretation of Revelation, which impresses her greatly:
мы при третьем коне, вороном, и при всаднике, имеющем меру в руке своей, так как всё в нынешний век на мере и на договоре, и все люди своего только права и ищут, we are in the time of the third horse, the black one, and of the rider who holds the scales in his hand, because in this present age everything is measure and contract, and all men seek only their own right.
In ch. III of Part Two, Rogozhin tells the prince what happened in Moscow (the beating, the door left unlocked to show that she was not afraid of him, the list of books for him to read) and reveals, against his will, who it is that she loves:
Другого она любит, — вот что пойми! Точно так, как я ее люблю теперь, точно так же она другого теперь любит. А другой этот знаешь ты кто? Это ты!, She loves another, that's what you have to understand! Just as I love her now, in just the same way she now loves another. And do you know who this other is? It is you!
In ch. X of Part Two, from a carriage, she shouts at Evgeny Pavlovich Radomsky, in front of the Epanchins, that Rogozhin has bought his IOUs. In ch. II of Part Three, at the Vauxhall, she announces in public the suicide of Radomsky's uncle and slashes with a cane the face of the officer who asked for the whip for her; the prince, seeing her again after three months, feels the same pity the portrait had awakened, now with horror. In ch. III of Part Three, Rogozhin tells him that she wants to marry the prince to Aglaya and writes letters to the other woman:
так она еще не разлюбила тебя [...] Ты ведь знаешь, что она тебя с тою непременно повенчать хочет, слово такое дала, хе-хе! [...] Говорит: «Хочу его счастливым видеть», — значит, стало быть, любит, so she has not yet stopped loving you [...] You know she is determined to marry you to that other woman, she gave her word, he-he! [...] She says: I want to see him happy; so it means that she loves him.
In ch. VIII of Part Three, on the green bench, the prince gives Aglaya Ivanovna Epanchina the diagnosis the novel takes as his own: she considers herself the most fallen of all, and it is this conviction, not the facts, that governs her.
Эта несчастная женщина глубоко убеждена, что она самое павшее, самое порочное существо из всех на свете [...] что она сама, первая, не верит себе и что она всею совестью своею верит, напротив, что она… сама виновна, That unhappy woman is profoundly convinced that she is the most fallen, most depraved being of all in the world [...] that she is the first not to believe in herself, and that with her whole moral conscience she believes, on the contrary, that she... that she herself is guilty.
In ch. X of Part Three the prince reads the letters she writes to her rival. In them, she declares herself disposable before Aglaya:
но вы для меня — совершенство! Я вас видела, я вижу вас каждый день. Ведь я не сужу вас; я не рассудком дошла до того, что вы совершенство; я просто уверовала, but you, for me, are perfection! I have seen you, I see you every day. For I do not judge you; it was not by reason that I came to find you perfect; I simply came to believe.
She describes a picture that exists only in her imagination, a pensive Christ, alone with a child:
Христос его слушал, но теперь задумался [...] мысль, великая, как весь мир, покоится в его взгляде; лицо грустное, Christ was listening to him, but now he has grown pensive [...] a thought, great as the whole world, rests in his gaze; the face is sad.
With full lucidity, she anticipates her own end:
но я знаю их тайну [...] Я уверена, что у него в ящике спрятана бритва, обмотанная шелком, как и у того московского убийцы [...] Я бы его убила со страху… Но он меня убьет прежде…, but I know their secret. [...] I am sure he has a razor hidden in his drawer, wrapped in silk, like that Moscow murderer [...] I would kill him out of fear... But he will kill me first...
That same night, kneeling in the street, she asks the prince the question he does not answer:
Ты счастлив? Счастлив? — спрашивала она. — Мне только одно слово скажи, счастлив ты теперь?, Are you happy? Happy? she asked. Only tell me one word: are you happy now?
In ch. VIII of Part Four, in the house of Darya Alexeyevna, she receives Aglaya, who tells her what no one had said to her face:
Вы его, такого простого, не могли полюбить, и даже, может быть, про себя презирали и смеялись над ним, могли полюбить только один свой позор и беспрерывную мысль о том, что вы опозорены, и что вас оскорбили. Будь у вас меньше позору, или не будь его вовсе, вы были бы несчастнее…, Him, so simple, you could not love, and perhaps even despised him and laughed at him inwardly; you could love only your dishonor and the constant idea that you were dishonored and offended. Had you less dishonor, or none at all, you would be more unhappy...
Humiliated before the prince, she offers the prince to the other woman and, minutes later, threatens to order him to choose right there:
А хочешь, я сейчас… при-ка-жу, слышишь ли? только ему при-ка-жу, и он тотчас же бросит тебя и останется при мне навсегда и женится на мне, а ты побежишь домой одна? Хочешь, хочешь?, And if you like, I can now... or-der, do you hear? Just let me or-der him, and he will drop you at once and stay with me forever and marry me, and you will run home alone? Want it? Want it?
He hesitates, Aglaya runs away, and she faints in his arms. In ch. IX of Part Four the wedding is set quickly, at her wish, and the groom confesses to Radomsky what he feels before her:
я этого никому не говорил, никогда, даже Аглае, но я не могу лица Настасьи Филипповны выносить… [...] я смотрел на ее лицо! Я еще утром, на портрете, не мог его вынести… Вот у Веры, у Лебедевой, совсем другие глаза; я… я боюсь ее лица!, I have never said this to anyone, never, not even to Aglaya, but I cannot bear Nastasya Filippovna's face... [...] I was looking at her face! Already in the morning, in the portrait, I could not bear it... Vera Lebedeva has completely different eyes; I... I am afraid of her face!
In ch. X of Part Four, on the eve, she falls to her knees and asks what he is doing to her; on the wedding day, at the door of Darya Alexeyevna's house, dressed as a bride, she sees Rogozhin in the crowd and runs to him:
Спаси меня! Увези меня! Куда хочешь, сейчас!, Save me! Take me away! Wherever you want, now!
Rogozhin takes her to the station. In ch. XI of Part Four the prince searches for her for a whole day in Petersburg; in her old apartment an open book was left behind, Madame Bovary:
увидал на столике развернутую книгу из библиотеки для чтения, французский роман M-me Bovary, заметил, загнул страницу, на которой была развернута книга, попросил позволения взять ее с собой, saw on the little table an open book from a lending library, the French novel Madame Bovary, noticed it, folded down the page where the book lay open, and asked permission to take it with him.
At night Rogozhin takes him inside the house and shows the body behind the curtain:
В ногах, сбиты были в комок какие-то кружева, и на белевших кружевах, выглядывая из-под простыни, обозначался кончик обнаженной ноги; он казался как бы выточенным из мрамора и ужасно был неподвижен. Князь глядел и чувствовал, что чем больше он глядит, тем еще мертвее и тише становится в комнате. Вдруг зажужжала проснувшаяся муха, пронеслась над кроватью и затихла у изголовья., At the feet, some lace was crumpled into a ball, and on the white lace, peeping out from under the sheet, the tip of a bare foot could be made out; it looked carved from marble and was terribly still. The prince looked and felt that the more he looked, the deader and quieter the room became. Suddenly a fly that had woken buzzed, flew over the bed and fell silent by the headboard.
Themes Embodied
The novel never resolves the tension between the guilt she does not have and the guilt she assigns to herself, and it is this refusal to resolve that makes her hard to write about. She herself declares before Totsky and the general that she is not to blame for the dishonor (ch. IV of Part One), Myshkin repeats the diagnosis on the night he asks her to marry him (ch. XVI of Part One) and again to Aglaya (ch. VIII of Part Three), and yet it is her judgment of herself that governs every decision she makes, from the challenge with the money in flames (ch. XVI of Part One) to the final flight (ch. X of Part Four). To treat her only as a victim erases the second half of the sentence; to treat her only as responsible for her own fall erases the first: the book asks for both at the same time, and this is the center of the theme of Compassion and charity, which she refuses whenever she feels it coming from above.
Her refusal of a negotiated exit is not one refusal but several: she refuses Totsky, refuses Ganya, accepts and then rejects Myshkin, and chooses Rogozhin knowing exactly what he is, enough to foresee in writing her own death at his hand at the end of Part Three (ch. X of Part Three). This is neither passivity nor lack of options; it is agency applied against herself, which sets Nastasya apart from a character whom the plot simply runs over.
Death closes this agency without cancelling it: she does not kill herself, she is murdered by Rogozhin, and the difference matters because the novel keeps her a subject to the end, someone who chose the risk and not the exit, not someone who decided to end her own story with her own hands.
The two paintings of Christ divide Part Three without any character directly confronting them: what Hippolyte Terentyev describes in Rogozhin's house, in ch. VI of Part Three, is a battered body defeated by matter; what Nastasya Filippovna imagines in the letters of ch. X of Part Three is gentle, pensive, beside a child. One belongs to the house that will kill her, the other to the mind of the one who is going to die there, and the novel never needs to say that they are the same question asked from two places.
В картине же Рогожина о красоте и слова нет; это в полном виде труп человека, вынесшего бесконечные муки [...] На картине это лицо страшно разбито ударами, вспухшее, со страшными, вспухшими и окровавленными синяками, глаза открыты, зрачки скосились; большие, открытые белки глаз блещут каким-то мертвенным, стеклянным отблеском, In Rogozhin's painting, however, there is not a word about beauty; it is the complete corpse of a man who endured endless torments [...] In the painting this face is terribly disfigured by blows, swollen, with terrible swollen and bloodied bruises, the eyes open, the pupils squinted; the large open whites of the eyes shine with a deathly, glassy gleam.
The book she leaves open in the old apartment, Madame Bovary (ch. XI of Part Four), is not a prop: it is the only time the text itself points to a reading companion for her, and the companion is neither a saint nor a redeemable sinner; it is another woman who also treated her own end as the only gesture left to her for narrating herself.
Relationships
- Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin: he is the only one who treats her origin as irrelevant to her worth; he asks her to marry him on the night of the birthday (ch. XV of Part One) and accepts the marriage she sets in Part Four (ch. IX of Part Four), and both times she runs away with Rogozhin (ch. XVI of Part One, ch. X of Part Four).
- Parfyon Semyonovich Rogozhin: has been paying for her since the diamond earrings told on the train (ch. I of Part One), is chosen by her even after she predicts in her letters that he will kill her (ch. X of Part Three), and kills her (ch. XI of Part Four).
- Afanasy Ivanovich Totsky: the guardian who took her as a lover in adolescence and later tries to rid himself of her by marrying her to Ganya (ch. IV of Part One); she sets him free, at no cost, in front of everyone at the party (ch. XIV of Part One).
- Gavrila Ardalionovich Ivolgin: the fiancé who would accept her for the dowry, whom she humiliates in his own house (ch. X of Part One) and in front of whom she burns the hundred thousand (ch. XVI of Part One).
- Aglaya Ivanovna Epanchina: the rival before whom Nastasya declares herself disposable in her letters (ch. X of Part Three) and before whom, in the confrontation, she threatens to order the prince to stay with her (ch. VIII of Part Four).
- Hippolyte Terentyev: never speaks to her directly, but describes the painting of the dead Christ, which the book sets in counterpoint to the picture she imagines (ch. VI of Part Three), and arranges, through Rogozhin, her meeting with Aglaya (ch. VIII of Part Four).