Who They Are
Varvara Ardalionovna Ivolgina, Varya, is the sister of Gavrila Ardalionovich Ivolgin and of Nikolai Ardalionovich Ivolgin, daughter of General Ardalion Alexandrovich Ivolgin and of Nina Alexandrovna. She is twenty-three when the novel begins and, the narrator says, even more energetic than her mother (chapter VIII of Part One). With her mother she keeps the household going by renting out furnished rooms; she is courted by Ptitsyn, a serious young man who lends money at interest, and marries him six months later (chapter I of Part Two). What she wants is to lift the family out of humiliation without humiliating herself: that is why she refuses to receive Nastasya Filippovna Barashkova as a sister-in-law and, at the same time, works a whole winter to marry her brother to Aglaya Ivanovna Epanchina. What she fears is dishonor; what she knows is how to read people better than her brother does, and it is she who explains why he lost Aglaya (chapter I of Part Four). Where she is mistaken is in the measure of her own calculation: the narrator places her, with Gania and Ptitsyn, among the intelligent ordinary people who distrust their own mediocrity and do not resign themselves to it.
Trajectory
In chapter VIII of Part One she declares, before her mother and Gania, that if that woman enters the house, she will leave; Gania turns against her, and she faces him with a silent look that knows how to make him lose his temper. In chapter IX of Part One Nastasya Filippovna enters by surprise, and the two exchange a strange look; when Gania threatens his sister with his eyes, she smiles slightly. In chapter X of Part One, after Rogozhin's auction, Varya shouts whether no one is going to throw that shameless woman out, and hears the reply, addressed to her brother:
Это меня-то бесстыжею называют! [...] а я-то как дура приехала их к себе на вечер звать! Вот как ваша сестрица меня третирует, Гаврила Ардалионович!, So it is me they call shameless! [...] And here I came, like a fool, to invite them to my party! See how your little sister treats me, Gavrila Ardalionovich!
Gania grabs her by the arm so that she will ask pardon, and she spits in his face. When he raises his hand to strike her, the prince catches it in the air, steps between the two and takes the blow in her place:
О, как вы будете стыдиться своего поступка!, Oh, how ashamed you will be of what you have done!
In chapter XI of Part One she comes to thank the prince and observes that he has influence over Nastasya Filippovna; she forgives her brother and warns him that the bride laughed at him and that it is not worth seventy-five thousand. In chapter XII of Part One Kolya says that the mother helps the captain's family with money and clothes, and Varya too; when the prince calls this moral strength, Kolya accepts it for the mother and refuses it for his sister, who would do it out of vanity.
In chapter I of Part Two, during the prince's six months' absence, she marries Ptitsyn and starts visiting the Epanchin girls by the back door. In chapter VI of Part Two she arrives at Lebedev's dacha with Gania and Ptitsyn; in chapter IX of Part Two the proofs with which Gania dismantles Burdovsky's claim, three letters from Pavlishchev, were obtained through her and a retired colonel. In chapter XI of Part Two she tells the prince that Aglaya has quarreled with the whole family, and Kolya brings the news that Yelizaveta Prokofyevna has thrown her out of the house for good. In chapter XII of Part Two the general's wife tells the prince that Gania is in a relationship with Aglaya, that Varya opened the way all winter, like a rat, and that one of the two put Aglaya in touch with Nastasya Filippovna.
In chapter I of Part Four the narrator places her, with her brother and her husband, among the ordinary people who do not resign themselves to their own mediocrity:
умный «обыкновенный» человек, даже если б и воображал себя мимоходом (а пожалуй, и во всю свою жизнь) человеком гениальным и оригинальнейшим, тем не менее сохраняет в сердце своем червячка сомнения, который доводит до того, что умный человек кончает иногда совершенным отчаянием; если же и покоряется, то уже совершенно отравившись вогнанным внутрь тщеславием., the intelligent "ordinary" man, even if he imagined himself, in passing (and perhaps all his life), a man of genius and the most original kind, still keeps in his heart a little worm of doubt, which leads him so far that the intelligent man sometimes ends in complete despair; and if he does submit, it is only after being thoroughly poisoned by vanity turned inward.
The narrator also tells that she married Ptitsyn out of sensible calculation, a modest man who would never commit a great baseness and who would give a roof to parents and brothers, and that she spent months visiting the Epanchins to bring her brother closer to Aglaya. She comes back from there with the news that the prince is a formal fiancé and, faced with Gania's strange calm, explains to him what he got wrong:
Князь ее на удочку тем и поймал, что, во-первых, совсем и не ловил, а во-вторых, что он на глаза всех идиот., The prince hooked her on the line precisely because, first, he did not try to hook her at all, and second, because in everyone's eyes he is an idiot.
In the same chapter she wants to spare her mother the news of the father's theft. In chapter II of Part Four, right after the general's curse, Gania shows her the note in which Aglaya asks him to meet her on the green bench, accompanied by his sister, to ask for advice. In chapter V of Part Four the narrator corrects her: she exaggerated the certainty of the engagement, perhaps to poison her brother's heart a little more. In chapter VIII of Part Four Hippolyte Terentyev tells that he saw Aglaya dismiss Gania and Varya on the green bench with a courteous phrase, and Kolya breaks inwardly with the two of them and with Ptitsyn. In chapter IX of Part Four it is she who goes to tell Yelizaveta Prokofyevna that Aglaya, after the meeting with Nastasya Filippovna, took refuge in Nina Alexandrovna's house.
Themes Embodied
Varya is Truth and Lies in the Ivolgin house, in the register of dignity: she is the only one in the family who says aloud what she thinks of her brother's marriage (chapter VIII of Part One), and she pays for it with a gesture that no young woman in the Epanchins' house would make, the spit of chapter X of Part One. Yet the same young woman who refuses Nastasya Filippovna for the money that comes with her marries for calculation and secretly works out a rich marriage for her brother. Her honor is one of family, not of principle, and the book shows both sides without condemning her.
It is she who formulates, in chapter I of Part Four, the most exact explanation of the prince's victory: he won Aglaya by not trying to win her. The phrase is an accusation against Gania and, without her saying so, against herself, who spent a winter calculating where calculation drove people away. Varya understands the prince better than her brother does because she is more intelligent than he is, and for that very reason she cannot do what the prince does.
Divergent Readings
The text supports two readings of her. In one, she is the only one of the Ivolgins with a spine: she confronts her brother, refuses the bought woman, helps the captain's family and wants to spare her mother when her father steals (chapter I of Part Four). In the other, she is the most calculating of the family, and Kolya is the first to say so, when he thinks she helps others out of vanity (chapter XII of Part One); Yelizaveta Prokofyevna calls her a rat (chapter XII of Part Two), and the narrator suspects that she exaggerates the news to wound her brother (chapter V of Part Four). Both readings rest on the same energy, which the narrator notes on the first day (chapter VIII of Part One).
Relationships
- Gavrila Ardalionovich Ivolgin, the brother, in whose face she spits (chapter X of Part One) and for whose marriage to Aglaya she works a whole winter (chapter XII of Part Two, chapter I of Part Four).
- Nikolai Ardalionovich Ivolgin, the younger brother, who doubts her vanity (chapter XII of Part One) and breaks inwardly with her (chapter VIII of Part Four).
- Ardalion Alexandrovich Ivolgin, the father, whose theft she wants to hide from her mother (chapter I of Part Four).
- Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin, who takes the blow in her place (chapter X of Part One) and to whom she comes to give thanks (chapter XI of Part One).
- Nastasya Filippovna Barashkova, the brother's fiancée, whom she refuses to receive (chapter VIII of Part One, chapter X of Part One).
- Aglaya Ivanovna Epanchina, whom she approaches through the back door (chapter I of Part Two) and who dismisses her on the green bench (chapter VIII of Part Four).