I came to the chapter in Crime and Punishment in which Raskolnikov, having broken relations with his family, walks directly to Sonia's apartment and interrogates her about her beliefs before asking her to read aloud for him the story of the raising of Lazarus from the Gospel of John. (He only knows about the story and can't find it in her New Testament; she's the one who knows it's in the Fourth Gospel.) In case the reader had forgotten, the narrator pointedly observes that it's a prostitute and a murderer who are contemplating the gospel text in Sonia's bare, destitute room. It doesn't seem like anything that might happen in The Real World, though I can imagine the scene as the subject of a painting—probably a sentimental one. The details of the interview could not be conveyed in a painting, however. Sonia is the eldest child in one of literature's most dysfunctional families. Her father has recently been killed in an accident and his wife, her stepmother, is dying of tuberculosis. She's resorted to prostitution in order to raise desperately needed funds for the three younger children. Raskolnikov presses her on what she thinks is going to happen to these kids once they are orphans. She seems to be in denial about the hopelessness of the situation and, for example, begs him not to say aloud that their mother will soon be dead. Raskolnikov responds by setting before her the picture of her stepmother's beggarly appeals being interrupted by her coughing fits. Sonia says God would not allow the worst to become the children. Raskolnikov asks whether she has noticed what God allows to become of some other people's children. Why does she suppose her siblings are special? He thinks she's a "religious maniac." She thinks he's a "madman." The sane reader probably thinks both are correct. In a twist, it comes out that her usual partner for Bible study had been Lizaveta, the pawnbroker's mentally challenged sister whom Raskolnikov a few days earlier had bludgeoned to death with an axe.
Dostoevsky is sometimes said to rank among the great 19th-century literary realists, which perhaps is defensible if we allow in the sights and bad smells of the faithfully described streets and byways of St Petersburg. If you want, you can on Google Maps follow Raskolnikov on his walks around town: the streets haven't changed names, and it's true that if you turn left on this one from that one you will come to a bridge that crosses a canal, etc. But the events that are described, the elements of the plot, what every reader will remember, are fantastical and exhibit what I'd call an overheated religious sensibility. His novels are long, exceedingly long, but the same kinds of things happen again and again. The scene with Raskolnikov in Sonia's room resembles the more famous one in The Brothers Karamazov, where the brilliant intellectual Ivan lays out for his saintly younger brother the case for atheism by describing the suffering of children.
There is another way in which Dostoevsky may qualify as a "great 19th-century realist." It relates mainly to minor characters who aren't in the path of the fireball. The chapter before the one in Sonia's room begins with this description of Luzhin in the immediate aftermath of having been rejected by his fiancée and her formerly hopeful mother:
The point was that up to the very last minute he had not in the least expected such a break. He had blustered and bullied, never imagining even the possibility that two poor and unprotected women could escape his power. His confidence was greatly strengthened by vanity and that degree of self-reliance which might best be called self-infatuation. Peter Petrovich, who had struggled up from nothing, was full of almost morbid admiration for himself, set a high value by his own brain and capabilities and sometimes, when he was alone, even admired his own face in the mirror. But more than anything in the world he loved and prized his money, got together laboriously and by every means in his power; it raised him to the level of everything that had been superior to him.
It is to this point my favorite paragraph in the book, especially that last sentence. The novel is psychologically acute concerning characters who aren't vessels for all the religious and philosophic freight.
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