Abstract

In Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov is an impoverished university student who commits a brutal double-murder of an old money-lender and her sister, and then for much of the novel manages to evade detection.1 He is racked by guilt and anxiety from the act. Sonia is a young woman who lives with her parents and several siblings. Her father is an alcoholic, unable to hold down a job, and Sonia has therefore become a prostitute to support the family. What is remarkable about Sonia is that she feels no bitterness, either to her father, or to her family, or to her clients, or even to fate itself.The novel traces an arc from the murders in part I to Raskolnikov's confession to the police ..