Anyone who has read The Idiot knows who Nastasya Filippovna Barashkova is. This is the heroine around whom the main plot knots are tied. Nastasya Filippovna's monologue can be considered the culmination of Dostoevsky's novel. The words that she addresses either to herself or to Prince Myshkin reveal incredible despair and disbelief in the happy outcome of her own life. What is the tragedy of Nastasya Filippovna? Are there prototypes for this character?
Prince Myshkin
One day, in a train carriage heading from Switzerland to Russia, Parfen Rogozhin meets a young man, rather strange, but arousing boundless sympathy and trust - Prince Myshkin. A distant relative of General Epanchina is very ill; he spent many years abroad, but treatment did not completely relieve him of his illness. It is from Rogozhin that Myshkin first hears about a woman named Nastasya Filippovna.
Dostoevsky's most famous hero is free from passions that destroy the human soul. He is like a child. His view of others is unclouded. That's why they call him an idiot. He is the only one who sees in Nastasya Filippovna not a fallen fatal beauty, but just an unhappy woman - a woman devoid of love and understanding. He feels sorry for her, perhaps he truly loves her. However, he is unable to bear the intrigues that a million-dollar inheritance that has fallen out of the blue gives rise to.
The author endowed Prince Myshkin with autobiographical features. The hero suffers from epilepsy, just like his creator. And it was Myshkin who told readers about the psychological state of a person before the death penalty - about what Dostoevsky knew from his own experience. Let's return to the image of Nastasya Filippovna. What role did the story of the “fallen woman” play in the fate of the unfortunate Prince Myshkin?
Nastasya Filippovna is the image of an infernal woman in the novel “The Idiot” by F.M. Dostoevsky
Sonya Marmeladova is the image of an infernal woman in the novel “Crime and Punishment” by F.M. Dostoevsky Read more: The image of Sonya in L. Ulitskaya’s story “Sonechka”
1.2 Nastasya Filippovna - the image of an infernal woman in the novel “The Idiot” by F.M. Dostoevsky
Another heroine of Dostoevsky, Nastasya Filippovna, is a fatal, proud, infernal woman in the novel “The Idiot.” The image of this heroine was taken from Dostoevsky’s first wife Marya Dmitrievna; it was as if he “wrote” her on paper, displaying all her character traits, behavior, and appearance. The love story of Dostoevsky with Marya Dmitrievna is similar to the story of Rogozhin and Nastasya Filippovna, the same difficult, unequal love with suffering and torment.
“He fell madly in love with her - he mistook her compassion, participation and easy play out of boredom and hopelessness for mutual feelings. Dostoevsky covered her with all the charms of unsatisfied desires, erotic fantasies and romantic illusions accumulated over the years of forced abstinence. Besides, she suffered, and sensitivity to other people's grief always fueled his passion. Very soon their connection grew into a strong attachment. They would have gotten married here, but the exalted Marya Dmitrievna began to experience feelings “for strength.” She wrote Dostoevsky letters of either hysterical hatred or passionate love letters. This game was killing him, because he loved with all the strength and passion of his belated first true love. Dostoevsky was on the verge of madness. He suffered, she suffered” [34] (V. Kozhinov).
The story is very similar to the story of the characters in the novel.
Nastasya Filippovna is a very complex and difficult person. She is unhappy, suffered a lot, never loved anyone, loved herself very much, strong, her fatal beauty and amazing mind, and cunning is “poison” for the men who knew her, and for women too. In her presence in society, not a single woman shone as brightly, nor was so majestic, not a single one could force anyone to remain silent just by looking at her withering gaze.
“She is driven by “demonic pride”, which does not allow her to accept Myshkin’s compassion. Therefore, the humanistic “resurrection” of Nastasya Filippovna, her “return” to the “image of pure beauty” (which she, apparently, never was) cannot take place.” (from the article by L.N. Smirnova “The world will be saved by beauty”). In one of the last scenes of the novel, before the heroine’s failed wedding to the prince, the crowd gathered at home is struck by her “infernal,” demonic beauty: she came out “pale as a scarf; but her big black eyes sparkled... like hot coals” [20, part 4, p. 569]. At the beginning of the novel's action, looking at the portrait of Nastasya Filippovna and marveling at her dazzling beauty, Prince Myshkin exclaims: “Oh, if only it were good! Everything would be saved!” [20, part 1, p. 36]. After all, the “sweet dream” that Pushkin spoke about in his “Poor Knight”, as imagined by the heroes of the novel, the same Aglaya, is “to restore and resurrect a person.”
It is for this purpose that Myshkin offers his hand to Nastasya Filippovna on the very first day of their acquaintance. Humanistic “truth,” combined with beautiful appearance and goodness, will recreate in the former courtesan the “image of pure beauty.”
Physical beauty, combined with moral beauty, will “save the world,” because, as Dostoevsky wrote in an article in 1861, it is “inherent in everything healthy” and is “a necessary need of the human body” [30]. But everything does not work out as the author of “The Idiot” originally intended. In the novel, a “brilliant figure” appears: Lebedev, a small businessman, a swindler, an intriguer and at the same time a profound paradoxical philosopher, an interpreter of the Apocalypse. It is he who expresses the key thoughts for further understanding of the main images of “The Idiot”: “... the law of self-destruction and the law of self-preservation are equally strong in humanity” [20, part 2, p. 278], “the devil... dominates humanity until the end of time, still unknown to us” [20, part 2, p. 280], “weakened,... the sources of life became clouded” in “our age of steamships and railways” [20, part 3, p. 354].
From the plot it becomes obvious that the “law of self-destruction” operates in Nastasya Filippovna’s fate; in her face, beauty is in no hurry to combine with truth and goodness, although it has every opportunity for this.
Firstly, upon closer examination it is difficult to call the heroine a victim of social injustice: in the 1860s, in the educated circles of Russia, the cult of a woman free to choose a loved one literally flourished, marrying whom was considered an “advanced” act. In addition, the heroine could well give up a luxurious life at the expense of rich people in love, if she was so burdened by her “venality,” and live an independent, modest working life. Evilly, but, in fact, rightly, Aglaya throws at her: “If I wanted to be honest, I would have become a laundress” [20, part 4, p. 547].
Finally, even at the beginning of the work, she has the opportunity to marry Prince Myshkin, who has just received a huge inheritance, and is eager to atone for her past suffering with sincere respect and devoted love. However, Nastasya Filippovna leaves with the merchant Rogozhin, and then throughout the entire novel action, rushes between both heroes, driving them to the point of insanity.
Understanding full well that Rogozhin’s possessive passion threatens her with death, she, nevertheless, once again runs away in a wedding dress from Myshkin and almost deliberately goes under the knife of Parfen, tormented by jealousy.
Compassion is powerless towards Nastasya Filippovna. Christianity cannot be reduced to one “pity”: Myshkin did not “resurrect” the heroine either spiritually or socially. In a world lying in evil, even a “positively beautiful person” on his own is not able to “save” another person, cannot resist the devil without God’s support. Myshkin’s attraction to Nastasya Filippovna is felt “like an attraction to some pathetic and sick child, who is difficult and even impossible to leave to his own will,” and he “loves her not with love, but with pity.” His choice between Aglaya and Nastasya Filippovna was predetermined like this : “She’s so unhappy. Humanity and selflessness, which are still unknown to her, contribute to a moral shift in a hardened soul” [30].
Nastasya Filippovna has no faith, she constantly wanders, as if she does not want to accept help from anyone, as if she herself is looking for death, as if she wants to suffer and does not at all appreciate what people around her did for her. She does not find salvation with Rogozhin; on the contrary, with him she finds only her death.
She always laughs when Prince Myshkin tells her that she is like a pure angel, like a child, that she is a woman who suffers greatly, but does not show it to anyone and hides under the mask of her, undoubtedly, incomparable beauty . She can’t believe in the naivety of this man, she can’t believe that someone can love her without all her jewelry, money, beautiful outfits, magnificent receptions, but it’s true, at the ball she refuses her patron and gives up everything, so what? No one except Myshkin marries her, no one can even think about it, all her friends see her only as an object of amusement, they do not perceive her as a strong and determined woman. Her life is not interesting, she doesn’t need money to be happy, she herself doesn’t know what she needs, because she also had a prince who loved her and respected her, appreciated and valued her, offered her his help, wanted her to start live again, calmly, without humiliation or suffering. She had Parfen Rogozhin. His love, on the contrary, looked more like a disease, like an attraction, like a passion. She torments all these men, as if she is wandering from the desire to live to death. As a result, Rogozhin makes it easier for her to choose not for the best, although if you take into account how much time she spent with Parfen and how much with Myshkin, we can conclude that she was more looking for death, since she herself knew that he would kill her.
“Angel” - as Myshkin believed, did not justify itself in his eyes, he counted on her prudence, on her common sense, but everything turned out to be in vain. Nastasya Filippovna is also an image of an unapproachable woman, an image of an infernal and fatal woman, very beautiful, educated and vain. She is always calm, never screams, her caustic gaze pierces and it makes you cold and scary at the same time. She is very proud, her disposition is like a fire that is ignited by one spark of a match, and can only go out when it completely burns out. The opinion of her surroundings does not bother her at all, she does not think about the fact that she may be wrong in her decisions; in some scenes she looks like a madwoman, she even inspires fear and panic, especially in the first part of the book, when Rogozhin offered her one hundred thousand rubles and run away with him to Ekateringof, she ran away with him like crazy. She forgot about her former life and all her friends and former hobbies, and all because this woman loves Myshkin, but she is so afraid to let him into her “strange” life that she runs not from people, but precisely from love for him. Nastasya Filippovna would like to marry him, but for the rest of her life she will wander between this desire and Rogozhin, namely the fear of this man.
Suffering tormented her, although she never suffered from hunger, cold, or poverty, her torment was always moral. She hated her guardian, hated the life that was given to her, she did not want to owe this man all her life for her long-term support - that’s why she suffered, she suffered a lot. She did not feel freedom, although she had never been a captive, but the eternal attempts to marry her off for convenience exhausted her. She no longer had the strength to fight this unfair, evil, soulless world. But the “world” managed to change her and in order to survive she had to get used to cruelty, lust, rudeness, she lost the habit of normal human relationships:
Kind and affectionate, warm and caring, and Prince Myshkin wanted to offer her just such a life. But Nastasya Filippovna was so accustomed to meanness and prudence that she did not immediately believe his words, not thinking that there was another idiot left in the world who was pure in soul and body, kind and knew how to love a simple girl without wealth or position in society. Exhausted by constant calculation and hypocrisy, she is surprised at such an unusual person.
Having fallen in love with him, she shows her best quality, she does not rush into his arms, she proudly and rudely refuses him, so that he certainly does not have a single hope left, thereby acting very nobly, because she knows that happy they cannot be, they are too different people. On the one hand, she is very rude and harsh with the prince, but at this time she is driven by only one desire - to save him from herself, and no one but her can do this. That’s why she leaves with Rogozhin. And soon she finds what she had been looking for for so long, but was afraid to admit it, constantly running away, but soon still returning to the person who, she knew perfectly well, would destroy her. Only a truly strong woman is capable of renouncing her love in the name of saving the life of her beloved, so as not to ruin his life and not to tarnish his pure name.
Sonya Marmeladova is the image of an infernal woman in the novel “Crime and Punishment” by F.M. Dostoevsky Read more: The image of Sonya in L. Ulitskaya’s story “Sonechka”
Information about the work “Infernal women in Dostoevsky’s novels”
Section: Foreign literature Number of characters with spaces: 50550 Number of tables: 0 Number of images: 0
Similar works
The symbolism of light in the novel by F.M. Dostoevsky "Crime and Punishment"
61327
0
0
..., however, already instills reconciliation with life, peace and hope for a victorious truth. Chapter 3. Mythological symbolism of light In this chapter we will look at the theoretical information about the mythological symbols of light found in Dostoevsky's novel Crime and Punishment; Also here we will include information about non-mythological symbols of light and classify all light symbols. ...
Dostoevsky's work in the context of European literature
129966
1
0
..., at the well in “Miserables” by Victor Hugo; it pierces the heart once, and then the wound remains forever” (13; 382). A very special role in Dostoevsky’s work was played by Hugo’s novel “The Last Day of a Man Condemned to Death” (1828) - one of the first examples of a psychological novel in European literature, the content of which was not external events, but the movement of thought of someone isolated from people, locked in...
Female images in Sholokhov’s novel “Quiet Don”
149779
1
0
..., preserving its traditional features and acquiring new ones, in tune with the cultural era and socio-spiritual characteristics of its time. Chapter 2. Female images in M. Sholokhov’s novel “Quiet Don” 2.1. The role of female characters in M. Sholokhov's novel M. Sholokhov's novel “Quiet Don” is dedicated to depicting the life of the Cossacks in the tragic years of Russian history. Man and history are one of the central problems...
The Dostoevsky phenomenon
64752
0
0
... ; all truths are in everyone's consciousness; choice is personality. Not just the persuasiveness of everything, but bringing the most unacceptable to the limit of persuasiveness - that’s what polyphony is. The Dostoevsky phenomenon: exploring all possibilities, trying on all masks, an eternal proteus, always returning to himself. This is where no point of view is the only correct and final one...
Characteristic
Nastasya Filippovna is a rather controversial heroine. The characters in the novel characterize it in different ways. How does Myshkin see this woman? Looking at her portrait for the first time, he is amazed. However, he is not struck by beauty, but rather by the terrible combination of pride and contempt that can be read in her gaze. A pale face, slightly sunken cheeks, a strange fire in the eyes - the prince sees all this in the portrait of a 25-year-old woman. At this moment, he seems to guess the previous and future fate of Nastasya Filippovna. Then, having become a millionaire, he tries to save her. But in vain. This woman feels contempt not only for others, but also for herself.
Nastasya Filippovna's childhood
Dostoevsky created this female image under the weight of his own love experiences. But we’ll talk about who served as the prototype for Nastasya Filippovna later. First, it is worth setting out the biography of this extraordinary woman.
Nastasya Filippovna was born into the family of a nobleman, a retired officer. When the girl was seven years old, her mother died. After the death of his wife, the father went crazy and soon died in a fever. Nastasya was left alone in this world. The neighboring landowner Afanasy Totsky took an active part in her fate. The orphan grew up in the house of his manager.
The girl has grown up. Totsky saw a future beauty in her. He hired tutors who taught Nastasya the French language, music and rules of behavior in secular society. When she turned 16, he made her his kept woman.
Nastasya Filippovna: a beauty with a borderline mental organization
It is difficult to feel sincere sympathy for Natasya Filippovna. The beauty, whose borderline mental organization allows her to live only in a storm of passions, drags us into a whirlwind of affects that are illogical and excessive from the point of view of an outside observer. And therefore our feelings and attitude towards her are also changeable: we either empathize with her pain, recognizing her childhood traumatic history with early molestation and use, or we admire her ability to subjugate everyone around her to her will, or we are perplexed, observing her inconsistency and passion for destruction .
Like all borderline organized people, she does not experience her drama - she acts it out in the hope of easing the pain, gaining satisfaction, finding peace. Her torment, rage and thirst for self-destruction are so great that they cannot be processed mentally, they break out and capture everyone who comes close to her. All the characters become representations of different parts of her psyche, and therefore they are all needed, it is impossible to get rid of them, and they cannot leave her, being captured by the important role that they unconsciously play.
And each of them also has its own “Nastasya Filippovna” - deceived, suffering, incapable of love. She says and does everything that they would like, but do not dare. That is why they follow her so fascinated and become witnesses to the drama played out until the tragic ending, unable to save either her or themselves from the furious desire to punish at least someone for their broken fate.
They are among us
You will find people with borderline organization almost everywhere. They pull you into their life and story, unconsciously forcing you to be something you never intended to be. You can save them, love them, give them your last shirt, but if you do even the slightest thing that was not expected, you will immediately be anathematized: in the easiest case, they will be mortally offended and will not want to have anything to do with you, in the complex case - they can take revenge, trying to take out all the pain for internal devastation on you.
They capture you, in their field you live in peak experiences: love - so to the grave, passion - so the heavens will tremble, if grief, then mortal, if rage, then murderous. They do not control either their lives or their affects, and it will be difficult for you to manage anything in this whirlwind of emotions and drives.
If you are tired of your boring, structured and predictable life, then Nastasya Filippovna will certainly appear on your horizon. The best thing we can do is to discover it and get to know it within ourselves, otherwise it will happen outside and no longer of our will.
Ganya Ivolgin
Only Prince Myshkin could see the suffering, vulnerable soul in Nastasya Filippovna. For others, it was a subject of bargaining. Having learned that Totsky is going to marry one of the daughters of General Epanchin, Nastasya comes to St. Petersburg. And now the landowner sees: in front of him is not a touching, defenseless creature whom he destroyed, but a woman ready to take revenge. She has a terrible, infernal charm that attracts new fans. Among them is Ganya Ivolgin.
This young nobleman is rich, has a decent appearance, and is well educated. He is not stupid, but at the same time he has neither talent nor abilities, he does not have a single idea of his own. Ganya Ivolgin is “decidedly like everyone else.” He serves as General Epanchin’s secretary, and it is from him in one of the first chapters that Prince Myshkin sees a portrait of Nastasya Filippovna, which amazes him so much.
Early years
As soon as Nastasya turned 16 years old, he immediately made her his kept woman.
(I don’t want to go into detail to explain what it means to be kept by a rich man. But it’s not the best position in a young girl’s life.)
One can imagine how wounded Nastasya was by her status at such a young age.
Nastasya's arrival in St. Petersburg was caused by the news of Totsky's marriage to the general's daughter Epanchina.
Afanasy saw another woman in front of him. Nastasya was no longer the touching and defenseless girl whom he had destroyed, but a strong and brave woman ready for revenge.
Her strong nature attracted many men, including Ganya Ivolgin, who carefully kept her portrait.
(It was in a similar portrait that Prince Myshkin saw her for the first time and fell in love with an image that was not yet familiar to him).
Parfen Rogozhin
After his first meeting with Nastasya Barashkova, the son of a wealthy merchant is seized by a fatal passion. He gives her diamond pendants worth ten thousand. A meeting with this woman unsettles Rogozhin from his usual rut. He commits a number of crazy actions - all in order to win Nastasya Filippovna. When Parfen becomes the heir to a million-dollar fortune, just like Totsky, he tries to buy her. However, he is not stupid and understands that he will never receive a reciprocal feeling. Nastasya Filippovna has not valued herself for a long time. For her, a connection with Rogozhin is a form of suicide.
Love triangle
In one of the scenes, Prince Myshkin proposes to Nastasya Filippovna. She refuses him and makes a long speech full of bitterness and suffering. Once upon a time, as Totsky’s kept woman, she dreamed of someone like Myshkin - kind, honest, “stupid.” But then society imposed a template on her that she had to follow.
Nastasya Filippovna understands how terribly marriage to a “fallen woman” can affect Myshkin’s fate. And therefore she marries Parfen Rogozhin, who respects the prince, but invariably sees him as a rival. Nastasya Filippovna is ruining both herself and those who love her. Rogozhin, in a fit of jealousy, kills her and then goes crazy. The fate of Prince Myshkin is no less sad.
Option 2
Nastasya Filippovna in F. M. Dostoevsky’s work “The Idiot” is a person with a dual inner world. Having lost her parents as a child, little Nastya was raised out of pity by a compassionate neighbor. However, at the age of 12, having turned into a lovely teenager, she became another victim of the landowner Totsky.
Having noticed the girl, Totsky, an expert on the female sex, orders her to be raised as a noblewoman. He hires a governess, teachers for the girl, and when she turns sixteen, Totsky makes her his mistress.
The girl feels disgust, horror and contempt for her patron. This terrible event turns her into a vengeful nature, although by nature she is infinitely kind and trusting. Her main feature, after she became a dazzling social beauty, is pride. Prince Myshkin tells her: “You are proud.”
At the beginning of the novel, he sees her portrait and thinks about it. Amazing beauty touches him, but the sensitive prince notices sadness in the look of the socialite and more than anything else he wants her to be kind and not take revenge for herself. Intuitively, he understands that the passion with which she lives will sooner or later burn her to the ground. This is how it turns out.
Everyone around him falls in love with this extraordinary woman: millionaire Parfen Rogozhin, General Epanchin, Ganya Ivolgin. However, they only want to “buy” the proud beauty. Only one noble prince Myshkin offers her his hand and heart.
Nastasya Filippovna's heart is racing. She does not find peace, realizing that the prince is proposing to her out of pity. In fact, he loves someone else - Aglaya. Nastasya Filippovna wants salvation, but her conscience torments her. Should she, the concubine of Totsky and Rogozhin, be a princess? However, she hopes for happiness until the end. Only after learning that Myshkin is marrying her out of pity, Nastasya Filippovna Barashkova runs away from the temple in her wedding dress and runs to certain death to Rogozhin.
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky in the image of Nastasya Filippovna showed us pure, immaculate beauty. Having become a victim of the voluptuous Totsky, she hates herself to such an extent that she considers herself worse than a street person. On the one hand, she wants deliverance, hopes for a bright future, but the evil spirit is stronger than her. He challenges her, reminding her of all her sins.
Unable to withstand the “purity” of Prince Myshkin, Nastasya Filippovna dies. At the end of the novel, the rich merchant Rogozhin, who killed the woman, brings Prince Myshkin to her body. The two of them are sitting in front of her, it was they who killed her with their love. They are essentially accomplices. This unfortunate woman has been unhappy all her life. She suffered from the cruelty of people since childhood. Her extraordinary beauty and strong character did not allow her to be an ordinary person. Everyone who interacted with her is guilty of her death. Envy, anger, malice, gossip did their job.
A proud beauty with a fiery heart died for no reason.
The image of the heroine in other works
The characteristic features of Nastasya Filippovna can be seen in other characters of Dostoevsky. For example, in Agrafena Svetlova from The Brothers Karamazov, Polina from The Player. The heroine of the novel “The Idiot” has become one of the brightest literary images. The story of a young woman with a broken destiny is also found in the works of later prose writers. Pasternak's novel Doctor Zhivago shows the fate of a girl from a poor family, the mistress of a rich and cynical lawyer. We are talking about Larisa, who became a victim of the scoundrel Komarovsky. We do not know whether Pasternak, when creating this female image, was influenced by the novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky. But the heroines of these two Russian writers undoubtedly have common features.
In 2021, Natalia Mironova’s book “Nastasya Filippovna Syndrome” was published. There is no such term in psychiatry. The writer herself created it. Mironova’s heroine became a victim of violence, after which she experienced serious psychological problems for several years. They were expressed in illogical hatred towards the stronger sex, the desire to be desired, but inaccessible and unattainable.
Option 3
F. M. Dostoevsky’s novel “The Idiot” is a legendary literary work that is still very popular today. Based on the novel, many plays are staged year after year and films are made. One of the most entertaining characters in the work is Nastasya Filippovna.
Nastasya Filippovna is a young woman who contains two characters: a proud, selfish and cruel nature and a once-offended, unhappy girl. To readers, she appears to be a dissolute, immoral girl, with an amazing beauty of face and body. She drives many men crazy by taking advantage of their feelings. The girl has a very capricious character, and many are even afraid to see Nastasya Filippovna in anger.
The heroine blames the landowner Totsky for the way her fate turned out. The girl was raised by a rich libertine from an early age after the loss of her parents. And he, instead of parental love, felt lust for Nastasya, stealing her innocence. Since then, she has been burning with revenge and anger, all her actions are caused by negative feelings and thoughts. She is filled with hatred from head to toe.
Everyone around Nastasya Filippovna sees her as an evil, cruel, depraved girl, but with dazzling beauty. Many men treat her as a commodity, offering different prices for her choice in favor of one lover or another. And only one Prince Myshkin was able to discern in the heroine a deeply unhappy, suffering girl.
Along with feelings of love, Myshkin feels pity for the beauty. He asks her to marry him. Nastasya, who herself is not breathing evenly in the direction of the prince, rushes from a positive decision to a negative one, not knowing what to do. Deep in her soul, she hates herself, believes that she does not deserve the status of a princess, that she belongs where she is. Nastasya Filippovna is worried about Myshkin’s fate, not wanting a dissolute girl as his wife who will poison his life and honor.
The heroine knows how fallen she is. Her mental strength and energy would be enough to change her life in a new way, but she does not do this. Unwillingly, the girl chose her fate. Her fate is very tragic. The heroine dies. Love, which could save the life of the unfortunate beauty, on the contrary, drives her into the grave. Of course, Myshkin understands that he is also the cause of her death. Until the end of his days, the prince experiences deep compassion and pity for the unfortunate Nastasya Filippovna.
Apollinaria Suslova
That was the name of the woman whom Dostoevsky loved for many years. Apollinaria was born into the family of a wealthy merchant and received a good education. Her older sister, Nadezhda, became the first Russian female doctor. And this suggests that Suslov’s daughters were brought up in a fairly favorable environment.
Apollinaria was 20 years younger than Dostoevsky. An affair began between them. Polina (that’s what her friends and relatives called her) demanded that the writer divorce his wife. In addition, she wrote novels and short stories that had no literary value and required assistance in publication. One of her works once appeared on the pages of Dostoevsky’s magazine. After the death of his wife, the writer proposed to Polina. However, the girl refused him. Their relationship has always been painful, nervous, unclear.
Many literary scholars who study the life and creative path of Fyodor Dostoevsky believe that Apollinaria Suslova is the prototype of Nastasya Filippovna.
Introduction to the events of the novel
Dostoevsky's work "The Idiot" is a classic of literature. The main characters are still interesting. Main characters:
- Prince Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin;
- Nastasya Filippovna Barashkova;
- Parfen Semyonovich Rogozhin;
- Afanasy Ivanovich Totsky.
Prince Myshkin is the main character around whom all events take place. This is a kind and merciful man, with his own view of the world, which is not accepted by many, as a result of which he is considered insane. He spent a long time in Switzerland for treatment and after a while returned to his homeland in Russia. He was left without a fortune, and completely poor in the carriage he met Parfen Rogozhin.
The second one has a rather harsh fate. He achieved success in life: from a small merchant to a millionaire. Despite this, he was not successful in relationships and suffered from unrequited and mocking love for Barashkova, who had the reputation of a fallen woman. He tells his neighbor about her.
Myshkin arrives in St. Petersburg, and soon meets Nastasya Filippovna, who was a kept woman with money. She was a beautiful woman , but with a tragic fate, which was destroyed by her guardian . As a result, she became insecure, despised herself and treated the men around her the same way.
Rogozhin invites her to marry, offering her funds, while Myshkin sincerely wants to marry her and clear her name. She begins to develop feelings for the prince, but knows that she is not suitable for him. Rogozhin and Nastasya Filippovna decide to get married. But Parfen, in spite of everything, was very jealous of his beloved Myshkin, and even tried to get rid of him, but could not do this with the prince, but killed Barashkova on the wedding day.
Lev Nikolayevich was not accepted by society, Nastasya died, and he is finally losing his mind. He has to return to Switzerland once and for all.
Actresses who played the famous heroine
Dostoevsky's novel has been filmed many times. In 1910, a film by Pyotr Chardynin was released. Nastasya Filippovna was played by Lyubov Varyagina. In 1958, Ivan Pyryev made a film that is recognized as one of the best adaptations of Dostoevsky’s novel. The main female role was played by Yulia Borisova. In 2003, a television serial film by Vladimir Bortko was released. This time Nastasya Filippovna was played by Lydia Velezheva.
At different times, such actresses as Asta Nielsen, Edwige Feuer, Lyudmila Maksakova, and Jeanne Balibar appeared on the screen in the image of the famous heroine. True, more than once foreign filmmakers gave the famous character a different name.
