Women in The Brothers Karamazov


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		Women in The Brothers Karamazov

			07 December 1998

	The story of The Brothers Karamazov[1] by Fyodor Dostoevsky is one of passion, suspense, hatred, and love. Both sides of every case, be it the existence of God or the identity of the murderer, is presented and debated. But rarely does Dostoevsky paint in black and white. Instead, the reader is invited to analyze and judge even the most important matters, such as the guilt of Dmitry or the saintliness of Elder Zosima.� In this spirit, the personal integrity of both Grushenka and Katerina will be compared and assessed by examining their relationships with the respective men in their lives.

	Far from being socially accepted, Grushenka has a reputation of being the town harlot. Even Alyosha blushingly asks Rakitin if she is a prostitute (97). Yet the people that know her well hold many different opinions of her, and many of these change as the novel progresses. Ivan passes judgement on her fairly quickly, telling Alyosha that the woman coming between Dmitry and his father is a "wild animal" (170). Dmitry admits that she is a "bitch" (129), but never once denies that she is unworthy of his love. Upon one of his first meetings with her, Alyosha declares to Rakitin that "she is our superior in love" (430). Grushenka herself claims that she is wicked and bad to Alyosha (427). Still, all of these assessments are biased and incomplete; a fairer picture of the woman can be drawn by examining her relationships with men.

	Grushenka is presented as a "kept" woman. Katerina actually delivers Grushenka's story: after being seduced and abandoned, a merchant named Samsanov provides Grushenka with means to live. "She would have drowned herself if that old merchant hadn't stopped her then," says Katerina (179). This man is described as one of the few that she ever trusts, although he gives her only small sums on which to live and completely leaves her out of his will. Grushenka becomes quite successful in her own financial dealings, but she does not abandon the man who has helped her so much during her darkest hour. Instead, she helps him with his finances and attends to him in the last two years of his life, despite the social disgrace that accompanies these services.


	The interactions between Grushenka and the man that seduced her also point to many attributes of Grushenka's character. Pan Musijalowicz was an officer in the Polish Army when he disgraced Grushenka and married another woman. Grushenka readily admits that she has sobbed into her pillow for the past five years because of the pain that he had caused her. Yet even as her love is about to return for her, she tells Alyosha that "it's possible that what I love is only the suffering he caused me, and that I really don't care about him at all" (431). Even after she realizes that Musikalowicz came back only because he heard that she was wealthy, she maintains her feelings: "You know, I did love him. I loved him all those five years, all that time....I'm lying to myself when I say that what I loved was just my anger" (529). Although this one man had been the cause of her disgrace and had later tried to take advantage of her wealth, Grushenka has no qualms about giving small amounts of money to him and his friend after finding them living in poverty, even though this makes Dmitry terribly jealous (681).�

	Grushenka's relationship with Fyodor Karamazov is viewed by some as the catalyst for Dmitry's hatred toward his father. They had had several business transactions, including the transfer of a promissory note of Dmitry. Fyodor fell in love with Grushenka and set aside 3000 rubles for her if she chose to be with him. Grushenka admits that she had teased him: "It was just out of sheer viciousness that I drove your old man insane" (530). She later asks Dmitry for forgiveness for making both of them suffer.

	In fact, Grushenka's relationship with Dmitry consists of much more than just a request for forgiveness. She allows him to take her to Mokroye for a weekend, although she consents to nothing more than a kiss on her little toe (135). Even as she is going to see her first lover, Musijalowicz, she does not forget Dmitry. "Tell him...that Grushenka did love him for an hour!" she commands Alyosha (434). Later, she declares that she could not love another man after once loving Dmitry. Even before he is accused of killing his father, Grushenka pledges her support for him, saying that she will go to Siberia if that is what he wants (534). Once Dmitry is accused, she quickly asserts that she is the cause of the murder (552). She reaffirms her feelings for Dmitry after he is taken prisoner, telling him, "I'll be yours forever, wherever they may send you" (614).

	Katerina is viewed by the general populace as the antithesis of Grushenka. She is "a girl of great beauty, a lady, a colonel's daughter," according to Rakitin (94). Alyosha, on the other hand, has a rather negative first impression of the woman. He takes note of her "domineering ways" and calls her "arrogant, haughty, and domineering" (173-4). Dmitry is not kind to his former fianc�e. He calls her a "hard, cruel woman, who knows how to hate" (713) and says "what she loves is not me but her own virtues" (138). But, once again, it is more productive to examine Katerina's actual interactions with the men in her life than to judge her by others' opinions.

	Her relationship with Dmitry does not begin on a happy note. To save her father, Katerina is forced to prostrate herself in front of Dmitry and to ask him for 4500 rubles. After giving her the money and requiring only repayment of the loan, she proposes to him in a letter. When telling Alyosha about her troubled relationship, she says, "My only desire in all this is that he should know who is his true friend and to whom he can turn to for help," (176). In an emotional scene, Katerina declares that she will never abandon Dmitry (226). Katerina generously pays for his legal counsel and for a doctor to examine her former love. She goes so far as to reveal the embarrassing details of their past during the trial in hopes of shedding favorable light on the man. Yet because of a letter that he has sent to her, Katerina is convinced of Dmitry's guilt, despite his pleas to the contrary. After her new love takes the stand and demands that he deserves the guilt of Fyodor Karamazov's death, Katerina renounces Dmitry, turning the damning letter over to the court and calling him a "monster" (830). After Dmitry has been convicted, Katerina goes to visit Dmitry and tells him that she has come "to tell you that you are my god, my joy, to tell you that I love you, love you terribly" (924). She insists that she never believed him to be guilty (925).

	Katerina's relationship with Ivan is almost just as troubled. Although at the end of the novel she maintains that she still loves Dmitry, there are sporadic moments when she says she loves Ivan instead (914). At the trial, she says that he is "a man of deep, deep scruples," and it was for his sake that she gives up the incriminating letter written by Dmitry. Yet Ivan himself says that "she has kept my by her side as an instrument of continuous revenge," (230) and that "she'll ruin that miserable wretch [Dmitry] in court tomorrow just to avenge herself on me" (722) if he should stop seeing her.

	At issue here is the personal integrity of each of the characters discussed. It is important to note that the integrity is that of a personal nature, i.e. not necessarily constricted to society's standards. Because every person's definition of integrity can differ, one must consider not only the morals upheld but also the constancy of those morals over time. When using this definition to assess the relationships presented above, it becomes clear that Grushenka has more personal integrity than Katerina. With Samsonov, Grushenka is thankful for the financial support and loyal throughout his sickness despite the social backlash that this creates. Katerina, though also grateful for Dmitry's financial help, turns her back on the man once her future lover is threatened. Grushenka also says that she has loved Musijalowicz even after she has discovered that he wants her only for her money. Katerina never states that she has loved someone consistently; although she declares her love for Ivan and renounces Dmitry on page 914, she says that Dmitry is her god only ten pages later. While Katerina makes many claims that she will never abandon Dmitry and that she will follow him anywhere, it is only Grushenka that agrees to go to America with him. Katerina stays behind with her beloved Ivan. It appears as though Alyosha was right when he says that Katerina is merely "acting, acting as if you were in a comedy, on the stage" (229). Most of Katerina's seemingly noble decisions and sacrificial actions are only a performance for others; she is capable of completely changing her views if the scene requires it. Even the narrator points out that "the weeping, humiliated, heartbroken girl had suddenly turned into a strong, self-possessed woman" (228) only moments after a tearful outburst. Grushenka, on the other hand, is motivated by her own desires, regardless of what others think. This difference is never more evident than in the interactions between the two.

	The first meeting of the two is indicative of their characters. Katerina has invited Grushenka to her home, thinking that she can win Grushenka over by offering her a cup of chocolate. Grushenka dies mislead Katerina at first, promising her that she will relinquish her hold on Dmitry. Katerina acts like she is in love with Grushenka, even calling her "an angel" (176). But the moment that Grushenka reveals that she will not let Dmitry go, Katerina flares up, calling Grushenka "a filthy slut" and a "whore" (180). Grushenka maintains her calmness, although she does admit that she knows of Katerina's request for money from Dmitry. While Grushenka's feelings of animosity toward Katerina were independent of Katerina's treatment of her, Katerina relied solely on Grushenka's actions to determine how she would treat Grushenka. Later, Grushenka has no regrets about the way she treated Katerina because she had acted according to her feelings (423); Katerina, on the other hand, is sorry that she invited "that creature" to her home and demands that she be flogged (182). The second and last time that the two meet together is in Dmitry's hospital cell. At this point, Katerina asks Grushenka for her forgiveness. Grushenka sees through her contrite fa�ade and answers, "We are too vicious, my good woman, both of us, and we're both past the niceties of forgiveness" (925). Katerina admits to Alyosha later that she had asked for forgiveness not because she was sorry, but because she wanted to punish herself completely (926). Grushenka is the only character of the two that remains true to herself, thus exhibiting more personal integrity than the fickle Katerina.

	Fyodor Dostoevsky makes hardly anything clear-cut in his novel The Brothers Karamazov. Yet a careful examination of the relationships with the men in their lives reveals that Grushenka displays more personal integrity than Katerina. In a world where one "must learn to love for nothing," (427) Grushenka clearly succeeds.�

	[1] Dostoevsky, Fyodor. The Brothers Karamazov. Translated by Andrew R. MacAndrew. New York: Bantam Books, 1981.

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