The Seven Seas Book

Just after she finishes praying she jumps out of her window

A Gentle Creature - by Dostoyevsky written in 1876

"A Gentle Creature" by Dostoyevsky chronicles the relationship between a pawnbroker and a girl that frequents his shop. It is about cruelty, desperation, manipulation, freedom and suicide, not from the perspective of the girl taking her life, but as inner monologue of her later husband in retrospective. Standing over her dead body, somewhere between victim and initiator, he passes revue on his enjoyment of his superiority and her suppression and incapacity. Looking for obediense and ideolization he punishes with silence and she revealed herself as being more worldly than he imagined. We are introduced to societal structures that force a girl into a life that suffocates her spirit and from which she can only escape from with death.

The Gentle Spirit

An abusive marriage between a 41-year old man and a 16-year old orphan girl

The narrator of the story is a 41-year-old narcissistic pawnbroker who uses a sixteen year old orphan girl with a gentle spirit as opportunity to outlive his dreams of control and authority. His narration is brittle in emotion and with a creeping paranoia teetering on the edge of a kind of madness. He took advantage and joy out of being chosen as husband, without it actually being her choice but desperation. Expecting admiration, gratitude and obedience, their relationship turns silent. He enjoys to be in a position of dominance and power, while she struggles to retain her pride. After marriage, her gentle disposition gradually begins to give way to a tougher exterior which leads to quarrels and sneaky behavior. But when she holds a gun to his head in his sleep, she doesn't pull the trigger, but finds liberation in her own death instead. He did not end her physical, but her spiritual life. He recognizes his guilt and tries to find absolution in reasoning with himself, but fails to recognize the cause of her actions and that believing in spiritual immortality was not enough to save her.

Faith and Suicide

A meek suicide that keeps haunting you for a long time

The theme of suicide is the main theme of the story and every line is penetrated with the feelings of fatal finish. The two first meet, when the girl wants to pawn a biblical icon in his shop and later she jumps from the window with this icon in her hands. This detail is important as it shows her faith but also that she is aware of herself as a sinner and that her desire not to live was stronger. She tried to betray him, tried to kill him and killed herself, thereby acting against her faith. It is characteristic that these are crimes in a purely religious sense, since sin can be committed "by thought, by word, by deed and by default of duty". Twenty-two suicides occur throughout Dostoevskys works, who wasn't only obsessed with the question of faith but also with suicide. The story was inspired by a news report that Dostoyevsky read in 1876 about the suicide of a seamstress. Dostoyevsky referred to it as a "meek suicide" that "keeps haunting you for a long time."

„I could see that she was still terribly afraid, but I didn't soften anything; instead, seeing that she was afraid I deliberately intensified it."

What I liked most about the story is the emotional depth and authentcity of the narrator, as well as the unusual perspective. Writing the story from his subjective, dominant and ignorant side, showed the social standing and inequality of the girl perfectly. I love that he remains puzzled about what caused her to commit suicide, because it pronounces his ignorance and inability to realize the consequences of his actions. He feels so rightful in his thoughts, that it becomes a societal institution to him.