Love in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment
The validity of love in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment and Anton Chekhov’s The Three Sisters
Emotions that are described by fictional characters as love in a wide variety of literary works range from being defined as a form of loose tolerance and acceptance in Anton Chekhov’s play The Three Sisters to a mingling of souls destined to be together between Rodia and Sonya in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment. The question however is raised as to whether emotions expressed by characters truly parallel love, or instead simply imitate it to create a desired appearance.
Most experience one form of love or another on a daily basis – that from our relatives, significant others, or friends, if not two or more of these, among other sources. Our society has shaped us into individuals for whom it is necessary to experience the conflicting emotions of both giving and receiving love. This exchange between others and ourselves seems to be necessary for what we have been taught to accept as a healthy social life, and we have grown so dependent on such positive social interaction that it has become almost as vital to our sane life as food, water, and shelter. Only with all four does mankind seem to attain happiness. Without one, such as love, man is restless and continues to seek a better life. Likewise, some fictional characters generally thought to be content with themselves as the result of their high socio-economic status are quite unhappy when they are unable to attain the love of one to whom they may be married to, or for whom they have desires for.
In Anton Chekhov’s play titled The Three Sisters, there are a high number of destroyed or malfunctioning marriages. The love that the characters do show for each other appears to be quite minimal. One of the three snobbish Prozorov sisters – Masha – says in Act II to Vershinin – a man in whom she is intimately interested in that ”[she] doesn’t speak of her husband, [she’s] grown used to him”[i] and generally finds the company of her husband and his colleagues agonizing. Vershinin in turn, also a married individual - on his second wife, and with two daughters - shortly replies with “I love you, love you, love you… I love your eyes, your movements, I dream of them… Splendid, wonderful woman!”[ii] But both of these characters are still...