SOURCE: Straus, Nina Pelikan. “Flights from The Idiot's Womanhood.” In Dostoevsky's The Idiot: A Critical Companion, edited by Liza Knapp, pp. 105-27. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1998.

In the following essay, Straus examines Dostoevsky's conception of femininity and feminism by comparing the principal female characters in The Idiot with the female characters in the author's other works.

The Idiot exhibits an experiment in terms of “the feminine” that distinguishes it from Dostoevsky's other novels. In Notes from the Underground, The Gambler, and Crime and Punishment, traces of the turbulent 1860s transform relationships between male characters and female characters who embody “new woman” heroinisms. If Sonya and Dunya do not immediately redeem Raskolnikov, and if Liza cannot entirely change the underground man's dedication to spite, their feminine powers are nevertheless acknowledged. If Polina does not bring Alexei toward love and self-knowledge, she at least exercises the wit to...