Crime and Punishment
Space and Place in Crime and Punishment
Petersburg had been the capital of Russia for more than a century and a half when Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote Crime and Punishment. The capital had been established in the early part of the 18th century by Tsar Peter the Great, who, like his descendents (Catherine the Great especially), was influenced by trends in European style and philosophical thought. With the liberation of the serfs in 1861, St. Petersburg went from cultural hub to the type of over-populated city full of all manner and class of people described by Dostoevsky in Crime and Punishment. The influx of people not only reflected the social and moral atmosphere of Russia as a whole, it also reflected the deteriorating condition of the spiritual and psychological state of Dostoevsky's hero/anti-hero Raskolnikov -- a man whose name is literally inspired by the Russian term for "split" or "schismatic." Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov is indeed a man splitting apart at the seams: he is at war within himself spiritually, at war psychologically with the landlord of his cramped and claustrophobic apartment, at war with his stifling surroundings in Petersburg, and at war with the natural and divine law of old world Russia. This paper will examine how Dostoevsky uses ideas of space and place in Crime and Punishment to reflect these various states of conflict.
St. Petersburg sets the tone of the novel with its extremes in terms of weather. At the beginning of the novel, the city is suffering from a terrible heat wave that mirrors the terrible fever rising in Raskolnikov's brain. Raskolnikov tries to beat the heat by getting outdoors, out of the confines of his room, but he encounters such characters within the city that his spiritual and mental condition is aggravated all the more. For example, he meets the predator whom he recognizes as trying to take advantage of an intoxicated young girl. Raskolnikov righteously calls...
At the same time, however, Raskolnikov is plotting the murder of an old woman simply on the grounds that if Napoleon can challenge the whole world, he a student with just as much will to power can certainly challenge a mere pawn broker. It is this thought that connects Raskolnikov with the revolutionary ideals that were sweeping across Europe and becoming popular in Russia by way of Petersburg. It was another great patron of Petersburg, Catherine the Great, after all, who had been a friend in letters to the French writer/philosopher Voltaire. Other French thinkers of the Enlightenment/Romantic Age, like Rousseau, had had some influence in the cultural growth/deterioration of the Petersburg intellectual climate. Obviously influenced by this current of thought, Raskolnikov is the representation of the conflict between modern ideas and old world religious belief in Petersburg. He is, like the city, literally split between the old and the new.
After his revolutionary and revolting murder, Raskolnikov wanders the city like a dispossessed person. His action has separated him from the moral foundations of youth, just like Petersburg's modernization was separating itself from its past. At one point, he sees a drunk run over in the street by a carriage and in recognition of the grief before him he gives money to the man's family, one of whom (Sonya) has been forced into prostitution. This action connects him to Sonya, who represents the old world Christian belief system, which is in direct contradiction to the modern ethos best represented by Raskolnikov's double, the philanderer Svidrigailov. Unable to attend to these conflicting principles, Raskolnikov is virtually at the mercy of the city, which like Raskolnikov is unable to tend properly to itself and appears to be coming apart at the seams as well. Raskolnikov confines himself even more in terms of space. That is, he locks himself away in his…
