Femininity and Masculinity of Fyodor Dostoevsky's The idiot
Chapter One ; An Introduction to Dostoevsky's The Idiot
Historical overview 1.1
Russian writing is condensed, extremely self-reflexive, and constantly on the
verge of forgetting that it is just words. Real-life writers are brought up on the legend,
while fictional figures cross over into reality (Emerson 1). Russia only entered the
world's and her own literary consciousness 200 years ago. The increase was
unprecedentedly rapid after that. Two paradigm-shifting events that occurred between
1815 and the end of the 1820s within a two-decade period—most Russia's perfect
military success (the expulsion of Napoleon from 1812–15) and the maturation of her
most ideal poet, Alexander Pushkin—provided good fodder for the national myth
(1799–1837) (ibid).
Numerous debates have been sparked by the peculiar structure of Russian
literature. Russia's literary history can be divided into four distinct periods: Old
Russian, Imperial, Post-Revolutionary, and Post-Soviet. It was prevalent belief in the
19th century that Russian literature had only been formed a century earlier because
Peter I (the Great; ruled 1682–1725)'s reforms drastically Westernized the nation
(Moser 12). The "Golden Era" of Russian literature is frequently referred to as the
19th century. Notably, the phrase "Golden Age of Russian Literature" is not
frequently used in literary criticism. It covers several of them rather than being
specific to any one school or movement (such as Classicism, Romanticism, or
Realism). As a result, it is instantly subject to all of these literary classifications'
flaws, not the least of which is imprecision. Additionally, the phrase necessitates, eo
ipso, a pair of unguided ages at each end and may cause one to quickly and
uncritically reject works that fall outside of its purview. Last but not least, those who
wrote during that time were not particularly aware that they were living in an aureate
age, and they most certainly never consciously identified themselves as being a part of
a unified or coherent faction—any similarity is adduced from the outside and
jeopardizes the particular geniuses of the authors. That said, the term "golden age of
Russian literature" has become popular and deserves to be defined as carefully and
wisely as possible, if for no other reason (Kurbanova 15).
The so-called "Golden Age" of Russian literature, which is associated with
Pushkin and his contemporaries, began with poetry's dominance and unprecedented
flourishing in the country's nineteenth century. Prose then gradually began to appear,
first in the form of mass entertainment literature and eventually in the form of what is
now known as the Great Russian Novel. The novel started to firmly establish itself in
Russia in the 1850s, with works characterized by cohesive plot development and
three-dimensional characters who were studied against a larger social and political
backdrop of individual, family, and group psychology. The most notable works before
1850 could be categorized as proto-novelistic cycles, such as Mikhail Lermontov's
Hero of Our Time (G) or Ivan Turgenev's Notes of a Hunter, which was written
between 1847 and 1851 and collected in a single volume in 1852; Turgenev continued
to add the occasional story here and there. The novel, in its mature form during the
time of the Great Reforms, adopted a mimetic-realist perspective to the historical
context of linear plots experienced causally by characters who make decisions and
respond to their surroundings or their own inner worlds in order to capture the chaos
of Russia's social and agrarian revolution and the turmoil of its political economy.
The political fault lines and social structures of Russian society gradually became
central themes in fiction. Ultimately, poetry experienced a widespread rebirth at the
end of the century that peaked during the period known as the Silver Age (Kahn and
Lipoveckij 346).
There were many great writers in the nineteenth century to whom they gave
credit for enriching Russian literature.. The first significant political writer in Russian
literature throughout the nineteenth century was Turgenev. No other novelist of the
time was able to combine aesthetic excellence and insight into current political trends
to the same degree (Andrew, Russian Writers 1 ). Turgenev's background is typical of
most Russian writers and intellectuals in the nineteenth century; it was rich and
aristocratic with private tutors, expensive education and high personal income in later
life . His most important works are Father and Sons, Torrents of Spring ,King Lear of
the Steppes, and First Love (Ibid). Another outstanding author of Russian literature is
Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky. His psychological insight into the darkest corners
of the human heart and his unparalleled enlightenment had a significant impact on
fiction in the 19th and 20th centuries. Dostoyevsky is frequently recognized as one of
the greatest authors to have ever lived. His theories had a significant impact on
literary modernism, existentialism, and many schools of psychology, theology, and
literary criticism. Because of how precisely he foresaw how Russia's revolutionaries
would act if they gained power, his works are frequently referred to as prophetic
( Ivanits 8). Russian literature frequently considers Pushkin as its beginning point. He
is the first national writer, the founder of modern literary Russian, and the father of
Russian literature; as a result, understanding nineteenth-century Russian literature and
culture requires a full understanding of his works (Andrew Writers and Society 1).
The best writers in history came from Russia throughout the 19th century, and
they all used themes of deceit, hope, and severe social criticism in their writing. The
issue of love in addiction, along with the relationship of a woman with society, has
always been complex, touching on the social, philosophical, historical, and cultural
worlds of science, society, and life. Duality eventually emerged as Imperial Russian's
guiding principle. Russia in the 19th century was an agrarian empire populated by
peasants that hurried through the awkward adolescence of industrialization .Only in
1861 were the serfs released, and by 1900, about 2.3 million Russians were employed
in factories. In less than a century, Russia had advanced from a feudal society based
on serfdom to the frontiers of modernity. The idea of deceit permeated the entire
text( Kalashinkov et al. 141).
