The prostitute is a curious fixture of Victorian era literature. In the works of William Thackeray and Samuel Richardson it was almost cliché for the heroine to end up in a house of prostitution and then to transcend that situation in a show of proper Victorian morals. Having seen many young women forced by extreme poverty to take up the trade of a loose woman, Fyodor Dostoevsky, a petit-bourgeois fallen on hard times himself, took a rather different approach to the whole issue; he recognized that these women were not utterly without merit as so many people of the time thought. Georg Brandes spoke accurately when he said, "Dostoevsky preaches the morality of the pariah, the morality of the slave." Dostoevsky explored these themes through prostitute characters in many of his works. The most famous of these characters are found in Crime and Punishment, Notes from Underground, and "The Meek One." Each of these presents a unique approach to the condition of prostitutes and the problem of their redemption.

In Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky uses the character of Sonia Marmeladov, whose first name means wisdom, not solely to illustrate God's mercy toward a fallen woman but to have her redeem both herself and Raskolnikov through God's mercy. As in the parable given by Father Zosima on his death bed in The Brothers Karamazov, Raskolnikov's initial connection to Sonia in Book I functions as his "stalk of grain" which keeps him from being completely severed from God's grace. Just as the old woman in the parable was without merit except for the fact she gave the beggar a stalk of grain, Raskolnikov lacks merit after his murderous deed except for the fact he had charity toward the Marmeladov family. He was utterly cut off from society but for his charity toward that family in their need. Yet this connection would be for naught if not for the virtue of Sonia. When he confesses his heinous crime to her, she weeps in sorrow for him and begs him to save himself by confessing. Dostoevsky's point here is that by setting himself anathema from society and God, Raskolnikov is destroying his own spirit. He is not allowing himself to function as he was made to function, and a house divided against itself cannot stand. Just so, Raskolnikov cannot survive as a man in a world turned about and disrupted beyond recognition by his act of violence and societal dissent. Providence is strikingly illustrated here: Raskolnikov cannot survive without Sonia's aid, but neither could Sonia have been redeemed if Raskolnikov had not come along in need of redemption himself; she would have continued on the road to perdition from which her charitable impulses tore her.

What is Dostoevsky illustrating here? He is showing us the cruelty of inner struggle and the fact that this struggle can only be won through the power of grace and redemption. Sonia struggles with the fact that she is indeed a house divided. On one hand she is the epitome of wisdom and holiness, and on the other she is the base tool of men's lust. This flagrant contradiction cannot stand; Sonia must choose one path or the other. Raskolnikov also demonstrates this inherent contradiction: he is both pure good and pure evil. This mélange of sin and sadism, of purity and hope cannot survive, cannot stand as a coherent whole. Madness awaits those who would attempt to be neither one thing nor the other. The bedlam of Raskolnikov's emotions and guilt drives him to confess with the aid of Sonia, and with his aid Sonia flees her depraved life and seeks a higher level of existence in aesthetic Siberia. The ultimately fallen man can only be understood by the ultimately fallen woman. The theme of mutual redemption is best seen through the eyes of an Eve and an Adam, and Dostoevsky uses that idea to great effect. Henry Miller exposes the pith by remarking, "Dostoevsky is chaos and fecundity. Humanity, with him, is but a vortex in the bubbling maelstrom."

In Notes From Underground, Dostoevsky reveals a view of prostitution and redemption that is much more reminiscent of Milton's "Paradise Lost" than Dante's "Paradiso." These notes are Dostoevsky's musings on the darker aspects of his years wandering the streets of St. Petersburg, and they evoke the hopelessness of a man so mired in his own mental filth and self-hatred that he rejoices in his illness, seeks humiliation, and is the most perverse creature imaginable. After attempting to have dinner with old schoolboy friends but simply embarrassing himself and hurting everyone around him, the Underground Man encounters a whore upon whom to inflict his vitriolic lack of self-esteem. He meets Liza, a employee in a bordello. Following the purchased connubial activity the Underground Man, seized by some strange impulse, begins to tell Liza the inevitable fate of all prostitutes: to be used, used again and abandoned. He offers to continue talking to her and to be her friend, and she tentatively accepts. This is the opening of grace for them both: a chance for both to open themselves and revive what is human in them. However, the Underground Man is too used to his life in muck and mental drudgery and perversion; when Liza comes, he rejects her friendship violently. Two souls completely estranged from humanity remain so forever because they did not cooperate with each other and grace. This scenario takes the problem confronted by Raskolnikov and Sonia and asks us to consider an alternate ending: an ending in which the existentialist Underground Man "wins" the battle over his humanity and Liza is allowed to drift back into penury and prostitution. The tragic endings of this story considered in light of the epilogue of Crime and Punishment shows us just how lucky both Sonia and Raskolnikov were and how being open to grace and being honest with one's own state of being is often enough for God to help one through crises of conscience.

For a more refulgent understanding of "The Meek One" let us first consider another character in Crime and Punishment, Dounia, who spends most of the novel on the brink prostitution of another stripe: spiritual prostitution. She is being asked to marry Luzhin, a man who wishes to control the thoughts, minds, and hearts of all around him. He is an all around bore of the worst kind. Dounia has fled a position under the cruel Svidrigailov to avoid actual prostitution, but now for love of her mother and brother she is compelled into selling her spirit as well as her body. Dounia is such a strong character that we see that if she is forced into this engagement, by either her own sense of obligation or other urgings, she will go insane and kill herself. This is a terrible fate which her family luckily finds a way to avert. However, the heroine of "The Meek One" is not nearly so lucky. This young girl is in the same situation as Dounia, only she does marry her Luzhin and kills herself. This is the third possibility for a woman who has sold herself: the existentialist "victory" of self-destruction and escape from hopelessness. Like Ophelia she chooses this way out of life's difficulties and gives up suffering for suffering, madness for more piercing madness, and falls into the abyss of either existential nothingness or Christian retribution.

Dostoevsky illustrates a few important ideas when he examines the prostitute in the works we have discussed. He shows us that even the lowliest of the lowly lost are loved by the Father, and by their sufferings gain merit. Secondarily, he shows us the fact that they too can be redeemed and can function as instruments of grace. But most importantly, he tells us that without our own attempt to transcend our sinful nature we will fail like the Underground Man or leap to our spiritual and physical doom as the heroine of "The Meek One" did. We are all Raskolnikov, we are all Sonia. The key is to strive, strive harder and strive forever to reach the unreachable perfection lost to us and unreachable without God.

Works Cited and Consulted