Reading the next 5 chapters it is very difficult looking back not to be unduly influenced by the Prince's declaration to Nastasya at the end of chap 15. It really effects the attitude that one has of the book so far. If we didn't believe that he was so innocent and guileless then we might have thought that he had been playing a sophisticated and cynical game to get her for himself.
Shrewd of you. Reading Myshkin, one does prognosticate a personality held in check. You meet him and keep reading wanting to believe in the Prince, yearning to believe that he's the only real human being and that everyone else is rotted by their own fallacious spite. You get the sense that his not 'winning' Nastasya is more of a resistance on his part than on hers...that he *could* win her if he wanted to. He's got a way better sense of people than Rogozhin, General Epanchin, Ferdychenko, or Totsky, as evidenced by his conversation with the Epanchin girls.
Chapter 11 has the strange conversation between himself and Ganya where this reader was almost drawn into believing that Ganya might have genuinely regretted attacking the Prince so publicly. Only Dostoevsky mentioning an unseen sarcastic smile gives lie to this thought.
One particular nasty calculating piece of information comes to light in this section and that is the fact that the General was wishing Ganya to marry Nastasya so that he may be "sold" her. The General is appearing a true villain so far with his business techniques, family manner and general lack of morals.
His and Totskys reminiscences in the parlour game while lacking the obvious and straightforward evil of the theft of 3 roubles and sacking of a maid mentioned previously, point to their calculating ruling class "crimes" that are even more so inexcusable because they appear to be borne of spite.
200 pages into the book and only 1 day in time covered I cannot really envisage the Prince and Nastasya casting aside all of the finance from Totsky marrying and living in simplicity on a surprise legacy.
Dostoevsky's generals are usually comic figures. Epanchin...well, his 'general' situation can be summed up by the word 'whipped' in conjunction with a synonym for a cat. His days of infamy are long behind him. Though he probably does cheat on his wife with hapless women of a lower economic strata frequently and with impunity, chances are that does so with at least some discretion (he's got a good deal more propriety than, say, General Ivolgin, who keeps a poor mistress and...well, is in debt to her and gets beaten by her). Epanchin sees Nastasya as a fun night, nothing more, really. He doesn't seem particularly distraught by her decision to run off with Rogozhin's crew. The general probably means well in a way unique to his own life position; remember the stigma that followed 'kept women' of Nastasya's ilk in 19th century Russia. If Totsky turned her out of doors, then chances are almost nil that she would ever marry respectably. Epanchin probably figured that by 'selling' her to Ganya, he was arranging a fairly stable situation for her...not to mention indebting her to him, which, well, you know.
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