Nastasya Filipovna

Nastasya Filipovna Barashkova (Russian: Наста́сья Фили́пповна Бара́шкова) is the principal heroine of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novel The Idiot.

Though of aristocratic origin, beautiful and intelligent, Nastassya Filippovna is regarded by society as a 'fallen' woman, owing to her having spent four years as the concubine of the aristocrat Totsky, a position into which she was forced at the age of sixteen. Much of the drama of Nastassya Filippovna's character comes from the contradiction between her essential innocence, which is clearly recognized by the novel's central character Prince Myshkin, and the attitude of society that implies an irredeemable moral corruption, a view that she herself has inwardly embraced.

Nastasya Filippovna occupies a vital position in two overlapping dramas in the novel, both of which could be described as love triangles. The first involves the characters of Prince Myshkin, Nastassya Filippovna and Parfyon Rogozhin, and the second involves Myshkin, Nastassya Filippovna and Aglaya Epanchin.

In the first triangle, the two male protagonists represent an appeal to one or other of the contradictory voices in the inner dialogue of Nastassya Filippovna's soul. According to Mikhail Bakhtin, "Nastassya Filippovna's voice is divided between the voice that pronounces her a guilty 'fallen woman' and the voice that vindicates and accepts her." Myshkin, himself a pure-hearted man, represents for her this second voice, and he unreservedly affirms her innocence even when she is fully immersed in her destructive role as the corrupted and condemned woman. She herself recognizes Myshkin as the possible realization of her innocence, but convinced also of her own corruption, she is equally driven by self-destructive and vengeful urges, and she refuses to cast herself in the role of a corrupter of children like Totsky. Thus she chooses to give herself to Rogozhin, for whom she can wholly become the 'fallen' woman. This is not because Rogozhin himself in any way morally condemns her, but because his mad and violent obsession with her resonates with her self-destructive urge, or the voice that identifies her as guilty.

All the essentials of this drama are established in Part 1 of the novel, particularly in two crucial scenes. The first is at the Ivolgins' apartment, where Nastasya Filippovna is visiting the household of her potential fiancé, Ganya. Here she meets Myshkin, who is renting a room from the Ivolgins, for the first time. Totsky has offered a large sum of money for the arranged marriage, but Nastasya Filippovna distrusts Ganya's motives and is aware that his family disapproves of her. She deliberately increases the tension in the room by mocking them and behaving insultingly, and when Rogozhin suddenly arrives with a retinue of drunken rogues, she laughingly encourages his inebriated attempts to buy her away from Ganya. When the scene reaches a climax, with Ganya on the point of striking his own sister for spitting in his face, Myshkin defuses the situation by diverting Ganya's violence toward himself. In the stunned aftermath, Nastasya Filippovna maintains, somewhat less assuredly, her sarcastic tone, and Myshkin reproaches her with feeling: "Aren't you ashamed? Surely you are not what you are pretending to be now? It isn't possible!" (p 108). This produces a change, and as Nastasya Filippovna leaves she kisses the hand of Ganya's mother and whispers to her that Myshkin is right. Rogozhin does not notice the gesture, and goes off with his retinue to raise the 100,000 rubles he has offered.

...
Wikipedia