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Aglaya Ivanovna Epanchin
Nastasya is a young woman with a dark, haunting beauty. Orphaned as a child and sexually abused by her guardian, Totsky, she believes that she is now permanently corrupted and does not deserve lasting happiness or a healthy relationship. This leads her to act in an outlandish, scandalous manner that shocks everyone while successfully asserting her dominance and power. For example, she writes letters which simultaneously profess her love for Aglaya, another woman, and which encourage Myshkin and Aglaya to be together romantically. She creates a spectacle wherever she goes, doing everything from making up stories about being involved in scandals to hitting a police officer who bothers her on the street. It seems that she behaves in this manner simply to rebel against the oppressive societal standards and male oppression that are inflicted upon her. Many men are in love with Nastasya due to her beauty and enticing nature, and want to control her and buy her affection. She appears to want to marry Myshkin, but seems to think that she is not good enough for his staunchly moral, endlessly forgiving nature. She ends up choosing Rogozhin instead, a man who is the exact physical and moral opposite of Myshkin instead, seemingly because she believes that she deserves someone corrupt rather than innocent. After they run away together, Rogozhin stabs her to death. Her murder traumatizes Myshkin, sending him into an incurable bout of epilepsy.
Nastasya Filippovna Barashkov Quotes in The Idiot
The The Idiot quotes below are all either spoken by Nastasya Filippovna Barashkov or refer to Nastasya Filippovna Barashkov. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Part One, Chapter Four
Quotes
But another rumor he involuntarily believed and feared to the point of nightmare: he had heard for certain that Nastasya Filippovna was supposedly aware in the highest degree that Ganya was marrying only for money, that Ganya’s soul was dark, greedy, impatient, envious, and boundlessly vain, out of all proportion to anything; that, although Ganya had indeed tried passionately to win Nastasya Filippovna over before, now that the two friends had decided to exploit that passion, which had begun to be mutual, for their own advantage, and to buy Ganya by selling him Nastasya Filippovna as a lawful wife, he had begun to hate her like his own nightmare. It was as if passion and hatred strangely came together in his soul, and though, after painful hesitations, he finally consented to marry “the nasty woman,” in his soul he swore to take bitter revenge on her for it and to “give it to her” later, as he supposedly put it.
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Part Three, Chapter Ten
Quotes
How did she dare write to her, he asked, wandering alone in the evening (sometimes not even remembering himself where he was walking). How could she write about that, and how could such an insane dream have been born in her head?
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“You are innocent, and all your perfection is in your innocence. Oh, remember only that! What do you care about my passion for you? You are mine now, I shall be near you all my life . . . I shall die soon.”
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Nastasya Filippovna Barashkov Quotes in The Idiot
The The Idiot quotes below are all either spoken by Nastasya Filippovna Barashkov or refer to Nastasya Filippovna Barashkov. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Part One, Chapter Four
Quotes
But another rumor he involuntarily believed and feared to the point of nightmare: he had heard for certain that Nastasya Filippovna was supposedly aware in the highest degree that Ganya was marrying only for money, that Ganya’s soul was dark, greedy, impatient, envious, and boundlessly vain, out of all proportion to anything; that, although Ganya had indeed tried passionately to win Nastasya Filippovna over before, now that the two friends had decided to exploit that passion, which had begun to be mutual, for their own advantage, and to buy Ganya by selling him Nastasya Filippovna as a lawful wife, he had begun to hate her like his own nightmare. It was as if passion and hatred strangely came together in his soul, and though, after painful hesitations, he finally consented to marry “the nasty woman,” in his soul he swore to take bitter revenge on her for it and to “give it to her” later, as he supposedly put it.
Related Characters:
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Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Part Three, Chapter Ten
Quotes
How did she dare write to her, he asked, wandering alone in the evening (sometimes not even remembering himself where he was walking). How could she write about that, and how could such an insane dream have been born in her head?
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
“You are innocent, and all your perfection is in your innocence. Oh, remember only that! What do you care about my passion for you? You are mine now, I shall be near you all my life . . . I shall die soon.”
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
