87TJ123-8-2009 LK VWD0011 Tradition Humanistic 6th Edition W:220mm x H:292mm 175L 115 Stora Enso M/A Magenta (V)Q Into what two categories does
Raskolnikov divide humankind?
Q How does he justify the transgressions
of the “lords of the future”?CHAPTER 30 Industry, Empire, and the Realist Style 8787“Triumph during their lifetime? Oh, yes, some achieve their
ends while they still live, and then.. .”
“They begin to mete out capital punishment themselves?”
“If necessary, and, you know, it is most usually so. Your
observation is very keen-witted.”
“Thank you. But tell me: how do you distinguish these
extraordinary people from the ordinary? Do signs and portents
appear when they are born? I mean to say that we could do 100
with rather greater accuracy here, with, so to speak, rather
more outward signs: please excuse the natural anxiety of a
practical and well-meaning man, but couldn’t there be, for
example, some special clothing, couldn’t they carry some kind
of brand or something?... Because, you will agree, if there
should be some sort of mix-up, and somebody from one
category imagined that he belonged to the other and began ‘to
remove all obstacles,’ as you so happily put it, then really.. .”
“Oh, that very frequently happens! This observation of yours
is even more penetrating than the last.” 110
“Thank you.”
“Not at all. But you must please realize that the mistake is
possible only among the first group, that is, the ‘ordinary’
people (as I have called them, perhaps not altogether happily).
In spite of their inborn inclination to obey, quite a number of
them, by some freak of nature such as is not impossible even
among cows, like to fancy that they are progressives,
‘destroyers,’ and propagators of the ‘new world,’ and all this
quite sincerely. At the same time, they really take no heed of
new people; they even despise them, as reactionary and 120
incapable of elevated thinking. But, in my opinion, they cannot
constitute a real danger, and you really have nothing to worry
about, because they never go far. They might sometimes be
scourged for their zealotry, to remind them of their place; there
is no need even for anyone to carry out the punishment: they
will do it themselves, because they are very well conducted:
some of them do one another this service, and others do it for
themselves with their own hands... And they impose on
themselves various public penances besides—the result is
beautifully edifying, and in short, you have nothing to worry 130
about... This is a law of nature.”
“Well, at least you have allayed my anxieties on that score a
little; but here is another worry: please tell me, are there many
of these people who have the right to destroy others, of these
‘extraordinary’ people? I am, of course, prepared to bow down
before them, but all the same you will agree that it would be
terrible if there were very many of them, eh?”
“Oh, don’t let that trouble you either,” went on Raskolnikov
in the same tone. “Generally speaking, there are extremely few
people, strangely few, born, who have a new idea, or are even 140
capable of saying anything at all new. One thing only is clear,
that the ordering of human births, all these categories and
subdivisions, must be very carefully and exactly regulated by
some law of nature. This law is, of course, unknown at
present, but I believe that it exists, and consequently that it
may be known. The great mass of men, the common stuff of
humanity, exist on the earth only in order that at last, by some
endeavour, some process, that remains as yet mysterious,
some happy conjunction of race and breeding, there should
struggle into life a being, one in a thousand, capable, in 150
however small a degree, of standing on his own feet. Perhaps
one in ten thousand (I am speaking approximately, by way of
illustration) is born with a slightly greater degree of
independence, and one in a hundred thousand with even more.
One genius may emerge among millions, and a really great
genius, perhaps, as the crowning point of many thousands of
millions of men. In short, I have not been able to look into the
retort whence all this proceeds. But a definite law there must
be, and is; it cannot be a matter of chance... .”The Literary Heroines of Flaubert and Chopin
Nineteenth-century novelists shared a special interest
in examining conflicts between social conventions and per-
sonal values, especially as they affected the everyday lives
of women. Gustave Flaubert’sMadame Bovary (1857),
Tolstoy’sAnna Karenina(1877), and Kate Chopin’sThe
Awakening(1899) are representative of the writer’s concern
with the tragic consequences following from the defiance of
established social and moral codes by passionate female fig-
ures. The heroines in these novels do not create the world
in their own image; rather, the world—or more specifically,
the social and economic environment—molds them and
governs their destinies.
Flaubert (1821–1880), whom critics have called “the
inventor of the modern novel,” stripped his novels of senti-
mentality and of all preconceived notions of behavior. He
aimed at a precise description of not only the stuff of the
physical world but also the motivations of his characters. A
meticulous observer, he soughtle mot juste(“the exact
word”) to describe each concrete object and each psycho-
logical state—a practice that often prevented him from
writing more than one or two pages of prose per week. One
contemporary critic wittily claimed that Flaubert, the son
of a surgeon, wielded his pen like a scalpel.
Flaubert’s landmark novel,Madame Bovary, tells the
story of a middle-class woman who desperately seeks to
escape the boredom of her mundane existence. Educated in
a convent and married to a dull, small-town physician,
Emma Bovary tries to live out the fantasies that fill the
pages of her favorite romance novels, but her efforts to do
so prove disastrous and lead to her ultimate destruction.
With a minimum of interpretation, Flaubert reconstructs
the particulars of Emma’s provincial surroundings and her
bleak marriage. Since the novel achieves its full effect
through the gradual development of plot and character,
no brief excerpt can possibly do it justice. Nevertheless, the
following excerpt, which describes the deterioration of
the adulterous affair between Emma Bovary and the young
clerk Léon, illustrates Flaubert’s ability to characterize
places and persons by means of the fastidious selection and
accumulation of descriptive details.