The Dead Wives in the Dead House

Narrative Inconsistency and Genre Confusion in Dostoevskii's Autobiographical Prison Novel

Bibliographic Data

ID4861094
AuthorsKarla Oeler (corresponding author)
Year2002
Volume61
Issue3
Pages519-534
Publication date2002-01-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSlavic Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0037-6779 • E-ISSN: 2325-7784
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/3090300
OpenAlexW2315086992
LanguageEN
References cited10

InNotes from the Dead House, fictional narrator Aleksandr Petrovich Gorianchikov appears as wife murderer in the preface and as a political prisoner in the memoirs. In the preface, Gorianchikov experiences moral anguish over his crime. But the memoirs actively employ social analysis to shift the burden of guilt from convicts onto the social structure. This authoritarian structure, which divides society into an underclass of ignorant "children" ruled by violent "fathers," notably excludes women. The murder of a second wife in an inset tale brutally enacts this exclusion: while Gorianchikov's social analysis helps him understand many of the prisoners, it cannot account for the convict Shishkin's murder of his wife Akulka. Gorianchikov's personal guilt for murdering his wife constitutes a response to-and a repetition of-the moral bewilderment that emerges out of Akulka's death. Seen in this light, the formal tensions between preface, memoir, and inset tale are motivated by and demonstrate a conflict between social analysis and individual responsibility

Art · Convict · Criminology · Literature · Memoir · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Prison · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Theology · Wife · History · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Russian Literature and Bakhtin Studies · Sociopolitical Dynamics in Russia

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub