Dostoevsky A Cattle Creature Analysis

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“A Gentle Creature” In this work of Dostoevsky, a young girl is transformed in her marriage to a middle-aged pawnbroker as he intentionally seeks to discourage any emotional relationship between them and instead forces her to conform to his expectations of wifely behavior. Even in the narrative of his confession, she remains unnamed and exists only in relation to him, thus being further denied her individuality outside the content of the narrative itself. Similarly, his behavior towards the girl revolves around demanding her submission to his own internal desires while neglecting her personality and spirit, thus creating an unequal relationship in a situation in which she is already financially and socially dependent on him. The pawnbroker …show more content…

Initially, the pawnbroker is pleased to discover that the girl is proud because “proud women are particularly good when - well, when you’re no longer in doubt about your power over them” (680), which leads him to pursue her as an object and a challenge rather than as a human being. As she adjusts to his controlling nature, she begins to engage in an unexpected power struggle through which her idealism clashes with his materialism. Exercising her autonomy through audacious behavior, the young girl stamps her feet and leaves the apartment unescorted, astonishing the pawnbroker, but not to the degree that he drops his facade of nonchalance and changes the relationship between them. Instead, he continues to underestimate the lengths that his young wife will go to defy his will, which results in her meetings with Yefimovich and her homicidal episode in which she holds a revolver to his head. Because she does not follow though, the pawnbroker believes that “[he] had conquered and she was conquered forever” (695), falsely interpreting her mercy to mean that she has finally accepted her subservient position in their

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