Katerina Ivanovna Insane

Katerina Ivanovna and the Simultaneous Development of Mental and Physical Illness
Is there a connection between physical ailment and mental instability? In Crime and Punishment, Dostoyevsky argues that there is. Katerina Ivanovna is the dismal wife of a dishonorable man and her story reads as tragic. She is plagued both with the vague, wasting disease of “consumption” and an unidentified mental affliction. As her mind deteriorates, the pity felt for this sick and dying woman is increased - her mental illness is written as more of a side effect than a defect. Written as a foil to Raskolnikov, Katerina was always meant to perish at the hand of her own mind in order to show what Raskolnikov could have become if he had not made the connection between

Insanity is too violent a term, associated with institutions and fear. As her mental state rapidly deteriorates, Raskolnikov notes that Katerina, “could not be said to be insane, but for a year past she had been so harassed that her mind might well be overstrained. The later stages of consumption are apt, doctors tell us, to affect the intellect” (Dostoyevsky 374). Her mental and physical well-being are interdependent; more than that, her consumption is blamed for her “overstrained” mind: “affect the intellect” is directly linking one to the other. If Katerina were truly insane, there would not be any underlying physical effects - it would simply be an illness of the mind. By illustrating her consumption and her mental state simultaneously, Dostoyevsky forces an indisputable connection between the two. Doctors and medicine are vaguely referenced to give legitimacy to what is more aptly described as an excuse for Katerina’s mental decline. This connection causes witnesses to falsely attribute it to her consumption, drawing them, and in effect Katerina herself, away from understanding the extent of her