Women, conformity, society, and power in Dostoevsky's 'The Idiot' and Flaubert's 'Madame Bovary'

The dissertation discusses the construction of women characters in Fedor Dostoevsky's (1821-1881) novel I (1869), a work that has remained a conundrum for critics. Due to the dismissive comments of previous commentators who have largely overlooked the significance of women characters in Dostoevsky's work, the influence of the French literary tradition on Dostoevsky's characterization has been virtually ignored. Dostoevsky's women, it turns out, owe much to their French sisters. This investigation into the Russian author's characterization of women reveals his understanding of the female psyche and the meaningful role he envisioned for women in Russia's "fatal moment."; Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary (1857) became a focal point for Dostoevsky as he wrote The Idiot. In his novel he polemicizes with the French writer about the roles and options of women in mid-nineteenth-century European and Russian society. Dostoevsky takes up four significant themes from Madame Bovary: the corrupting influence of novel reading, using literary paradigms to shape social behavior, the older woman as enforcer of social mores, and the image of the dead bride. In their personal lives and choices, both Nastas'ia Filippovna and Aglaia Epanchina draw from literary texts with strong societal implications to create what Iurii Lotman calls "behavioral texts" through which they communicate with those around them. This imitation creates a situation in which "art imitates life imitating art." When considered within the context of these themes from Flaubert's novel, Nastas'ia Filippovna's and Aglaia's extravagant behaviors begin to make more sense.; Dostoevsky turns Flaubert's original critique of French bourgeois society back on European culture as a whole. In Dostoevsky's view, Emma Bovary represents what is wrong not only with European, bourgeois womanhood, but also with Western European values in general. When he marries these narrow concerns of women's freedom to his perennial questions about changing Russian national identity and the destiny of Russia, Dostoevsky's sincere interest in the Woman Question comes to the fore, and an interesting new perspective on The Idiot emerges.