Poor Folk (1846)

Fascination—the reader’s holy bliss, thus the writer’s holy grail.  Fascination often starts when I find myself wanting something on behalf of a character.  When this character’s desire meets resistance, my urge to see the character fulfilled increases.  This could be part of why the two narrators of Poor Folk can fascinate me simply by speaking.  The words of Devushkin and Varvara have their own drag of resistance even before they collide with external barriers.  Their simplest statements are rife with tension.

When, for example, Varvara calls Devushkin a good man, he replies, “All that is true, little mother, all that is completely true; I really am as you say, I know it myself.”  The way he repeats himself betrays a strain in his voice.  We get the impression that a part of Devushkin does not believe himself a good man, and his repetition is an effort to talk down that part.  This impression deepens as he continues: “When a man reads the kind of thing you write, his heart is moved, and then various painful thoughts come into his mind.”  These unspoken painful thoughts must be Devushkin’s inner objections to Varvara’s compliment.

Vavara’s speech is full of similar fractures.  When Devushkin invites her to the theatre, she responds, “Won’t that be very expensive?” and then she worries about the money he spends and laments that he spends it on her.  She closes the letter, and then tacks on a post script: “You know, if we go to the theatre I shall wear my new hat and my black mantilla.”  This betrays the excitement that her letter was laboring to suppress.  

Devushkin and Varvara are stuck in a similar dilemma—they both have a desperate need for money but fatally coupled with a deeper need, which thwarts their ability to receive money.  When Varvara comes upon some rubles, she sends them to Devushkin, but he uses the money to go on a drunken binge.  He describes his spree starting this way: 

You would soon be going hungry yourself, yet you told me to buy tobacco. Well, what was I to do in such a position?  Was I, like some bandit, to start plundering you, a little orphan?  It was at that point that my spirits sank, little mother; that’s to say, at first, being overwhelmed by the feeling that I was no good for anything and was little better than the sole of one of my own boots, I thought it improper for me to believe myself of any consequence, and started to view myself as something improper and, to a certain degree, indecent.  Well, once I had lost all respect for myself, once I had abandoned myself to the denial of all my good qualities and of my own sense of self-worth, then I was done for, my downfall was assured!  

Devushkin needs money, but he can’t accept Varvara’s gift because he has a deeper need that thwarts the gift.  This is evident when he relates how, as a younger man, he became obsessed with an actress.  He bankrupted himself “hiring smart cabs and trying to make myself noticed as I drove past her window.”  His deeper need is to be admired by a woman, and to take money from Varvara would spoil his efforts.

When Devushkin comes into some cash, he mails it to Varvara, who immediately returns it even though she is on the verge of dying from the work she is doing to support herself.  She can receive his money no more easily than he can receive hers.  She has a hidden desire that runs deeper than her instinct to save her own life, or even his.  This becomes evident in another one of her fractured speeches.  “Poor and unhappy people ought to steer clear of one another,” she tells him, “I have brought you unhappiness such as you never experienced earlier in the modest and isolated existence you have led.  All this is tormenting me and making me waste away with grief.”  In effect, she says, we’re bad for each other—let’s leave each other alone.  And yet, she immediately follows this with, “Please write me a frank account of what happened to you and how you could have come to behave like that.”  In this sentence, we get a glimpse of the desire that has a deeper grip on her than self-preservation.  She needs to save him.  It isn’t enough that he be saved—she needs to be informed of and controlling the process.  If this is her driving need, it makes perfect sense that she always sends his money back.  She needs to be the one giving in order to fulfill her mission.

The novel’s plot escalates around this contest to out-give each other while neither is capable of receiving.  They push each other into deeper and deeper need.  Scarcity lurks not only in their wallets, but also in their mindsets.  Or, put another way, the effect of poverty on them has not merely been circumstantial, but also psychological.  This adds greater poignance to the title Poor Folk.

That their poverty is not merely circumstantial is key to my fascination as a reader.  Inner conflict is easier to relate to than external conflict.  If the story were merely about characters bumping up against hard times, I could not be as greatly moved because I wouldn’t be able to see myself in those characters unless I had been in similar situations.  But the inner conflict of being unable to receive is near-universal.