The Landlady (1847)

One of the most difficult decisions one makes when composing fiction is how to frame the point of view.  In The Landlady, Dostoevsky tackles this issue in interesting ways.  He largely relies on the perspective of his protagonist, Ordynov.  In the early pages, the narrator describes Ordynov’s childhood:

“Every one was always somewhat ill at ease in his presence, that even in his childhood every one had avoided him . . . he was utterly unlike other children of his own age.  Now he remembered and reflected that always, at all times, he had been left out and passed over by every one.” 

This statement feels subjective—it depicts Ordynov’s emotional experience, not objective reality.  While Ordynov may have been a social misfit, that his otherness would be so universal smacks of morbid self-centeredness—reality doesn’t single people out with such Truman Show exactness.  So at this point, the story is submerged in Ordynov’s perspective—I don’t yet see how Dostoevsky is going to reveal to me a more reliable sense of reality.

For a few pages, I worry that he won’t.  The narrator starts indulging in overblown depictions of emotion.  From the inside, emotions can feel omnipotent and eternal, and phrases like “a rush of infinite passion” or “life lost its color forever” may indeed capture what Ordynov is feeling, but these phrases lack wider perspective.  Their subjectivity is too airtight.  They are akin to demanding that all birds be shot because once one made droppings on my head.

Yet capturing subjective experience is crucial for the reader to get emotionally involved with the character.  As a reader, I don’t want to just clinically observe a case study; I want to empathize with a personal experience.  But as we’ve seen, subjectivity taken too far leads to dishonesty. I crave a tension between consciousness and reality.

By the end, The Landlady creates just such a tension.  Dostoevsky stuffs me into Ordynov’s head, yet he leaves me clues to show me where Ordynov’s perspective is at odds with reality.  This is the sort of fiction I like most.  A sense of truth gathers between Dostoevsky and me through mutually acknowledged gaps in the speech, thought, and actions of Ordynov.  

I get this sense when Ordynov goes for a walk.  After a while, he discovers that he is soaked to the skin and then notices for the first time that it is raining.  I experience this as Ordynov does—I was just as ignorant as he of the rain, yet the evidence of his soaked clothes hints to me the reality beyond Ordynov’s awareness of it.

Dostoevsky slips me these hints by poking holes in Ordynov’s reliability.  Ordynov’s regular delirium helps with this.  When Katerina behaves unexpectedly, Ordynov wonders if he is still dreaming.  This shade of doubt on Ordynov’s perception strengthens the notion that there is a reality beyond his consciousness.  Dostoevsky often doesn’t give data about the world outside Ordynov, but he destabilizes Ordynov’s ego-centric view enough for me to know that world is there.

One of the strongest images of the novella is when Ordynov peeks through a hole to spy on Katerina.  The limitation of the view focuses it—I have both a subjective perspective and an awareness of a hidden beyond.