Netochka Nezvanova (novel)

Njetotschka Neswanowa (Russian Неточка Незванова; German editions also under the titles Netotschka Neswanowa, Nettchen Neswanowa, The Strange Love Association) is a feuilleton novel from the early work of Fyodor Dostoevsky, he from 1848 to 1849 wrote in the years and its first chapter in January and February and then published in May 1849, without naming the author in the St. Petersburg journal Patriotic annals. The work remained unfinished because Dostoevsky was arrested in 1849 for involvement in revolutionary activities against the tsar and exiled to Siberia. After his release in Dostoevsky has not dealt with it.

Action

The narrative describes the life Njetotschka Neswanowa years eight to sixteen of the heroine in first person. Her stepfather, Efimov is a trunk addict, poor violinist who considers himself to be highly talented. One evening a guest of the famous violinist p. Za in St. Petersburg. Efimov finally want to see a violinist who comes close to his own talent. He asks Njetotschka to steal the money for the ticket from her mother. Under heavy remorse she comes asking her stepfather.

On the same evening the mother dies, as Efimov comes back from the concert. When she lies dead in bed, he plays for the first time in years on his violin. He is confronted with the reality that in truth he has no talent and flees from the apartment. Two days later he died after an attack at a hospital.

Njetotschka moves in with a count, who lives across the street and she takes out of sympathy with them. Njetotschka befriends after initial shyness and aversion to the daughter of the Count, Katja, at. Both kiss incessantly, telling her girlish secrets and stories. Katja is doing similar nerves susceptible and sentimental as Njetotschka. The Countess is worried about her daughter and separates the two. Finally, the Graf family moved to Moscow, and Njetotschka has to stay in St. Petersburg.

The daughter of the Countess from his first marriage Alexandra Mikhailovna then takes Njetotschka to live with him. She and her husband are childless and dreamed for years of junior. To also susceptible nervous and often ill Alexandra Mikhailovna Njetotschka developed genuine affection while she eventually develops contempt for her husband.

One day Njetotschka discovered in a book by Alexandra Mikhailovna an old, lost letter from a lover. The letter retains Njetotschka for themselves, because they are weak in the face of Alexandra Mikhailovna's health does not dare to confront the recipient of it. The husband has forgiven the affair proud of his wife and tortures them now with their weakness and his own generosity.

At the end of the unfinished story of the husband Njetotschka snatches the letter and holds it for a self-addressed to Njetotschka love letter. The husband will not tolerate that plays an affair under his roof and urges that Njetotschka leaves the house. Alexandra Mikhailovna contradicts energetic and suffers a severe attack. The unfinished book on listening, as Njetotschka the husband hands over the letter and realizes that Njetotschka was not entered into any affair.

Relation to other works of Dostoevsky

The suffering young girl is a constantly recurring theme in the work of Dostoevsky. The figure of Njetotschka Neswanowa has been compared with other emancipated women from Dostoevsky's works, such as the Dunya Raskolnikowa from " Crime and Punishment" and Aglaia Epantschina from " The Idiot".