Nastasya Fillipovna And Catherine Earnshaw: Two Heroines, Similar Stories

Childhood Trauma And Self-destructive Behavior In Adulthood

Nastasya Fillipovna in the poster of the 1958 adaptation of The Idiot, played by Yuliya Borisova

Hello!!! 

This is Joyie and welcome back to my little bookish corner of the internet where I talk all things books! 

Yesterday I finally started Anna Karenina. I'd been planning to read it for months, but always ended up reading some other book instead. Have you been reading anything this week?

Today I want to talk about something that maybe won't make a lot of sense to others, but to me it totally does. So, earlier this year there was a period when I was reading Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Idiot and Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights simultaneously. I personally generally always have a different type of interest in the heroine of a story, even when they're not written to be very interesting. And I’m of the opinion that both Nastasya Fillipovna and Catherine Earnshaw are pretty interesting heroines. So I was thinking about them a lot, and as I did, it just occurred to me that there actually are quite some similarities between the two of them.

Firstly there's the superficial similarity of them both being very beautiful and attractive and being placed romantically between two men who are the opposite of each other, a distinct good boy and a bad boy. Both get a lot less screen time than their male love interests. However, through the charm and influence they hold over these men, their presence is felt throughout the story. In a sense they are the ones driving the actions of the male romantic leads and thus the stories. Both seem to have trouble picking one man, although in the end they do. Nastasya chooses the bad boy while Catherine the good boy.

But the similarity that I personally find more interesting is that they're both abused children, who grew up without the protection of an adult guardian figure and now are ill-adjusted adults who lash out in self-destructive ways. The details of the abuse are different, but it warps their sense of self-worth and their constant back and forth between their romantic interests is a consequence of that. In the end, they both end up losing their lives, and it's to a great extent, their own doing. 

When I was reading The Idiot, I was reading some articles on Dostoevsky's inspirations behind the novel and there I learned about the trial of Olga Umetskaya. 

Olga Umetskaya was a fourteen year old girl who, alongside her brothers were abused by their parents and unable to take it anymore, tried to set their estate on fire several times, and then tried to take her own life. Dostoevsky followed the trial very closely and was apparently very distressed by the minimal sentencing received by the parents. Nastasya Fillipovna’s character in The Idiot was inspired by Olga Umetskaya, through whom Dostoevsky intended to show the devastating consequences of society failing to protect its children.

Wuthering Heights, too, is largely a book that addresses the consequences of society failing to protect its children. It shows the ugly consequences of childhood neglect and abuse and how it ruins people. So, I don't think it's stretching it too far when I claim that Nastasya Fillipovna and Catherine Earnshaw share some similar characteristics between them. 

What about you? Have you read The Idiot or Wuthering Heights? What do you think of Nastasya and Catherine? I'd love to hear about it!!!

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That’s it for today, I'll be back in your inbox next week.

Until then,

Joyie 🌻