高橋 知之

<p> In <i>The Insulted and Injured,</i> Dostoevsky portrays an orphan called Nellie, explicitly referring to Dickens' heroine Nell from <i>The Old Curiosity Shop.</i> What was his purpose in creating this kinship?</p><p> The heroine of <i>The Old Curiosity Shop</i> was enthusiastically received in the Victorian Age as a symbol of innocence. Dostoevsky named his orphan after Dickens' heroine, suggesting that Nellie shares Nell's innocence.</p><p> But while Nell's innocence remains intact in spite of persecution, Nellie's innocence is actually injured and damaged by her adverse environment. There is a gap between their characters, their similar names notwithstanding.</p><p> The reference to Dickens' Nell can be regarded as an allusion to the 1840s, an idealistic period in Russia when French utopian socialism was highly influential. Dostoevsky himself was a utopian socialist at the time. <i>The Old Curiosity Shop</i> was translated into Russian in 1843, and it is likely that Nell became an object of worship for the young Dostoevsky. Therefore, in <i>The Insulted and Injured,</i> the name of Nellie has a bitter irony. The narrator Ivan, who is a self-portrait of the young Dostoevsky, tries to save the weak. But he fails to save Nellie, whom he admired as an ideally innocent child, from her agony. Thus Nellie's story may be read as a strong criticism of the idealism of the 1840s.</p>