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The Plight Of Prostitution: A Study Of Sonia Marmeladov In Crime And Punishment, Clare Carroll
The Plight Of Prostitution: A Study Of Sonia Marmeladov In Crime And Punishment, Clare Carroll
Spring 2014, Dostoevsky
Fyodor Dostoevsky's celebrated novel Crime and Punishment (1866) exposes complex moral issues testing the urban population of nineteenth century St. Petersburg. Prostitution is one theme that complicates the novel, and Dostoevsky invites readers to consider the prostitute’s point of view. In 1843, the tsarist Ministry of Internal Affairs appointed “medical-police committees” to regulate prostitution in Russia. Registered prostitutes were typically poor urban women, and they became subject to strict rules. Sonia Marmeladov, an emblem of virtue in Crime and Punishment, endures the horrors of commercialized sex. Though her virtue and religious faith far exceed that of the average person, her …