p. 23
Marmeladov, the alcoholic Father of Sonya, drinks up the family’s food and rent money so his teenaged daughter Sonya has to become a prostitute to support her mother and siblings. In a drunken outpouring, Marmeladov explains: ‘This half bottle here, sir, was bought with her money . . . Thirty kopecks. Brought them out with her very own hands, the very last, all she had, I saw for myself. . . . Didn’t say a word, just looked at me silently . . . . They don’t do that here on earth, only up there . . . they grieve for people and weep, but they don’t reproach you, they don’t reproach you! And that hurts worse, sir, it hurts worse when they don’t reproach you!”
Categorized In Sin
Crime and Punishment
Dostoevsky, Fyodor trans. Michael Scammell | Washington Square, 1963