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Crime and Punishment

Dostoevsky, Fyodor trans. Michael Scammell | Washington Square, 1963

 

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!”