Continuing Crime and Punishment (10-15%)
I mentioned that I restarted C&P for the fourth time (third time from the absolute beginning, hmm, that means it was likely my fifth time reading, depending on how I count, but I digress). I just pressed my way through two really interesting scenes, one where he gets a letter from his mother, and a second while he is out walking while thinking about the letter. Needless to say, since I’m talking about the plot…spoiler alert!
For the letter, it is fascinating to see the stream of consciousness of another person (the mother) trying to explain what has happened in her daughter’s life (his sister). They have been sending him money as the male in the family and he was struggling, even though they themselves don’t have much. His sister was working in a house, the husband made a serious pass at her which was declined, the wife found out and blamed the girl, huge scandal for several weeks, and then the truth came out — with the wife realizing it was all the husband, the girl had resisted repeatedly and was not encouraging him but had no other job to go to, so couldn’t just quit, etc. The beauty of the letter is unrivalled. It has nuggets galore to think about and ponder…how the mother describes the daughter’s new suitor who has proposed marriage, the idea of the would-be husband that it is better to have a wife who will see the marriage as a saving act to rescue her from poverty rather than a wife who takes him for granted (there are TONS of refs to power imbalances in the letter, with assumptions all around), how the sister has reacted, etc.
And then while he’s walking, we get to see HIS interpretation or almost translation of what his mother has said. His mother and sister are happy, but he suspects it is all terrible, and should be stopped. The man’s designs, the family’s need, it is all a tragedy, and he should be the hero, not the new husband. Again, entirely in his head as he concocts huge scenarios based on the flimsiest of lines in the letter.
But as he walks, he is distracted coming upon a young woman, a girl by his standards, around 16, who is clearly drunk and in a state of disarray for her clothing. He deduces that she has been fed liquor to become intoxicated and then raped (“deceived by a ruffian”), and she is still incredibly drunk, going on about how some quite forward man “wouldn’t let her alone”. She is practically passed out on a bench at one point. He wants to help her, and suspects another passerby of ill intent, that he will take advantage of her too. So he calls a cop, gives him money to help her get home, gets the police involved, accuses the other man of ill intent (a proxy perhaps for his own desires that man always suspects others of having), and then the woman leaves with the police in tow. At which point, the narrator starts to wonder if he should have gotten involved at all, and why did he give away money to help her when he needed it himself? He even yells at the police for getting involved. It’s a bit of a wild ride for a scene.
Yet what strikes me most about these two scenes is that from my previous reading, I had the timeline for them completely different in my mind. I estimated they took place after the titular “crime” that is still to come. This is the third time I’ve read this opening section (0-15%) and yet because of the fits and starts previously, I couldn’t even keep the order of events correct in the timeline. Odd, that.
Anyway, another 5% out of the way at lunch this week. Onward!
