Hothouse

By Mia Johnson

The quote, “My passions may govern me, but they cannot blind me” (149), from Madame de Lafayette’s The Princesse de Clèves, captures the essence of love and confession found in the novel. While the idea of committing a murder and beginning a relationship amidst coping with that reality would be thought to be associated with intensity and passion, Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment takes an indirect approach, generally withholding feelings from the reader. By analyzing the framing of the confessions in each novel, it is revealed that the haste surrounding Mme de Clèves’ confession is a contributor to her passion while the languid pace surrounding Raskolnikov’s confession is directly tied to his finding of salvation through Sonya. 

We begin by looking at the speed at which the confessions are framed, as well as the tempo and contents of the confessions themselves. In The Princesse de Clèves, Mme de Clèves spots M. de Nemours resting in public and this inspires deep reflection on her remorseful feelings of love. That encounter and those thoughts encourage her to immediately seek M. de Nemours out the next day to cut off their flirtatious go-abouts. Although a night’s worth of time passed between the two events, Madam de Lafayette chose to write this transition with a sense of urgency that needed to begin to be resolved within a few lines distance. A similar situation occurs following Mme de Clèves’ confession, in which the narrator describes Mme de Clèves sending herself into exile while M. de Nemours eventually heals over time from his “violent” passion. Once again, the tense and blurred aspects of time do not play a role in these descriptions, quickly progressing the story to an end, touching little on character depth, and refraining from including any dialogue. 

However, the framing of Raskolnikov’s confession in Crime and Punishment takes on more of a slow-burn effect. While Raskolnikov also saw the subject of his desire, Sonya, prior to committing himself to a confession, this interaction was spaced out and carried on a tense stretch of time as Raskolnikov debated back and forth about why he chose to visit Sonya in the first place and if he wanted to go through with the confession. Even though this space of time was much shorter than the night Mme de Clèves sat on the urge to speak to M. de Nemours, Dostoevsky spaced out this segment the create a silent, lingering drama that lacks in much of the real-life interactions throughout the novel. Following the one-line confession is the epilogue, which is initially responsible for putting together a cohesive confession of Raskolnikov’s crime by the narrator. Similar to the confession’s prelude, the excerpt following also draws out time by detailing moments such as the court proceedings, Raskolnikov’s early stay in the Siberian prison, and his interactions with his friends and family members in greater detail. A characteristic of this sense of time as well as the sparse nature of Sonya and Raskolnikov’s relationship is that it takes nearly five pages of the epilogue before Sonya is even mentioned once. 

Also, note that the agency of the two main characters in these novels differs, indicating a distinction in the passion in action– characteristic of Mme de Clèves– and rejoicing in salvation– characteristic of Raskolnikov. Mme de Clèves acted on her own accord, with her own intentions and sense of duty at the forefront of her confession. She deliberately states the guilt of her “crime.” In the case of Raskolnikov, his ultimate motivation to confess comes from Sonya pushing him to do it, even promising to follow him to his sentence if he follows through. In the following case, Dostoevsky even portrays the back-and-forth roundabout to get the confession as if Sonya was the one confessing instead of Raskolnikov: “Something pained and tormented, something desperate, showed in her face. She clasped her hands. A hideous, lost smile forced itself to his lips. He stood a while, grinned, and turned back upstairs to the office” (530). The presence of Sonya as a motive for confession in addition to the narrator being the one to deliver that full murder confession removes the intensity of feeling from this critical point in the novel. In seeing the intensity of emotion in Mme de Clèves acting by and for herself, it can be said that 

Raskolnikov’s choice to act more to soothe the soul of Sonya acknowledges the lack of clarity of feeling in Crime and Punishment. Although there is a lack of intensity in this moment and relationship that would be presumed to be the novel’s climax, it is also comparable to the peace in inaction found in the final lines of The Princesse de Clèves. The stability of Sonya’s presence as a symbol of salvation throughout the tumultuous journey lies adjacent to the repose Mme de Clèves is able to find in herself. What readers are left to question is why Dostoevsky chose to create peace in moments that should have been passionate while Madame de Lafayette represented peace more adherent to its typical definition and function. 

Now looking at the confessions themselves, The Princesse de Clèves comes to a close as Mme de Clèves professes her love to M. de Nemours and simultaneously rejects the opportunity to carry through with a marriage to him following the death of her husband. She professes her love to M. de Nemours as if confessing to a crime, stating that “The truth is that you are the cause of M. de Cleves’ death; the suspicions your thoughtless behavior aroused in him cost him his life no less than if you had killed him with your own hands… I know that he died because of what you did and that it happened because of me” (147). In the confession, it is apparent that Mme de Clèves acknowledges her role in the crime against her husband, holding herself accountable for loving M. de Nemours while she was still married, leading to the sorrow that likely caused M. de Clèves’ death. What is interesting is that she also brings M. de Nemours into the picture as a guilty party alongside herself, making him both the subject of a crime that she is facing and the lover that she struggles with parting with. Ultimately, her choice to remove M. de Nemours from her life entirely puts forth the notion that there was nobody but herself for Mme de Clèves to land on following her confession while a very different case is seen in Crime and Punishment. 

While the relationship between Sonya and Raskolnikov never seems to cement itself in either of their realities that are conveyed to the reader, Sonya’s presence in Raskolnikov’s pre and post-confession life puts her in the position to act as a cushion when the blow of confession hits him. The idea of feeling understood plays a significant role in Raskolnikov finding salvation in Sonya, present especially when the narrator states that “Raskolnikov felt and understood in that moment, once and for all, that Sonya was now with him forever and would follow him even to the ends of the earth, wherever his fate took him. His whole heart turned over inside him…but—here he was at the fatal place…” (526). Raskolnikov’s inability to create a set and rational decision for himself without clearly mentioning an intention is the only position offered to the reader, but his realization of being understood creates the effect that he is becoming grounded in this situation, even giving him some credibility as a character with previously questionable motives. In this, Raskolnikov is similar to Mme de Clèves because they both struggle internally for extended periods of time to work through and weigh the levity of their perceived or actual crimes. By seeing that Mme de Clèves chose a path that required her to willingly go into exile to both uphold her personal duty and seek punishment for being unfaithful to her husband’s love, readers can view Raskolnikov opening up to the love and help of another as less passionate but an equally radical shift in character. Both chose a big jump to work through their post-confession lives that were out of the comfort zones of their previously portrayed character psychologies. 

Overall, it may be said the fast-paced framing of Mme de Cleves’ confession is characteristic of her passionate participation in her own crime and punishment whereas the slower framing of Raskolnikov’s confession acknowledges a lack of passion and the discovery of salvation in Sonya’s presence instead. Although both novels differ in their purpose and stylistic means of reaching a peaceful end, it is valuable to observe the view through the passionate gaze of The Princesse de Clèves to discover that the lack of intense emotion in Crime and Punishment is meant to create a confusing, dragged out experience for the reader to achieve a similarly characterized feeling of peace amidst a powerful frenzy.

Works Cited 

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, et al. Crime and Punishment. Vintage Books, 2021. Fayette, La, and Terence Cave. “The Princesse De Cleves.” The Princesse De Cleves ;the Princesse De Montpensier ;the Comtesse De Tende, Oxford University Press, 2008, pp. 3–156.