Sonia is forced to begin prostitution

Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladova’s forced entry into prostitution is presented as a crisis produced by her family’s poverty, hunger, and lack of viable income. Her first departure brings thirty roubles to the household, but the Yellow ticket that follows also separates her from her family’s home. In Semyon Zaharovitch Marmeladov’s account, the event turns on this double consequence: Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladova helps keep her family alive, yet must do so under conditions that exclude her from living with them.

Conditions Before Her Departure

The family’s crisis has accumulated over years of instability. Semyon Zaharovitch Marmeladov says that he lost his office position through his drinking and that the family lives in part of a room at Amalia Fyodorovna Lippevechsel’s lodging house, alongside many other residents. The room is poor and disorderly, and he cannot explain how they manage either rent or daily expenses. Katerina Ivanovna, already weak in the chest and prone to consumption, works from morning to night cleaning and caring for the children. There are three young children, and at one point they have gone three days without a crust of bread.

Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladova is Katerina Ivanovna’s stepdaughter, and Semyon Zaharovitch Marmeladov describes her childhood with his wife as difficult, while also insisting that Katerina Ivanovna has generous feelings. The immediate pressure comes when Katerina Ivanovna, distressed by illness and the children’s hunger, reproaches Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladova for living in the household without contributing. Semyon Zaharovitch Marmeladov presents the remark as an expression of desperation rather than a settled judgment: he asks his listener not to blame Katerina Ivanovna, who was overwhelmed by the circumstances and the children’s crying.

The family has little ordinary earning power to fall back on. Semyon Zaharovitch Marmeladov says respectable work could bring Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladova less than fifteen farthings a day, even if she worked without stopping. He also recounts that a civil counsellor failed to pay her for six linen shirts and dismissed her roughly over the collars. Separately, Semyon Zaharovitch Marmeladov has sold her stockings and a shawl given to her for drink. These losses make the household’s need visible not as an abstract hardship but as the depletion of clothing, wages, and food.

The Departure and the First Money

The immediate episode begins after Katerina Ivanovna’s reproach. Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladova asks whether she is truly expected to do what is being urged. Semyon Zaharovitch Marmeladov is lying drunk and hears the exchange, but does not intervene. His account also notes that Darya Frantsovna, described by him as a woman known to the police, had already tried several times to reach Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladova through the landlady. The family’s financial emergency therefore meets an external pressure directed specifically at the young woman.

At six in the evening, Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladova puts on her kerchief and cape and leaves. She returns at about nine and silently places thirty roubles on the table before Katerina Ivanovna. She gives no explanation and does not look at her stepmother. Instead, she takes the household’s large green shawl, covers her head and face, and lies down facing the wall. Her shoulders and body continue to shake. The account gives the money and her silence equal weight: the household receives urgently needed help, while Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladova withdraws from the family at the moment she provides it.

Katerina Ivanovna responds without words. She goes to Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladova’s bed, kneels, and kisses her feet throughout the evening, refusing to rise. The two eventually fall asleep in each other’s arms. Semyon Zaharovitch Marmeladov remains drunk and lying where he was. The sequence makes the family’s distress and affection coexist: Katerina Ivanovna’s earlier cruelty is followed by remorse and tenderness, while the father recognizes his own passivity as part of the scene he is recounting.

The Yellow Ticket and Separation

Semyon Zaharovitch Marmeladov says that an unfortunate incident and information supplied by ill-intentioned people led to Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladova being forced to take a Yellow ticket. He identifies Darya Frantsovna as a leading participant in the events that preceded it, but does not give a fuller account of the incident. The evidence he does supply is clear about the consequence: Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladova is no longer able to live in the family’s rooms.

The household’s response sharpens that exclusion. Amalia Fyodorovna Lippevechsel refuses to allow Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladova to remain there, despite having earlier supported Darya Frantsovna. Mr. Lebeziatnikov also objects to her presence. Semyon Zaharovitch Marmeladov says that Mr. Lebeziatnikov had initially tried to court Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladova, then invoked his education as a reason he could not share rooms with her. Katerina Ivanovna defends her stepdaughter and refuses to let the insult pass; that dispute forms part of the trouble between Katerina Ivanovna and Mr. Lebeziatnikov. The household’s need for Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladova’s help does not protect her from being displaced from it.

She lodges in a separate partitioned space in the room of the Kapernaumovs, a family of tailors. Semyon Zaharovitch Marmeladov describes the Kapernaumovs as very poor and notes that the family members have cleft palates; Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladova has a partitioned room of her own within their shared quarters. She now visits her family mostly after dark, when she is less likely to be seen. The ticket thus marks both her new circumstances and a practical barrier to ordinary family life.

Continuing Support and Temporary Relief

The separation does not end Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladova’s involvement in her family’s survival. She comforts Katerina Ivanovna and gives the household what she can, while keeping her visits mostly to the evening. Her assistance remains limited by the conditions that have forced her out: she cannot simply return to the family’s rooms, and her support is described as something she provides from outside the household.

A later improvement in Semyon Zaharovitch Marmeladov’s circumstances briefly changes the family’s daily life. Five weeks before he tells the story, he has regained an office position. Katerina Ivanovna and the children respond by treating him with careful respect, preparing coffee before work, and finding eleven roubles and fifty copecks for boots, shirt-fronts, and a uniform. Katerina Ivanovna prepares a meal of soup and salt meat with horseradish, and makes herself presentable despite having no proper dresses. Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladova contributes money for the time being but says she cannot visit often and may come only after dark. This episode does not undo her exclusion; it shows that even when the household briefly regains income and dignity, her ability to be present remains constrained.