Your price is a ten-rouble note

The phrase "Your price is a ten-rouble note" is the most searing verbal weapon Maslova deploys against Nekhludoff during their second prison interview. It condenses a decade of betrayal, shame, and self-loathing into a single, brutal equation: his offer of marriage is no different from the cash he once shoved into her apron. The line marks the moment when her accumulated bitterness, long buried under the habits of a depraved life, erupts and forces Nekhludoff to confront the full, unvarnished horror of what he did.

Origin and Context

The phrase is rooted in the original betrayal. When Nekhludoff, then a young officer, seduced and abandoned the sixteen-year-old Katusha, he left her a 100-rouble note—a sum he considered generous for a servant girl. That note became the symbol of his moral cowardice: a payment to silence his conscience and to reduce a human being to a commodity. Years later, when he sits before her in the prison office and declares his intention to marry her, Maslova does not hear a proposal. She hears the same transaction, only with a different price tag. Her retort, "Your price is a ten-rouble note," is a deliberate, savage undercutting of his gesture: she names a sum even smaller than the original, as if to say that his entire moral project is worth less than the first bribe.

The Scene of Utterance

The confrontation takes place in the prison office, with a jailer present. Nekhludoff, having just told her he wants to marry her to atone for his sin, is met not with gratitude but with fury. Maslova's face flushes scarlet; her squinting eyes, which he had once found so captivating, now glare with hatred. She speaks rapidly, her voice trembling with rage: "I am a convict, and you are a gentleman and a prince. There's no need for you to soil yourself by touching me. You go to your princesses; my price is a ten-rouble note." The words are not merely a refusal; they are an accusation. She is telling him that his offer is not a sacrifice but an insult—a continuation of the same pattern of using her for his own moral comfort, just as he once used her body for pleasure.

Thematic Significance

The phrase crystallizes the novel's central critique of how money and class corrupt human relationships. Throughout her life, Maslova has been treated as a thing to be bought: first by Nekhludoff with a 100-rouble note, then by the brothel-keeper Kitaeva, then by every man who paid for her body. Her retort exposes the lie behind Nekhludoff's noble rhetoric. He speaks of duty and redemption, but she hears the clink of coins. By naming a price, she forces him to see that his offer, however well-intentioned, is still framed by the same economic logic that destroyed her. She will not be bought twice. The line also marks a turning point in Maslova's own psychology: it is the moment she stops being a passive victim and becomes an active agent of her own story, even if that agency is expressed through rage and rejection.

Consequences and Echoes

The immediate effect on Nekhludoff is devastating. He had come to the prison full of self-congratulatory resolve, expecting to be a savior. Instead, he is reduced to a trembling, stammering man who can only repeat, "I know, I know; but what is to be done now?" The phrase haunts him long after the interview. Later, alone in his room, he recalls the moment with horror and disgust, recognizing that the money he gave her was not atonement but a further degradation. The ten-rouble note becomes a recurring symbol in his moral reckoning: it is the price of his sin, the measure of his cowardice, and the obstacle he must overcome if he is ever to truly repent. For Maslova, the utterance is both a liberation and a cage. It allows her to reject Nekhludoff's pity, but it also locks her into the identity of a woman who can only be valued in cash. The phrase echoes through the rest of the novel, a bitter reminder that the wounds of class and betrayal cannot be healed by good intentions alone.