Lizaveta gives birth in the bathhouse and dies

Lizaveta’s birth in the bathhouse and death at dawn bring a newborn child into the Karamazov household through an act of rescue, while leaving his parentage contested. The episode begins on the night after Grigory and Marfa have buried their own child: they hear a woman groaning near the garden gate, find Lizaveta dying beside her newborn, and save the baby. Grigory and Marfa raise him as Pavel, later known as Smerdyakov, whose name preserves the nickname of the mother he never knew.

Discovery in the Bathhouse

The strange cries come on the very night after Grigory and Marfa have buried their child. Marfa wakes to what she believes is the wail of a newborn; Grigory hears something more like a person groaning and suspects a woman. He dresses, takes the key, and goes out into the garden, disregarding his wife’s certainty that the crying is her own dead baby calling for her.

Near the garden gate, Grigory recognizes that the groans come from the bathhouse. Opening its door, he finds Lizaveta, a mute woman known throughout town as “Stinking Lizaveta,” who has given birth and lies dying beside the baby. She cannot explain what has happened: she has never been able to speak. The narrative thus reveals the birth through an act of physical discovery, while the circumstances that brought Lizaveta into the bathhouse remain outside this episode’s account.

Rescue and Death

Grigory acts at once. He sends Marfa to Lizaveta and runs to fetch an old midwife who lives nearby. Their intervention saves the infant, but Lizaveta dies at dawn. The outcome places the two children who frame the episode in sharp contrast: the couple’s own child has just been buried, while a stranger’s newborn survives through their care.

Grigory carries the baby home and places him on Marfa’s lap. He calls the orphan a child of God and kin to everyone, especially to them, and interprets his arrival as a gift sent in place of their lost child. His words turn a shocking discovery into an act of adoption: Marfa is asked to nurse the infant and cease weeping for the child she has lost. She takes him in and raises him.

The Child’s Name and Parentage

The child is christened Pavel. People add Fyodorovitch to his name, identifying him as Fyodor Pavlovich’s son, and Fyodor Pavlovich does not object to the patronymic. He finds the situation amusing, however, and vigorously denies being responsible for the child. The episode therefore leaves the boy’s paternity in a pointedly unresolved condition: the household and townspeople attach him to Fyodor Pavlovich, but Fyodor refuses the implication.

Later, Fyodor Pavlovich invents the surname Smerdyakov for the boy, taking it from his mother’s nickname. The name makes Lizaveta’s identity persist in the child’s public designation even though she has died and could never tell her own story. Raised by Marfa, Pavel becomes a second servant in Fyodor Pavlovich’s household and works as a cook, living in the lodge with Grigory and Marfa when the main story begins.

Significance in the Family History

The episode’s decisive reversal is intimate rather than spectacular: after the burial of their own child, Grigory and Marfa are confronted with another child’s need, and Grigory answers by bringing the orphan into their home. His act gives the baby shelter and a family, but it does not settle the question of who fathered him. Instead, the naming and household arrangements preserve the uncertainty: Fyodor Pavlovich permits the patronymic, supplies the surname, and denies responsibility.

Lizaveta’s silence also shapes how the episode is told. She cannot give an account of her own experience, and the narrative pauses over her death to say that her story needs a chapter to itself. What remains here is the scene witnessed by others and its aftermath: her child survives, receives care from Grigory and Marfa, and enters the Karamazov household under a name drawn from the mother town life had reduced to a nickname.