Mitya confronts Grushenka’s Polish former lover

Mitya confronts Grushenka’s Polish former lover in an encounter that turns a cash bargain into a public unmasking. Mitya tries to purchase the man’s departure, but the failed offer exposes the difference between the romantic past Grushenka has mourned and the self-interested, diminished figure who now stands before her. Her recognition frees her from the grievance that had kept her attached to that past and shifts the scene toward her bond with Mitya.

The offer and its terms

The chapter frames the confrontation around the Polish visitor’s claim to Grushenka and Mitya’s attempt to remove him from the scene. Mitya approaches the Poles and asks what he can do for them; then he pulls out banknotes and offers the short Pole three thousand roubles to leave with Vrublevsky. He makes the demand emphatic: they must go at once and never return. The sum is not merely compensation for travel. Mitya wants to end the rival’s presence in Grushenka’s life by paying him to disappear.

The offer immediately meets resistance. The Pole asks whether Mitya means three thousand, and the men exchange searching glances. Mitya then revises the arrangement, offering seven hundred roubles in cash at once rather than the full three thousand. He senses that something has gone wrong and asks whether they distrust him, but the reduced immediate payment exposes the gap between the dramatic promise and the money he can hand over on the spot. The Poles’ response makes clear that the encounter cannot be settled on Mitya’s terms.

The bargain collapses

The little Pole spits on the floor, and Vrublevsky spits too. Mitya recognizes that the negotiation is finished and accuses the pair of hoping to profit further from Grushenka. His accusation is specific: he believes they are refusing because they expect to make more money through her. The scene thus links the former lover’s asserted claim with the financial calculation Mitya suspects beneath it.

The Pole then presents himself to Grushenka in the language of honor and forgiveness, saying he has come to forget the past and forgive what has happened. Grushenka cuts him off. In front of her, he explains that Mitya offered him money to leave and that he spat at Mitya. The attempted private transaction has become an open confrontation: Grushenka learns what Mitya proposed, while the Pole’s performance of noble reconciliation is placed beside his account of the rejected payment.

Grushenka recognizes the man before her

Grushenka reacts with indignation when she hears that Mitya offered money for her, demanding to know whether she is being treated as something for sale. Mitya insists on her purity, but his defense cannot erase the implication of his own action: he has tried to decide her future by paying off a rival. At the same time, the Pole claims that he came to make her his wife and presents himself as a nobleman rather than a mercenary. The competing declarations do not establish a disinterested claim on her; instead, they expose how the men speak over her while she judges what their claims are worth.

Her judgment is a reversal. Grushenka says that she had been miserable for five years, but that misery came from anger rather than love, and the man before her is not the one she remembers. She contrasts the remembered lover, who laughed and sang to her, with the present figure, whom she mocks for his wig and compares unfavorably to a gander. The five years of grief collapse into recognition: she had preserved an image, not the person now asking to be forgiven and taken as a wife. She sinks back into her chair and hides her face in her hands, but the gesture follows a decisive verbal rejection of the idealized past.

Significance of the encounter

The scene makes money a revealing measure of the characters’ competing assumptions. Mitya treats payment as a possible way to clear the rival from Grushenka’s path; the Pole’s refusal and subsequent account make the offer part of Grushenka’s knowledge rather than a solution arranged behind her back. Her anger at being made the object of a bargain gives way to a sharper recognition that her long attachment has been sustained by resentment and memory.

The confrontation therefore does more than settle whether the Polish visitor will leave. It breaks the force of Grushenka’s five-year grievance by letting her compare the remembered lover with the man who has returned. In the same moment, Mitya’s offer reveals both his urgency and the limits of trying to secure affection through money. Grushenka, not either man, delivers the encounter’s decisive verdict: the past she mourned does not match the person standing before her.