Money sewn into a rag by Mitya

The money sewn into a rag by Mitya is the concealed half of the three thousand roubles he had taken from Katerina Ivanovna, carried for a month around his neck and later produced during questioning. Its physical presence sharpens a crucial distinction in Mitya’s account: he admits that the money was stolen, but insists that it was stolen from Katerina, not from his father. The little bundle thus stands at the crossing of debt, shame, and suspicion, making a private act of concealment visible in the investigation of the murder of Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov.

Origin and Concealment

A month before the questioning, Mitya had received three thousand roubles from Katerina Ivanovna, who was then his betrothed. At the time, he had just come to love Grushenka and carried her off to Mokroe. There, over two days, he spent half of the money in revelry and kept the other half: fifteen hundred roubles. The rag-wrapped cash was therefore not the money allegedly taken from his father’s house on the night of the murder. It was the retained portion of Katerina’s money, separated from the half already spent.

Mitya explains that he sewed the fifteen hundred roubles into a rag before getting drunk on the rest. He had not yet understood Grushenka, and believed that she wanted money and would not forgive his poverty. He therefore calculated on preserving part of Katerina’s sum, then concealed it against his body. His own account condemns the act as base: the bundle embodies not merely a financial decision but the anxious, compromised arrangement by which he tried to hold money back while pursuing Grushenka.

How the Money Was Carried and Spent

Mitya says he wore the sewn-up money around his neck for a month, like a locket. In the questioning, he identifies it as fifteen hundred roubles and says he had carried it on him all the time. That prolonged concealment gives the rag a double character: it keeps the money physically close and hidden, while the continuing presence of the bundle preserves the unpaid theft from Katerina as a source of shame.

The bundle was not intact by the time Mitya produced what remained. He says that the day before the questioning he undid the rag and spent part of the money; eight hundred roubles remained, and he handed that amount to Nikolay Parfenovitch. His distinction between the original fifteen hundred and the eight hundred still in his possession matters: the object records both the reserved sum and its later depletion, rather than serving as a simple container for an unchanged amount.

Removal and Evidentiary Significance

Asked when and where he took the money from his neck, Mitya says that he tore it off and took out the cash while going from Fenya’s to Perhotin’s. The questioning presses him on the circumstance: according to his earlier evidence, he had not gone home, and he is asked whether he did it in the dark. His answer places the removal on the route between those two stops, making the timing and location of the hidden money part of the investigators’ scrutiny.

When the issue of the money taken from his neck arises, Mitya abruptly rejects the relevance of five o’clock and of his own confession to the matter under discussion. He then makes the distinction on which his explanation depends: the money was his in the sense that he had it on him, but it was not rightfully his; he had stolen it, and the original amount was fifteen hundred roubles. Asked where he got it, he points to his own neck and describes the rag sewn there. He repeats that he had carried it for a month, presenting the concealed cash as proof of a theft—but not, as he insists, a theft from his father.

Meaning Within the Investigation

The rag connects two different forms of incriminating evidence without making them identical. Mitya’s concealed cash confirms his theft from Katerina Ivanovna, while his insistence about its source challenges the inference that the money found on him was stolen from Fyodor Pavlovich. The physical object cannot settle the murder accusation by itself: it establishes where one portion of Mitya’s money came from, but its removal on the way from Fenya’s to Perhotin’s leaves the circumstances open to questioning.

Its most pointed irony is that the concealment meant to preserve money for Mitya’s uncertain future becomes a conspicuous object in the investigation. Sewn into a rag and worn against his neck, the money is both hidden and carried openly on his person; once undone, it gives his private shame a countable remainder. The bundle makes Mitya’s financial guilt concrete while preserving the distinction on which his account turns: he admits to having stolen, yet denies stealing that money from his father.