Nastasya Filippovna and Afanasy Totski's relationship

Nastasya Filippovna Barashkoff and Afanasy Ivanovitch Totski's relationship is the foundational wound of the novel, a story of predatory guardianship, systematic exploitation, and a woman's long-delayed, catastrophic rebellion. Totski, a wealthy sensualist, took Nastasya as a child after her parents' ruin, raised her in secluded luxury as his mistress, and then, when he wished to marry, tried to pass her off to a husband he had selected, only to discover that the girl he had shaped into a dependent ornament had become a woman of implacable will who would rather destroy herself than be disposed of.

Origins and the Structure of Dependency

The relationship began when Nastasya was a child of seven or eight. Her father, a poor gentleman named Barashkoff, had gone mad and died after his house burned down and his wife perished in the fire. Totski, whose estate neighbored the ruined family, adopted the two orphaned girls. The younger died of whooping cough, leaving only Nastasya. For five years Totski forgot about her, living abroad. When he returned to Russia and visited his bailiff's house, he discovered a lovely twelve-year-old girl of unusual promise. He stayed only a few days, but long enough to make his arrangements. A good governess, a Swiss lady of experience and culture, was engaged. For four years this lady lived with little Nastia, and then the education was considered complete. The governess departed, and another lady came to fetch Nastasya by Totski's instructions. She was transported to another of Totski's estates in a distant part of the country, where she found a delightful little house, just built and prepared for her reception with great care and taste. Here she took up her abode with the lady who had accompanied her, along with two experienced maids, musical instruments of all sorts, a charming young lady's library, pictures, paint-boxes, a lap-dog, and everything to make life agreeable. Within a fortnight Totski himself arrived, and from that time he appeared to have taken a great fancy to this part of the world, coming down each summer and staying two or three months at a time. So passed four years peacefully and happily, in charming surroundings.

The Rupture and the New Woman

About four months after Totski's last visit, a report reached Nastasya that he was about to be married in St. Petersburg to a rich, eminent, and lovely woman. The report was only partially true, the marriage project being only in an embryo condition. But a great change now came over Nastasya. She suddenly displayed unusual decision of character and, without wasting time in thought, left her country home and came up to St. Petersburg, straight to Totski's house, all alone. The latter, amazed at her conduct, began to express his displeasure, but he very soon became aware that he must change his voice, style, and everything else with this young lady; the good old times were gone. An entirely new and different woman sat before him, between whom and the girl he had left in the country last July there seemed nothing in common. In the first place, this new woman understood a good deal more than was usual for young people of her age; so much indeed that Totski could not help wondering where she had picked up her knowledge. It even embraced legal matters and the world in general to a considerable extent. Her character was absolutely changed. No more of the girlish alternations of timidity and petulance, the adorable naivete, the reveries, the tears, the playfulness. It was an entirely new and hitherto unknown being who now sat and laughed at him and informed him to his face that she had never had the faintest feeling for him of any kind, except loathing and contempt—contempt which had followed closely upon her sensations of surprise and bewilderment after her first acquaintance with him. This new woman gave him further to understand that though it was absolutely the same to her whom he married, yet she had decided to prevent this marriage—for no particular reason, but that she chose to do so, and because she wished to amuse herself at his expense, for that it was quite her turn to laugh a little now.

Totski's Fear and the Bargain

Totski, a man of fifty with a solid and respectable position, was terrified. He realized that Nastasya was capable of ruining herself, and even of perpetrating something which would send her to Siberia, for the mere pleasure of injuring a man for whom she had developed so inhuman a sense of loathing and contempt. He had sufficient insight to understand that she valued nothing in the world—herself least of all. He knew well that Nastasya thoroughly understood him and where to wound him and how. Therefore, as the marriage was still only in embryo, Totski decided to conciliate her by giving it up. He determined to establish her in St. Petersburg, surrounding her with all the comforts and luxuries that his wealth could command. For five years this Petersburg life went by. Totski's position was very uncomfortable; having funked once, he could not totally regain his ease. He was afraid, he did not know why, but he was simply afraid of Nastasya. For the first two years or so he had suspected that she wished to marry him herself, and that only her vanity prevented her telling him so. But to his great, and not entirely pleasurable, amazement, he discovered that this was by no means the case, and that were he to offer himself he would be refused. He could not understand such a state of things and was obliged to conclude that it was pride, the pride of an injured and imaginative woman, which had gone to such lengths that it preferred to sit and nurse its contempt and hatred in solitude rather than mount to heights of hitherto unattainable splendor. To make matters worse, she was quite impervious to mercenary considerations and could not be bribed in any way. Finally, Totski took cunning means to try to break his chains and be free. He tried to tempt her in various ways to lose her heart; he invited princes, hussars, secretaries of embassies, poets, novelists, even Socialists, to see her; but not one of them all made the faintest impression upon Nastasya. It was as though she had a pebble in place of a heart, as though her feelings and affections were dried up and withered forever.

The Plan to Dispose of Her

When Totski approached General Epanchin with his request for friendly counsel as to a marriage with one of his daughters, he had made a full and candid confession. He said that he intended to stop at no means to obtain his freedom; even if Nastasya were to promise to leave him entirely alone in future, he would not believe and trust her; words were not enough for him; he must have solid guarantees of some sort. So he and the general determined to try what an attempt to appeal to her heart would effect. They proposed that Nastasya should marry Gavrila Ardalionovitch Ivolgin, a young man of good family who was said to love her passionately. Totski offered her seventy-five thousand roubles as a gift, claiming it would have been left her all the same in his will. Nastasya's reply astonished both the friends considerably. Not only was there no trace of her former irony, of her old hatred and enmity, but she seemed charmed and really glad to have the opportunity of talking seriously with him for once in a way. She confessed that she had long wished to have a frank and free conversation and to ask for friendly advice, but that pride had hitherto prevented her. She admitted that such a storm as that of five years ago was now quite out of the question. She said that she had long since changed her views of things and recognized that facts must be taken into consideration in spite of the feelings of the heart. She accepted the seventy-five thousand roubles, saying she quite understood the value of money and would, of course, accept the gift. She thanked him for his delicacy, however, but saw no reason why Gavrila Ardalionovitch should not know about it. She would not marry the latter, she said, until she felt persuaded that neither on his part nor on the part of his family did there exist any sort of concealed suspicions as to herself. She did not intend to ask forgiveness for anything in the past, which fact she desired to be known. She did not consider herself to blame for anything that had happened in former years, and she thought that Gavrila Ardalionovitch should be informed as to the relations which had existed between herself and Totski during the last five years. If she accepted this money it was not to be considered as indemnification for her misfortune as a young girl, which had not been in any degree her own fault, but merely as compensation for her ruined life.

The Final Reckoning

At her birthday party, Nastasya publicly rejected the entire arrangement. She told Totski, "Take your seventy-five thousand roubles—I don't want them. I let you go free for nothing—take your freedom! You must need it. Nine years and three months' captivity is enough for anybody." She declared that she had been in prison for ten years and was free at last. In a final, devastating speech, she laid bare the whole history: "Why have I worried him, for five years, and never let him go free? Is he worth it? He is only just what he ought to be—nothing particular. He thinks I am to blame, too. He gave me my education, kept me like a countess. Money—my word! What a lot of money he spent over me! And he tried to find me an honest husband first, and then this Gania, here. And what do you think? All these five years I did not live with him, and yet I took his money, and considered I was quite justified." She then threw the packet of one hundred thousand roubles that Rogojin had brought into the fire, a symbolic act of rejecting the entire system of purchase and sale that Totski had embodied. Totski, for his part, after the scandal, married a French marquise and was carried off by her to Paris and then to Brittany. As Ptitsin remarked to him afterward, walking away from the scene, the whole affair was "very like what they say goes on among the Japanese"—the offended party rips himself open before his enemy's eyes. Totski himself, in a moment of reflection, called Nastasya "an uncut diamond" and lamented that "all those gifts are wasted." The relationship that began with a child's abduction ended with a woman's self-immolation, leaving Totski untouched and Nastasya destroyed.