Critiquing the Utopia of the norm: reading Fyodor Dostoevsky's the Idiot

Abstract

This research makes a study of interweaving issues of disability—instances of epilepsy and derision in the major characters, and the subjugation of Myshkin in Russian Aristocratic class, in particular–in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novelThe Idiot. Together with investigating the ways in which Myshkin and Nastasya Filippovna are represented in this Russian text written at the high time of Russian aristocracy, principal focus has been to bring into light the Russian aristocratic culture that subjugates peoples who slightly disagree with the then social values. In particular, my attempt has been to scrutinizeThe Idiotthat emerges as a ruthless commentary over Russian aristocratic culture. Whereas Dostoevsky chronicles the marginalized ‘abnormal’ voices on literary disability studies, the novel comes to put the characteristic features of Russian aristocracy in the pretext of so called disabled people’s degradation. This research follows the latest contributions on Fyodor Dostoevsky’s work. Dostoevsky delves in the life of Myshkin and Nastasya Fillippovna to expose the sufferings and contingencies in that they had to carryout solely because of their so-called physical and psychological abnormality.