Re-examining the Ideal of Utopia in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Idiot

Abstract

This research interweaves the two disability cases of epilepsy and derision among major characters, with the Russian Aristocratic class subjugation of Myshkin in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel, The Idiot. In addition to the investigation of Myshkin and Nastasya Filippovna within this text to be made during the time when Russian high aristocracy was in its prime, focus will also include examining how the culture of Russian aristocracy runs rampant over those varying just slightly from the social mores existent at that time. This research study has attempted to critically analyze The Idiot which turns into a piece of brutality commenting on the Russian aristocratic civilization. If, on the one hand, Dostoevsky collects these marginalized voices (of the abnormal) within the literary disability studies set of tools: then, finally what is recorded in this novel are not more than the defining characteristics of the Russian aristocracy disguised as an effort to degrade so called disabled people. Through the skepticism of his character, Dostoevsky digs into the life of Myshkin and Nastasya Fillippovna to discover the pains and fates that had only to fulfill as they were forced to do because their presumed physical and psychological deviance.