She was standing by the wall, close to the window, she had laid her arm
against the wall, and her head was pressed on her arm, she was standing like
that thinking. And she was standing so deep in thought that she did not hear me
come and look at her from the other room. She seemed to be smiling—standing,
thinking and smiling (Dostoevsky, A Gentle Spirit).
The reason why the meek one smiles before committing
the fatal act is absolutely impenetrable to the hero and also to us. What
understanding can the poor girl have reached? “Standing, thinking and smiling”—what
could be more paradoxical, more surreal, more real to the highest degree than
this scene fashioned in the mind of the great writer? It seems that the
solution to this gesture (for gesture it is!), to this mystery, would
automatically lead to an understanding of life, of the world itself. Probably
Dostoevsky confronts us with this gesture, this mystery, in order to make us
marvel at female nature, which in essence expresses the whole of human nature.
And perhaps by her very nature, woman is closer to the transcendent and
therefore capable of achieving that higher understanding, which leads to
self-reconciliation. No other explanation relating to the immanence of this
world would have been conceivable. You cannot in any wise penetrate to the
meaning of the thought that expresses perhaps the very essence of the feminine
whole, even the very essence of life itself and therefore the supreme
understanding of life. Or perhaps this was in the natural way of things, that
what happened should happen, because there was no “other solution.” The meek
one, as a woman, is perhaps capable of seeing what men cannot and will never be
able to see. Or perhaps in this world, this is the natural order:
an organic incompatibility between the two principles, male and female. Perhaps
this is why the main character, the moneylender, is not so guilty for his
wife’s death, since, as one of the novella’s critics so aptly puts it: “the
guilt far outstrips the guilty party, it no longer belongs to him, but to the
entire universe, which is structured crookedly, built on suffering, and which
nobody anywhere will ever be able to redeem.” A conclusion that is
like the passing of a sentence!
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