Petersburg government clerks clearly inspired Dostoevsky’s early work, and French novels about prostitutes provided material for Dostoevsky’s characterization of Sonia. The French character type of the ambitious young man from the provinces contributes to his portrait of Raskolnikov; the hero of Balzac’s Père Goriot (1835), Eugène de Rastignac, belongs to this type.

Napoleonism, the Young Man from the Provinces, and the Mandarin

Père Goriot was the first book Dostoevsky recommended to his new bride—his second wife, Anna Grigorievna—four months after he completed Crime and Punishment. Immediately after Père Goriot appeared in French, it was published in Russian by two different journals. In it, Rastignac is a law student from the provinces who poses a moral question to his friend Bianchon: If he could make his fortune by killing a mandarin living in China without stirring from Paris, would he do it? Dostoevsky’s Raskolnikov overhears a student ask an officer a similar question: Would he kill the old pawnbroker in order to use her wealth to aid thousands of struggling young people? Dostoevsky lowers the scene, and Balzac’s hypothetical mandarin becomes a greasy-haired St. Petersburg pawnbroker.

The relationship of Crime and Punishment to Père Goriot centers on the moral question of the superman. The figure of Napoleon—who had conquered Europe, sacrificing more than a million lives, apparently with no pangs of conscience—was revered in France and fascinated Europe. Napoleon’s campaigns naturally gave rise to the question of man’s right to take human life. Russians in particular experienced Napoleon’s army firsthand: Napoleon invaded Russia with 600,000 men, of whom 410,000 perished. Raskolnikov measures himself against Napoleon, an outsider who had risen from humble origins, as one who is emancipated from customary ideas and moral scruples. In Père Goriot, Rastignac’s would-be mentor, Jacques Collin, preaches Napoleonism to him: “In every million of this higher livestock, there are perhaps a dozen daredevils who stand above everything, even the law. I am one of them. If you are above the ruck, go straight forward” (p. 110). Collin sees himself as a Napoleon among his fellow thieves.

In the course of Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov gives a series of different reasons for committing murder but finally understands that it is because he wanted to see if he was “above the common ruck.” He is ashamed that he is unable to kill even such a “louse” as the pawnbroker without suffering for it horribly. His would-be mentor, Svidrigailov, does in fact attain Raskolnikov’s model of superman; he can apparently sacrifice human life without regret. The novel is conceived as a demonstration of the error of their ideas.

The parallels between the casts of characters in Père Goriot and Crime and Punishment are systematic: In both, young law students from the provinces leave beloved mothers and sisters at home; in the capital they are torn between compassion, whose objects are Goriot and Marmeladov, and immorality, represented by Vautrin and Svidrigailov.

Throughout, Dostoevsky takes what is literal in Balzac and renders it metaphorically, metaphysically. Vautrin plans to go to America to become a slave owner and start a tobacco plantation; Svidrigailov, when he speaks of going to America, is contemplating suicide. Dostoevsky thus presents two variants of false salvation, a literal journey and a figurative journey to the other world.

This pattern governs the many correspondences between the two novels. The heroes’ sisters are part of Rastignac’s and Raskolnikov’s initial motivations for their respective crimes. Each hero, while in the capital, receives a letter from his village home; Rastignac calls his sisters “angels,” just as Raskolnikov’s mother calls Raskolnikov’s sister, Dunia, an angel. Rastignac’s mother tells him “Love your aunt; I won’t tell you all she’s done for you . . . ”; Raskolnikov’s mother writes, “Love Dunia your sister, Rodia; love her as she loves you and understand that she loves you beyond everything, more than herself ” (p. 40). Rastignac’s sisters are happy to sacrifice their savings out of their ecstatic love of their brother; Raskolnikov’s mother writes that Dunia is prepared to sacrifice her entire life for Raskolnikov by marrying Luzhin, a man she cannot love. Dunia gives her brother not material wealth but selfless love. What is material in Balzac becomes spiritual in Dostoevsky.

Goriot and Marmeladov are similarly obsessed outcasts who are responsible for their own misery. They are guilt-ridden and driven to confession and self-punishment. Dostoevsky’s recasting of the material aspect of human motives is particularly striking in his description of Marmeladov’s death.