{"id":526,"date":"2010-02-02T17:51:50","date_gmt":"2010-02-02T16:51:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sarahjyoung.com\/site\/?p=526"},"modified":"2010-06-22T11:27:19","modified_gmt":"2010-06-22T10:27:19","slug":"sonia-another-thought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sarahjyoung.com\/site\/2010\/02\/02\/sonia-another-thought\/","title":{"rendered":"Sonia: another thought"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>William Burnham&#8217;s article, &#8216;The Legal Context and Contributions of Dostoevsky&#8217;s <em>Crime and Punishment<\/em>,&#8217;\u00a0<em>Michigan Law Review<\/em>, 100.6 (2002), 1227-1248, suggests another dimension to Sonia&#8217;s role as a registered prostitute. Burnham states that while confession and eye-witness testimony were considered the most reliable forms of proof in Russia at the time, &#8216;the law disqualified several classes of people from serving as witnesses&#8217; (p. 1234), including not only all sorts of criminals, but also, for example, people who were deaf and dumb, and foreigners who were only staying in Russia for a short time. The status of prostitutes under this law seems to be a little uncertain (p. 1237 n.), but it does seem to be clear that even if Sonia was competent to testify, she would not have been considered a reliable witness. This, I think, puts a rather different complexion on Raskolnikov&#8217;s decision to confess to her &#8212; a decision he seems to make before he has even committed the murders. It&#8217;s as though he designs it as a consequence-free act, a means of unburdening his conscience without any legal implications, which makes him look far more calculating than I am accustomed to assuming. Dostoevsky&#8217;s narrative makes it very easy for us to sympathize with Raskolnikov, but moments like this make you realize what a disturbing process that is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>William Burnham&#8217;s article, &#8216;The Legal Context and Contributions of Dostoevsky&#8217;s Crime and Punishment,&#8217;\u00a0Michigan Law Review, 100.6 (2002), 1227-1248, suggests another dimension to Sonia&#8217;s role as a registered prostitute. Burnham states that while confession and eye-witness testimony were considered the most reliable forms of proof in Russia at the time, &#8216;the law disqualified several classes of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[91,528,32],"class_list":["post-526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dostoevsky","tag-crime-and-punishment","tag-dostoevsky","tag-women"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2MwXo-8u","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahjyoung.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahjyoung.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahjyoung.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahjyoung.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahjyoung.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=526"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/sarahjyoung.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1487,"href":"https:\/\/sarahjyoung.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526\/revisions\/1487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahjyoung.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahjyoung.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahjyoung.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}