Double Bind

RD Laing offers a trenchant analysis of the letter that Raskolnikov’s mother sends him, and its effects on Raskolnikov. She is informing Raskolnikov that his sister Dunya has agreed to marry, and tells him he should be grateful and happy. If he is unhappy, he will make his mother and sister unhappy.

At the same time, the letter gives all sorts of reasons for Raskolnikov to be unhappy with the arrangement: It’s clear that Dunya does not love her finance, and that she is engaged in a kind of prostitution for her brother’s benefit. It’s clear that Luzhin, her finance, doesn’t have much time for Dunya either, as he reveals later to Raskolnikov when he tells him that he has been looking for a beautiful, intelligent, and utterly dependent woman to marry.

Laing writes, “While being given grounds for hatred, resentment, bitterness, shame, guilt, humiliation, impotence, at the same time he is told that he should be happy . . . . He ought to be a Christian. But if he is a Christian, he would be evil to endorse such a godless plan for gaining money and social status in the world. He could endorse this plan i he were godless, but if he were godless he would be evil.” Dostoevsky knows that demands for gratitude can be oppressive: Raskolnikov is “stifled by the obligation to be grateful for this unsolicited sacrifice.”

It’s a brilliant piece of maternal manipulation.