Dostoevsky: Demons discussion

Dennis Abram's synopsis of "The Last Peregrination of Stepan" ...

https://projectdblog.wordpress.com/20...

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My discussion points:

I couldn't recall when the gospel-selling woman was introduced earlier in the story, though Stepan mentions something that sounds like a scandal where she had come to town and had possibly been mistreated.

I noticed that the ending of Stepan's chapter has the echoing of the "doubles" or rivals in love theme that Dostoevsky includes in other earlier works , where two rivals for love somehow reconcile with each other showing some kind of extreme sense of magnanimity (this is something Rene Girard writes a lot about in Resurrection from Underground). In this case, neither Sofia the Bible-seller nor Mrs. Stavrogin hold anything against each other in the end, neither seem jealous for Stepan's love, and Mrs. Stavrogin offers to take in Sofia and join forces selling Bibles with her.

It was interesting that Stepan says he could not live without a woman. I had wondered while I was reading in what ways Dostoevsky may have put parts of his own tendencies in this character, since Karmazinov was meant to resemble his rival at the time, Turgenev.

I didn't realize at first that Dennis Abrams created 3 separate blog entries for this section.

This last one contains a discussion about the role of Stepan in the novel and questions and opinions from several scholars about the nature of Stepan's "confession of faith" at the end:
https://projectdblog.wordpress.com/20...