feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Brothers Karamazov/section_0_part_4.txt
feat_book_id: The Brothers Karamazov.book 1.chapter 3
feat_summary_id: book 1, chapter 3
feat_summary: {"name": "book 1, Chapter 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section1/", "summary": "Second Marriage, Second Children Fyodor Pavlovich remarries soon after getting rid of four-year-old Dmitri. He stays married for about eight years. His wife, Sofia Ivanovna, is a sixteen-year-old orphan from another province, where Fyodor Pavlovich has traveled on a business trip. Despite his drunken and debauched lifestyle, Fyodor Pavlovich has handled his investments shrewdly, and his fortune continues to grow. Fyodor Pavlovich convinces Sofia to elope with him against the wishes of her guardian, and Fyodor Pavlovich treats her deplorably, openly holding orgies with other women in the house, right under her nose. As a result of Fyodor Pavlovich's ill treatment, Sofia becomes nervous and hysterical, until her husband begins calling her \"the shrieker. Despite her instability, Sofia gives birth to two sons, Ivan and Alexei, who is nicknamed Alyosha. When Alyosha is four, Sofia dies, and the two boys fall into the care of the same servant who briefly had charge of Dmitri. Their mother's former guardian, a general's widow, then takes them in. The widow soon dies, but leaves funds for the education of Alyosha and Ivan. As the boys grow older, in the care of their benefactress's heir, Ivan becomes a brilliant student, gaining notoriety in literary circles for an article he writes about ecclesiastical courts. Eventually Ivan moves back to his father's town to live with his father, despite having been ashamed of him all his life. This bizarre circumstance is partially arranged by Dmitri, who, after being told about his ruined inheritance, has requested that his brother join him and their father, hoping that Ivan might help to mediate their dispute", "analysis": ""}
text: Chapter III. The Second Marriage And The Second Family
  
  
  Very shortly after getting his four-year-old Mitya off his hands Fyodor
  Pavlovitch married a second time. His second marriage lasted eight years.
  He took this second wife, Sofya Ivanovna, also a very young girl, from
  another province, where he had gone upon some small piece of business in
  company with a Jew. Though Fyodor Pavlovitch was a drunkard and a vicious
  debauchee he never neglected investing his capital, and managed his
  business affairs very successfully, though, no doubt, not over-
  scrupulously. Sofya Ivanovna was the daughter of an obscure deacon, and
  was left from childhood an orphan without relations. She grew up in the
  house of a general's widow, a wealthy old lady of good position, who was
  at once her benefactress and tormentor. I do not know the details, but I
  have only heard that the orphan girl, a meek and gentle creature, was once
  cut down from a halter in which she was hanging from a nail in the loft,
  so terrible were her sufferings from the caprice and everlasting nagging
  of this old woman, who was apparently not bad-hearted but had become an
  insufferable tyrant through idleness.
  
  Fyodor Pavlovitch made her an offer; inquiries were made about him and he
  was refused. But again, as in his first marriage, he proposed an elopement
  to the orphan girl. There is very little doubt that she would not on any
  account have married him if she had known a little more about him in time.
  But she lived in another province; besides, what could a little girl of
  sixteen know about it, except that she would be better at the bottom of
  the river than remaining with her benefactress. So the poor child
  exchanged a benefactress for a benefactor. Fyodor Pavlovitch did not get a
  penny this time, for the general's widow was furious. She gave them
  nothing and cursed them both. But he had not reckoned on a dowry; what
  allured him was the remarkable beauty of the innocent girl, above all her
  innocent appearance, which had a peculiar attraction for a vicious
  profligate, who had hitherto admired only the coarser types of feminine
  beauty.
  
  "Those innocent eyes slit my soul up like a razor," he used to say
  afterwards, with his loathsome snigger. In a man so depraved this might,
  of course, mean no more than sensual attraction. As he had received no
  dowry with his wife, and had, so to speak, taken her "from the halter," he
  did not stand on ceremony with her. Making her feel that she had "wronged"
  him, he took advantage of her phenomenal meekness and submissiveness to
  trample on the elementary decencies of marriage. He gathered loose women
  into his house, and carried on orgies of debauchery in his wife's
  presence. To show what a pass things had come to, I may mention that
  Grigory, the gloomy, stupid, obstinate, argumentative servant, who had
  always hated his first mistress, Adelaida Ivanovna, took the side of his
  new mistress. He championed her cause, abusing Fyodor Pavlovitch in a
  manner little befitting a servant, and on one occasion broke up the revels
  and drove all the disorderly women out of the house. In the end this
  unhappy young woman, kept in terror from her childhood, fell into that
  kind of nervous disease which is most frequently found in peasant women
  who are said to be "possessed by devils." At times after terrible fits of
  hysterics she even lost her reason. Yet she bore Fyodor Pavlovitch two
  sons, Ivan and Alexey, the eldest in the first year of marriage and the
  second three years later. When she died, little Alexey was in his fourth
  year, and, strange as it seems, I know that he remembered his mother all
  his life, like a dream, of course. At her death almost exactly the same
  thing happened to the two little boys as to their elder brother, Mitya.
  They were completely forgotten and abandoned by their father. They were
  looked after by the same Grigory and lived in his cottage, where they were
  found by the tyrannical old lady who had brought up their mother. She was
  still alive, and had not, all those eight years, forgotten the insult done
  her. All that time she was obtaining exact information as to her Sofya's
  manner of life, and hearing of her illness and hideous surroundings she
  declared aloud two or three times to her retainers:
  
  "It serves her right. God has punished her for her ingratitude."
  
  Exactly three months after Sofya Ivanovna's death the general's widow
  suddenly appeared in our town, and went straight to Fyodor Pavlovitch's
  house. She spent only half an hour in the town but she did a great deal.
  It was evening. Fyodor Pavlovitch, whom she had not seen for those eight
  years, came in to her drunk. The story is that instantly upon seeing him,
  without any sort of explanation, she gave him two good, resounding slaps
  on the face, seized him by a tuft of hair, and shook him three times up
  and down. Then, without a word, she went straight to the cottage to the
  two boys. Seeing, at the first glance, that they were unwashed and in
  dirty linen, she promptly gave Grigory, too, a box on the ear, and
  announcing that she would carry off both the children she wrapped them
  just as they were in a rug, put them in the carriage, and drove off to her
  own town. Grigory accepted the blow like a devoted slave, without a word,
  and when he escorted the old lady to her carriage he made her a low bow
  and pronounced impressively that, "God would repay her for the orphans."
  "You are a blockhead all the same," the old lady shouted to him as she
  drove away.
  
  Fyodor Pavlovitch, thinking it over, decided that it was a good thing, and
  did not refuse the general's widow his formal consent to any proposition
  in regard to his children's education. As for the slaps she had given him,
  he drove all over the town telling the story.
  
  It happened that the old lady died soon after this, but she left the boys
  in her will a thousand roubles each "for their instruction, and so that
  all be spent on them exclusively, with the condition that it be so
  portioned out as to last till they are twenty-one, for it is more than
  adequate provision for such children. If other people think fit to throw
  away their money, let them." I have not read the will myself, but I heard
  there was something queer of the sort, very whimsically expressed. The
  principal heir, Yefim Petrovitch Polenov, the Marshal of Nobility of the
  province, turned out, however, to be an honest man. Writing to Fyodor
  Pavlovitch, and discerning at once that he could extract nothing from him
  for his children's education (though the latter never directly refused but
  only procrastinated as he always did in such cases, and was, indeed, at
  times effusively sentimental), Yefim Petrovitch took a personal interest
  in the orphans. He became especially fond of the younger, Alexey, who
  lived for a long while as one of his family. I beg the reader to note this
  from the beginning. And to Yefim Petrovitch, a man of a generosity and
  humanity rarely to be met with, the young people were more indebted for
  their education and bringing up than to any one. He kept the two thousand
  roubles left to them by the general's widow intact, so that by the time
  they came of age their portions had been doubled by the accumulation of
  interest. He educated them both at his own expense, and certainly spent
  far more than a thousand roubles upon each of them. I won't enter into a
  detailed account of their boyhood and youth, but will only mention a few
  of the most important events. Of the elder, Ivan, I will only say that he
  grew into a somewhat morose and reserved, though far from timid boy. At
  ten years old he had realized that they were living not in their own home
  but on other people's charity, and that their father was a man of whom it
  was disgraceful to speak. This boy began very early, almost in his infancy
  (so they say at least), to show a brilliant and unusual aptitude for
  learning. I don't know precisely why, but he left the family of Yefim
  Petrovitch when he was hardly thirteen, entering a Moscow gymnasium, and
  boarding with an experienced and celebrated teacher, an old friend of
  Yefim Petrovitch. Ivan used to declare afterwards that this was all due to
  the "ardor for good works" of Yefim Petrovitch, who was captivated by the
  idea that the boy's genius should be trained by a teacher of genius. But
  neither Yefim Petrovitch nor this teacher was living when the young man
  finished at the gymnasium and entered the university. As Yefim Petrovitch
  had made no provision for the payment of the tyrannical old lady's legacy,
  which had grown from one thousand to two, it was delayed, owing to
  formalities inevitable in Russia, and the young man was in great straits
  for the first two years at the university, as he was forced to keep
  himself all the time he was studying. It must be noted that he did not
  even attempt to communicate with his father, perhaps from pride, from
  contempt for him, or perhaps from his cool common sense, which told him
  that from such a father he would get no real assistance. However that may
  have been, the young man was by no means despondent and succeeded in
  getting work, at first giving sixpenny lessons and afterwards getting
  paragraphs on street incidents into the newspapers under the signature of
  "Eye-Witness." These paragraphs, it was said, were so interesting and
  piquant that they were soon taken. This alone showed the young man's
  practical and intellectual superiority over the masses of needy and
  unfortunate students of both sexes who hang about the offices of the
  newspapers and journals, unable to think of anything better than
  everlasting entreaties for copying and translations from the French.
  Having once got into touch with the editors Ivan Fyodorovitch always kept
  up his connection with them, and in his latter years at the university he
  published brilliant reviews of books upon various special subjects, so
  that he became well known in literary circles. But only in his last year
  he suddenly succeeded in attracting the attention of a far wider circle of
  readers, so that a great many people noticed and remembered him. It was
  rather a curious incident. When he had just left the university and was
  preparing to go abroad upon his two thousand roubles, Ivan Fyodorovitch
  published in one of the more important journals a strange article, which
  attracted general notice, on a subject of which he might have been
  supposed to know nothing, as he was a student of natural science. The
  article dealt with a subject which was being debated everywhere at the
  time--the position of the ecclesiastical courts. After discussing several
  opinions on the subject he went on to explain his own view. What was most
  striking about the article was its tone, and its unexpected conclusion.
  Many of the Church party regarded him unquestioningly as on their side.
  And yet not only the secularists but even atheists joined them in their
  applause. Finally some sagacious persons opined that the article was
  nothing but an impudent satirical burlesque. I mention this incident
  particularly because this article penetrated into the famous monastery in
  our neighborhood, where the inmates, being particularly interested in the
  question of the ecclesiastical courts, were completely bewildered by it.
  Learning the author's name, they were interested in his being a native of
  the town and the son of "that Fyodor Pavlovitch." And just then it was
  that the author himself made his appearance among us.
  
  Why Ivan Fyodorovitch had come amongst us I remember asking myself at the
  time with a certain uneasiness. This fateful visit, which was the first
  step leading to so many consequences, I never fully explained to myself.
  It seemed strange on the face of it that a young man so learned, so proud,
  and apparently so cautious, should suddenly visit such an infamous house
  and a father who had ignored him all his life, hardly knew him, never
  thought of him, and would not under any circumstances have given him
  money, though he was always afraid that his sons Ivan and Alexey would
  also come to ask him for it. And here the young man was staying in the
  house of such a father, had been living with him for two months, and they
  were on the best possible terms. This last fact was a special cause of
  wonder to many others as well as to me. Pyotr Alexandrovitch Miuesov, of
  whom we have spoken already, the cousin of Fyodor Pavlovitch's first wife,
  happened to be in the neighborhood again on a visit to his estate. He had
  come from Paris, which was his permanent home. I remember that he was more
  surprised than any one when he made the acquaintance of the young man, who
  interested him extremely, and with whom he sometimes argued and not
  without an inner pang compared himself in acquirements.
  
  "He is proud," he used to say, "he will never be in want of pence; he has
  got money enough to go abroad now. What does he want here? Every one can
  see that he hasn't come for money, for his father would never give him
  any. He has no taste for drink and dissipation, and yet his father can't
  do without him. They get on so well together!"
  
  That was the truth; the young man had an unmistakable influence over his
  father, who positively appeared to be behaving more decently and even
  seemed at times ready to obey his son, though often extremely and even
  spitefully perverse.
  
  It was only later that we learned that Ivan had come partly at the request
  of, and in the interests of, his elder brother, Dmitri, whom he saw for
  the first time on this very visit, though he had before leaving Moscow
  been in correspondence with him about an important matter of more concern
  to Dmitri than himself. What that business was the reader will learn fully
  in due time. Yet even when I did know of this special circumstance I still
  felt Ivan Fyodorovitch to be an enigmatic figure, and thought his visit
  rather mysterious.
  
  I may add that Ivan appeared at the time in the light of a mediator
  between his father and his elder brother Dmitri, who was in open quarrel
  with his father and even planning to bring an action against him.
  
  The family, I repeat, was now united for the first time, and some of its
  members met for the first time in their lives. The younger brother,
  Alexey, had been a year already among us, having been the first of the
  three to arrive. It is of that brother Alexey I find it most difficult to
  speak in this introduction. Yet I must give some preliminary account of
  him, if only to explain one queer fact, which is that I have to introduce
  my hero to the reader wearing the cassock of a novice. Yes, he had been
  for the last year in our monastery, and seemed willing to be cloistered
  there for the rest of his life.
  
  
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: book 1, Chapter 3
target: Second Marriage, Second Children Fyodor Pavlovich remarries soon after getting rid of four-year-old Dmitri. He stays married for about eight years. His wife, Sofia Ivanovna, is a sixteen-year-old orphan from another province, where Fyodor Pavlovich has traveled on a business trip. Despite his drunken and debauched lifestyle, Fyodor Pavlovich has handled his investments shrewdly, and his fortune continues to grow. Fyodor Pavlovich convinces Sofia to elope with him against the wishes of her guardian, and Fyodor Pavlovich treats her deplorably, openly holding orgies with other women in the house, right under her nose. As a result of Fyodor Pavlovich's ill treatment, Sofia becomes nervous and hysterical, until her husband begins calling her "the shrieker. Despite her instability, Sofia gives birth to two sons, Ivan and Alexei, who is nicknamed Alyosha. When Alyosha is four, Sofia dies, and the two boys fall into the care of the same servant who briefly had charge of Dmitri. Their mother's former guardian, a general's widow, then takes them in. The widow soon dies, but leaves funds for the education of Alyosha and Ivan. As the boys grow older, in the care of their benefactress's heir, Ivan becomes a brilliant student, gaining notoriety in literary circles for an article he writes about ecclesiastical courts. Eventually Ivan moves back to his father's town to live with his father, despite having been ashamed of him all his life. This bizarre circumstance is partially arranged by Dmitri, who, after being told about his ruined inheritance, has requested that his brother join him and their father, hoping that Ivan might help to mediate their dispute