3.2 Lizaveta Smerdyaschaya
"Born of the devil's son and a saint". Of the saint stumbling upon Hell, away from her guardians, or the son of the Devil lurking in Heaven. There's nothing sacred in the marshy ground to him. Different perspectives, the same cruelty. Irrational, crude evil. "Born of the devil's son and a saint" seems like the introduction of a Byronian hero, but most human suffering wouldn't make a good novel. It's nothing but a distraction for the narrator, an anecdote of the suffering of common people he deems uninteresting. Afterwards, Grigory Vassilievich can only point at the miracle and keep earning his salary the next day.
Treated like little more than a fascinating creature or a human- shaped animal, yet why should we, like the townspeople, necessarily attribute Lizaveta's humbleness to idiocy, just because she cannot justify herself? Would she need to justify herself? Why should her compassion be less believable than the shallow motivation of the atrocity she suffered? I believe Lizaveta came to understand it.
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