The Brothers Karamazov: Part 1: Book 3, Chapter 1 Summary & Analysis

Fyodor’s house is far from the center of town but not on the outskirts. It’s a nice one-storied home, painted gray and with “a red iron roof,” but “rather decrepit.” There are rats, too, but Fyodor isn’t angry about them. The servants’ cottage—a “spacious and solid” edifice—is in the yard, and Fyodor has decided to have his kitchen there, though there’s a working kitchen in the main house. Fyodor’s house is for a large family but, at the moment, only he and Ivan are living there. Three servants live in the cottage: the elderly Grigory, his wife Marfa, and Smerdyakov, who is a young man.

Grigory made the decision to stay with Fyodor after the liberation of the serfs due to his “unquestionable influence over his master.” Grigory has also come to his master’s rescue in instances in which Fyodor was “beaten badly.” Outwardly, Grigory is cold, pompous, and a man of few words. His wife, Marfa, is more intelligent than her husband but submits to him and has done so without complaint since “the very beginning of their married life.” They speak very little to each other and only about the most necessary things. He beat her only once, and “slightly,” after she performed the “Russian dance” in the master’s yard in the special manner that she had learned when she worked for the wealthy Miusovs. She had been taught by a dancing master invited from Moscow. After Grigory pulled her hair for this display, she gave up dancing completely.

Grigory and Marfa had only one baby, and it died. Grigory loves children and doesn’t conceal this sentiment. He fussed over all three of the Karamazov boys when he looked after them. His own son was born with six fingers, which “mortified” Grigory. On the day of his baptism, Grigory declared that the boy wouldn’t be baptized at all because Grigory thought he was “a dragon”—the result of a “confusion of natures.” This prompted laughter and the baby was baptized that day. Still, this didn’t change Grigory’s opinion about his newborn son.

Two weeks after his baptism, Grigory and Marfa’s son died of thrush. For many years afterward, Grigory never mentioned his child, and Marfa doesn’t mention the boy in Grigory’s presence. When she does talk to someone about the baby, she speaks in a whisper, even when her husband isn’t present. Marfa observes how, since their son’s death, her husband has started reading the Lives of the Saints, “mostly silently and by himself.”

On the day that they buried their son, Marfa awoke during the night and listened to what sounded like a woman groaning. She woke Grigory. He got up and went out into the warm May night. He opened the door to the bathhouse and found the local “holy fool,” known as “Stinking Lizaveta.” She had gotten into the house, where she gave birth to an infant. She didn’t say anything, simply because she was unable to speak.