Nadezhda Khvoshchinskaya, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and the Psychology of Child Loss

• In Event: 19th-Century Russophone Women Writers I: In Dialogue with Famous Men

Abstract

Infant and child mortality was high in nineteenth-century Russia, and this fact is reflected in the numerous novels and novellas that make reference to child loss. Anna Berman’s paper will explore the way lost children shape family dynamics and the psychology of the survivors in the works of Nadezhda Khvoschinskaya and Fyodor Dostoevsky. The paper will also contextualize these authors’ works amongst those of their peers, such as Tolstoy and Panaeva.

Author

• Anna A. Berman, U of Cambridge (UK)