The Style of “Poor Folk” and “The Double”

Extract

In 1845 Dostoevski] made his debut with Poor Folk, a novel in letters. The two correspondents are a very poor government clerk, Makar Alekseevič Devuškin, and the very much younger, impoverished orphan, Varvara Aleksevna Dobroselova. Devuškin, who is a distant relative of the girl, loves her in a disinterested, fatherly fashion in which, nevertheless, there is a slight trace of shy infatuation. He wants to see his Varinka every day. This is possible since they live in neighboring houses. Devuškin fears, however, that his too frequent visits may compromise Varinka in the eyes of her neighbors. Thus he limits his personal visits to a minimum and uses letters as a substitute. This is the motivation for the letter form and the content of the letters. As they are to be a compensation for personal conversations and chats, the letters are not written in a formal style but rather in an unconstrained, conversational manner.