The Margin

Person

Lizaveta Smerdyastchaya

Also known as Stinking Lizaveta, stinking Lizaveta, Lizaveta.

A speechless town wanderer known by the cruel nickname Stinking Lizaveta. Grigory finds her in Fyodor Pavlovitch's bath-house after hearing groans from the locked garden, and she is dying with a newborn baby beside her. At this first moment she is less a social figure than a shocking presence in the Karamazov household's hidden space.

III-II. Lizaveta

Her history is filled in: the town treats her as an idiot dear to God, gives her clothes and food, and watches over her pregnancy with alarm. Rumor names Fyodor Pavlovitch as the man who wronged her, though certainty is never established.

IX-II. The Alarm

When Marfa wakes at night to groans in the garden, the memory of Lizaveta's earlier night there returns to her in terror.

XII-XII. And There Was No Murder Either

At the trial, Lizaveta is remembered through Smerdyakov's resentful parentage and through the old scandal of his birth.

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The Margin

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Lizaveta Smerdyastchaya