W: LP: GRP: FD: PFOS (Poor Folk & other stories)

There are plenty of write-ups on this story, so I won't go into heavy analysis. I find this story interesting because Fyodor Dostoevsky creates a romance using the technique of correspondence between two people to create the story in the mind of the reader. This story is what I would almost call an anti-romance or to use the Greek classification, a tragedy. The two main characters, an older writer and a young seamstress, are both profoundly poor, and they live across a courtyard from one another in what we would call a tenement. The courtyard is not that large but it still serves as a metaphor for the gulf between the two that prevents them from coming together to form a couple and a family. The barriers are insurmountable, but the affection can't die.

I don't know if FD intended to purposely make a social commentary, but because of the realism of the story about the sordid conditions of those on the bottom of society, this short novella serves to slap the complacent in the face about "how the other half lives" or in the real nature of the case, how the other 90% lives. Perhaps almost depressing, nevertheless, the story shows the real humanity of the characters and how they grasp at so little for hope and comfort. If one can take it, the story is a "must-read".