Is there a society suitable for Myshkin?

[Big Dante]

The Idiot by Dostoevsky was my first run in with Dostoevsky and his works and it certainly won't be my last. I was interested by the complex messages that were in the book and reflecting upon it this question came to me. Is there a society that Myshkin could live in without being treated as an outcast such as he was throughout The Idiot? He seemed to be mixed within the Russian upperclass of the time where money alone could buy a woman's heart but Myshkin's own good nature did not seem to fit in. Whenever he expressed his opinions he was laughed at and passed off as an idiot when what he was saying was completely legitimate. Perhaps in a middle or lower class his personality would be more suited. Instead of the two women he was torn between he could find someone kind and uneducated such as himself in a different level of society.

[Crass the head]

Good question. I don't know so myself. Not in this world. I think his efforts would certainly be more welcomed in a middle or lower class environment/setting, but even then people are often overtaken by their own cynicism and would thus still treat Myshkin like he is a fool, especially in a capitalist society where holding one's money and preserving one's health take precedent over helping others.

[Gladys]

I think his efforts would certainly be more welcomed in a middle or lower class environment/setting, but even then people are often overtaken by their own cynicism and would thus still treat Myshkin like he is a fool...

Don't we see an instance of this behaviour when the prince talks of his time in Switzerland and his friendship with the plain, destitute, consumptive and disgraced, 20-year-old Marie, befriended by the him and, later, by school-children he had influenced? The schoolmaster Thibaut reacts with hostility.



However, most of the people were angry with me about one and the same thing; but Thibaut simply was jealous of me.