Sonya the innocent
From Grazhdanskaya 19 I continue on to Kaznacheyskaya, to Sonya
Marmeladovna's house and the corner where Raskolnikov exchanged a few
words with some whores. A madwoman eats bird seed on Kaznacheyskaya and a
half-blind woman is selling used shoestrings. Dostoyevsky knew his Sonya
well, and the whores are here again in Ploschad Mira, rubbing shoulders
with the other freaks. The official records reveal that in 1868 there
were two-thousand-and-forty-eight prostitutes in St. Petersburg. I say my
farewells to Sonya's virtues and Dostoyevsky's unrealistic psychology.