How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
"Oh, undoubtedly, this person wished somehow, and for some reason, to do Evgeny Pavlovich a bad turn, by attributing to him—before witnesses—qualities which he neither has nor can have," replied Prince S. drily enough.
Muiskhin looked disturbed, but continued to gaze intently and questioningly into Prince S.'s face. The latter, however, remained silent.
"Then it was not simply a matter of bills?" Muishkin said at last, with some impatience. "It was not as she said?" (2.11.12-14)
So, yeah, Radomsky turns out to be not actually quite so innocent of the whole embezzlement situation, right? But Nastasya is also pretty guilty—she is acting under orders from Lebedev, who for some reason knows about Radomsky's suspiciously well-timed resignation from the army. So do we feel bad for Radomsky and how this yelling-from-the-carriage incident derails his thing with Aglaya?
Quote #8
"I want to be brave, and be afraid of nobody. I don't want to go to their balls and things—I want to do good. I have long desired to run away, for I have been kept shut up for twenty years, and they are always trying to marry me off. I wanted to run away when I was fourteen years old—I was a little fool then, I know—but now I have worked it all out, and I have waited for you to tell me about foreign countries. I have never seen a single Gothic cathedral. I must go to Rome; I must see all the museums; I must study in Paris. All this last year I have been preparing and reading forbidden books. Alexandra and Adelaida are allowed to read anything they like, but I mayn't."
[…]
[The prince] could not believe that this was the same haughty young girl who had once so proudly shown him Ganya's letter. He could not understand how that proud and austere beauty could show herself to be such an utter child—a child who probably did not even now understand some words.
"Have you always lived at home, Aglaya Ivanovna?" he asked. "I mean, have you never been to school, or college, or anything?"
"No—never—nowhere! I've been at home all my life, corked up in a bottle; and they expect me to be married straight out of it." (3.8.64-75)
Compare this scene to the one where Nastasya shows up to confront Totsky. Here, we also have a sudden transformation, and the prince also wonders who this person is in front of him who seems nothing like the one he has knows all this time. In this case however, the prince thinks Aglaya is regressing into childhood, whereas Nastasya was clearly busting out of her childhood shell into adulthood. But are these really childish requests on Aglaya's part? None of what she is saying sounds all that crazy to us. And hey, she actually ends up doing exactly what she says she wants to do, right?
Quote #9
[W]hen the whole essence of an ordinary person's nature lies in his perpetual and unchangeable commonplaceness; and when in spite of all his endeavours to do something out of the common, this person ends, eventually, by remaining in his unbroken line of routine—[…]. [A] type of commonplaceness which will not for the world, if it can help it, be contented, but strains and yearns to be something original and independent, without the slightest possibility of being so.
[…]
Such were, for instance, Varvara Ardalionovna Ptitsyn, her husband, and her brother, Ganya. There is nothing so annoying as to be fairly rich, of a fairly good family, pleasing presence, average education, to be "not stupid," kind-hearted, and yet to have no talent at all, no originality, not a single idea of one's own—to be, in fact, "just like everyone else."
[Ganya] was from head to foot permeated and saturated with the longing to be original. This class, as I have said above, is far less happy. For the "clever commonplace" person, though he may possibly imagine himself a man of genius and originality, none the less has within his heart the deathless worm of suspicion and doubt; and this doubt sometimes brings a clever man to despair. (4.1.2-12)
It's kind of interesting to think of unoriginality as a form of innocence. You know, a person who is innocent of new ideas or opinions. What does this formulation reveal about Ganya?