White Nights

Dostoyevsky’s “White Nights” is a tightly framed short story which is divided into six thematically and structurally distinct sections. The story traces the brief, emotionally charged connection between a lonely narrator and a young woman named Nastenka. Set over four nights and a morning in St. Petersburg, the story unfolds as both a personal confession and a meditation on longing, love, and disappointment. The narrative’s emotional arc is shaped by its characters’ inner lives and by the deliberate way Dostoyevsky structures their encounters, shifting between present-tense immediacy and retrospective reflection. 

The structure of the story is one of its defining features. Divided into titled sections, the story invites readers to treat each night as a discrete emotional movement in the narrator’s short-lived romantic fantasy. The addition of “Nastenka’s History” as its own embedded narrative unit reinforces the symmetry between the two characters. While the story progresses chronologically, it also moves inward—each night pulling the characters into deeper vulnerability, followed by the collapse of that intimacy on the final morning. The consistent return to the same setting—the canal embankment—creates a cyclical rhythm that mimics emotional circling: Each night begins in the same place, yet with slightly changed circumstances, new expectations, and shifting emotional stakes.