White Nights

Nastenka is the second prominent character in “White Nights” and the emotional counterpart to the narrator. Like him, she is isolated and deeply in need of connection, but unlike him, she has a defined identity, a specific name, a family role, and a more realistic view of the world. Where the narrator lives in fantasy, Nastenka’s outlook is shaped by experience and constraint. Their differences are most visible in their emotional styles: The narrator romanticizes everything he feels, while Nastenka is more direct, candid, and occasionally playful. Still, they share a vulnerability that allows them to connect quickly and intimately. Both are young, emotionally deprived, and eager to be seen, but Nastenka has a clearer sense of her desires and her capacity to act on them, even when her choices are impulsive or complicated. 

Nastenka’s life is tightly controlled by her blind grandmother, who literally pins their clothing together to keep Nastenka from wandering off. This detail dramatizes the larger forces of restriction that shape her life. As a 17-year-old girl in mid-19th century Russia, Nastenka has little freedom to choose her own path. Her dependency on her grandmother and her desperation for emotional connection reflect the limited agency available to young women in her social position. Nastenka’s name also underscores her relatively powerless status: It is the diminutive form of the name Anastasia—a nickname given to a child. Even her act of running to the lodger with her belongings—an act that defies social norms—is born of emotional frustration and material need, not confident autonomy. Nastenka’s story foregrounds both the personal and societal costs of this kind of repression. 

Structurally, Nastenka also plays a significant narrative role. Her extended monologue in “Nastenka’s History” functions as a framed narrative embedded within the narrator’s own. Nastenka’s voice is distinct—less ornate than the narrator’s, more conversational, and marked by digressions, self-corrections, and emotional honesty. This shift in narrative control also momentarily reorients the emotional center of the story. The choice to let Nastenka tell her own story lends her complexity and credibility, resisting the temptation to reduce her to a romantic object or passive muse.

The lodger—Nastenka’s family’s former tenant and first love—occupies a central position in the plot of “White Nights” while remaining almost entirely off the page. He is never named, never speaks directly, and appears only in the final moments of the story. This absence crates a compelling ambiguity: He is both idealized and distrusted, functioning alternately as a romantic hero and a source of pain. Because readers are only given his story through Nastenka’s recollections and the narrator’s emotional lens, the lodger becomes a blank space onto which competing hopes and fears are projected. He remains emotionally powerful within the narrative precisely because he is never fully present. 

Nastenka initially presents the lodger as kind, thoughtful, and restrained. He sends her books, includes her grandmother in outings, and speaks with apparent respect. When she comes to him in desperation the night before his departure, he behaves with caution and dignity, telling her, “I sweat to you that if I am ever in a position to marry, you shall make my happiness” (53). His promise is portrayed as sincere, and his refusal to bind her or deceive her seems honorable. But his extended silence after returning to St. Petersburg casts doubt on his intentions. Nastenka’s emotional breakdown during this waiting period reveals the intense suffering that even a delayed response can cause. “Not one word! Why, the lowest creature on earth is treated more compassionately” (73), she cries, interpreting his silence as abandonment and betrayal. The lodger is excluded from the emotional intimacy of the narrative, making it difficult to know whether he is a man of integrity. His return at the climax of the story fulfills the letter of his promise—he does, presumably, come back in a position to marry—but the emotional impact of his arrival is disruptive. 

Ultimately, the lodger is both a plot device and a symbol of unresolved tension between fantasy and fulfillment. His presence interrupts the narrator’s dream and anchors Nastenka’s original longing in reality. Whether readers view him as a man of his word or a source of romantic cruelty depends more on emotional allegiance than textual evidence. Dostoyevsky offers no definitive judgment. In this way, the lodger becomes a mirror: What readers see in him may reflect more about themselves than about him.

Nastenka’s grandmother is a strict, overprotective, and sometimes comically portrayed figure whose presence shapes the early course of Nastenka’s life. Blind and elderly, she exerts control not through force, but through rigid, anxious supervision that leaves Nastenka emotionally stifled. Most notably, the grandmother responds to a minor act of rebellion by literally pinning Nastenka’s dress to her own, insisting they remain physically connected while sitting for long hours. This image is both absurd and tragic, highlighting the generational divide between two women and the grandmother’s inability to adapt to her granddaughter’s growing independence. 

From a historical perspective, the grandmother represents a conservative model of womanhood in 19th-century Russia, one shaped by religious values, domestic confinement, and strict moral codes. Her fears about Nastenka’s exposure to the world reflect the limited opportunities and heavy scrutiny placed on young women at the time. Even her distrust of literature—worrying that novels might “seduce virtuous girls” (47)—reflects the cultural anxiety surrounding female education and agency. Though her methods are oppressive, they are also a product of a society that offered women few options outside marriage or family dependence. 

Despite the narrator’s amusement at the grandmother’s habits and superstitions, Nastenka defends her with warmth and loyalty. When the narrator laughs at the image of the women being pinned together, Nastenka cuts him off: “Don’t you laugh at grandmother. I laugh because it’s funny…but yet I am fond of her in a way” (44). Her words reflect ambivalence—she resents the restrictions, but she also recognizes the love and fear behind them. The grandmother’s genuine desire to protect her granddaughter, however misguided, earns Nastenka’s compassion. Her inclusion in Nastenka’s future plans (“We must take granny,” [82]) suggests a relationship built not only on obligation but also enduring care.