This is probably the weirdest post I've ever made but here goes:
I have always wondered what escorts/erotic masseuses think of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. Obviously, the majority of sex workers have probably not read it, because most people don't read Russian literature unless they have to. But for the ones who have read it who work in the sex industry, I wonder what they think of the character of Sonya, the very young streetwalker. She was my favourite in the novel because she seemed like the moral core of the novel (self-sacrificing for her loved ones, faithful, etc.). But I can also see how she could be read as a hooker-with-a-heart stereotype. In Lectures on Russian Literature, Nabokov also complained about one scene where Sonya is with Raskolnikov, the axe-murderer protagonist, and it's described something like, "the harlot and the murderer read the Bible by candlelight". Nabokov argued that this was drawing a false moral equivalency between them: Sonya was pressured into prostitution by her stepmother to support her family, whereas Raskolnikov chose to murder someone for money to support himself. I guess I just wonder what sex workers think.
Sorry mods if this is too pretentious and odd a question!
I have always wondered what escorts/erotic masseuses think of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. Obviously, the majority of sex workers have probably not read it, because most people don't read Russian literature unless they have to. But for the ones who have read it who work in the sex industry, I wonder what they think of the character of Sonya, the very young streetwalker. She was my favourite in the novel because she seemed like the moral core of the novel (self-sacrificing for her loved ones, faithful, etc.). But I can also see how she could be read as a hooker-with-a-heart stereotype. In Lectures on Russian Literature, Nabokov also complained about one scene where Sonya is with Raskolnikov, the axe-murderer protagonist, and it's described something like, "the harlot and the murderer read the Bible by candlelight". Nabokov argued that this was drawing a false moral equivalency between them: Sonya was pressured into prostitution by her stepmother to support her family, whereas Raskolnikov chose to murder someone for money to support himself. I guess I just wonder what sex workers think.
Sorry mods if this is too pretentious and odd a question!
I still remember forcing my self to read it in English class 
