“Both Together”: Scenes of the Encounter of Two Rivals in F. M. Dostoevsky’s Novels

The article examines the recurring plot of the heroines’ meeting in the novels of F. M. Dostoevsky — the “scenes of two rivals.” An analysis of three similar episodes from different works (“Humiliated and insulted,” “The Idiot”, “The Brothers Karamazov”) allowed us to conclude that they are all associated with a dueling context, and the plot of the “women’s verbal duel” is not accidentally, but consistently implemented by the author, since, first of all, it includes the culmination of the love conflict and the confrontation of the heroines; secondly, it develops the conceptual line of the work. The key features of such scenes were identified as: specific dueling vocabulary, special roles of characters (“duelists” and “seconds”), dueling atmosphere, “false ending.” These episodes are related to the carnival nature of Dostoevsky’s artistic world, analyzed by M. M. Bakhtin, because the “scenes of two rivals” are characterized by certain features of the carnival worldview, such as: the theatrical nature of the “verbal duel,” the erasure of social hierarchical barriers between the participants in the conflict, a special eccentricity in the behavior of the heroines, familiarity of attitudes to the subject of thought and to the truth itself, the phenomenon of carnival laughter, features of “Socratic dialogue,” ease and rapidity of changes in the people’s destinies and life situations. Thus, Dostoevsky's women's duel is not just a conversation, but a carnivalized dialogue. This dialogue is not only external, focused on the plot conflict, but also internal: the dilemma of each individual dispute is the struggle of different types of love, embodied in dichotomous female images.