Poor Folk

Fyodor Dostoevsky's Poor Folk is told through letters exchanged by Makar Devushkin, an impoverished copyist, and Varvara Dobroselova, a younger relative living across the street in St. Petersburg. Their correspondence creates an intimacy that cramped rooms, hunger, and social embarrassment repeatedly threaten. Makar spends beyond his means on gifts for Varvara, seeking dignity through generosity even as colleagues ridicule his clothes and position.

Varvara's letters reveal losses that preceded her current poverty. After her parents die, she suffers under Anna Fyodorovna's control and remembers her friendship with the sickly student Pokrovsky. Books become part of both characters' emotional lives: they offer connection, but a story resembling Makar's own circumstances also wounds his pride.

Small improvements never remove their insecurity. Help from Makar's employer briefly eases his debts, yet Varvara accepts a proposal from the wealthy Mr. Bykov, whose resources promise escape at a troubling personal cost. Preparations for her departure transform the letters from mutual support into a record of separation. The novel examines how poverty shapes affection, self-respect, and choice, giving bureaucratic and domestic hardship the force of an emotional tragedy.