Fyodor Dostoevsky's first novel, Netochka Nezvanova, written in
1849, remains the least studied and understood of the writer's long
fiction, but it was a seedbed for many topics and themes that
became hallmarks of his major works. Specifically, Netochka
Nezvanova was the first in Dostoevsky's corpus to focus on the
psychology of children and the first to feature a woman in a
leading and narrative role. It was also the first work in Russian
literature to deal with problems of the family. In Heroine Abuse,
Thomas Marullo contends that Netochka Nezvanova also provides a
striking example of what psychologists today call codependency: the
ways-often deviant and destructive-in which individuals bond with
people, places, and things, as well as with images and ideas, to
cope with the vicissitudes of life. Marullo shows how, at age
twenty-eight, Dostoevsky intuited and illustrated the workings of
"relationship addiction" almost a century and a half before it
became the scholarly focus of practitioners of mental health. The
moral monsters, "infernal" women, children-adults, and
adult-children who populate Netochka Nezvanova seek codependence in
people, places, and things, and in images, ideas, and ideals to
satiate cravings for love, dominance, and control, as well as to
indulge in narcissism, sexual perversion, and other aberrant or
alternative behaviors. (Indeed, in no other work would Dostoevsky
examine such phenomena as pedophilia and lesbianism with such
abandon.) Racing from tie to tie, bond to bond, and caught in a
debilitating loop that they claim to detest, but
sadomasochistically enjoy, the characters in Netochka Nezvanova
wreak havoc on themselves and the world. They do so, moreover, with
impunity, their addictions moving them from momentary exultation as
self-styled extraordinary men and women, through prolonged darkness
and despair, and once again, to old and new addictions for physical
and emotional release. Readers of Heroine Abuse will see Netochka
Nezvanova as a timeless model in depicting codependency in the
world of the twenty-first century as it did in St. Petersburg in
1849. Marullo's original work will appeal to scholars and students
of Russian and comparative fiction; to doctors, psychologists, and
therapists; to laymen and women interested in relationship
addiction; and, finally, to codependents and relationship addicts
of all types.
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