Crime and Punishment (Audio Connoisseur Edition) characters

Appears from the start

An impoverished former student living alone in St Petersburg. Proud, withdrawn, and feverishly preoccupied with whether an exceptional person may cross ordinary moral limits, he visits a pawnbroker while concealing the purpose of his careful observations.

Also known as Alyona Ivanovna

Appears from the start

An elderly pawnbroker from whom Raskolnikov borrows small sums against his possessions. She is suspicious, exacting, and the subject of the disturbing plan taking shape in his mind.

First appears in chapter 2

A disgraced former government clerk whom Raskolnikov meets in a tavern. Talkative and painfully conscious of his failures, he has drunk away money needed by his desperately poor family.

Also known as Sonia, Sonya

First appears in chapter 2

Marmeladov's quiet elder daughter. Her family's poverty has forced her into registered prostitution, yet her father describes her as compassionate and willing to sacrifice herself for others.

First appears in chapter 2

Marmeladov's proud, ill and overburdened wife. Born into a more secure social position, she struggles to maintain order and dignity while caring for three young children in severe poverty.

Also known as Dunya

First appears in chapter 3

Raskolnikov's intelligent and resolute younger sister. A former governess, she has accepted a financially advantageous engagement that her brother suspects is another sacrifice made for his benefit.

First appears in chapter 3

Raskolnikov and Dunya's affectionate mother. She lives modestly on a pension, places great hopes in her son, and writes to him with news of Dunya's ordeal as a governess and coming marriage.

First appears in chapter 3

Dunya's prosperous fiancé, a lawyer who values self-reliance and expects gratitude from a wife raised in poverty. Raskolnikov distrusts the controlling assumptions visible in his courtship.

First appears in chapter 3

Dunya's former employer, whose unwanted pursuit placed her in a compromising position in his household. Pulcheria's letter presents him as manipulative and morally dangerous.

Also known as Lizaveta

First appears in chapter 6

The pawnbroker's much younger half-sister, a timid, hardworking woman whom Alyona exploits. Raskolnikov learns by chance that she will be away from their rooms at a predictable time.

Also known as Razumikhin

First appears in chapter 10

Raskolnikov's former university friend, sociable, practical, and generous despite his own limited means. When Raskolnikov falls ill, Razumikhin takes responsibility for his care and tries to reconnect him with ordinary life.

First appears in chapter 10

A doctor and friend of Razumikhin who attends Raskolnikov during his fever. He treats the young man's agitation as an illness but observes his strange reactions closely.

First appears in chapter 9

A police clerk whom Raskolnikov first encounters after being summoned over a debt. Interested in the pawnbroker case, he later becomes the audience for Raskolnikov's reckless attempts to test how much the authorities suspect.

First appears in chapter 19

The examining magistrate responsible for investigating the pawnbroker's murder. Informal and apparently good-humored, he is keenly interested in Raskolnikov's published argument about extraordinary people and crime.