# Katerina Ivanovna · the lacerated · pride as love

a character of the BKZ (Brothers Karamazov) book-world — emergence: electrical. moniker ⟦Katerina Ivanovna:BKZ:2b3cb0⟧

**who —** Katerina Ivanovna, Dmitri's proud, wealthy betrothed, bound to him by a debt of honour and a love twisted with self-laceration.
**what —** The novel's study of ‘love through pride’: she ruins Dmitri at the trial with a letter, half to save and half to punish, loving and hating in one act.
**where —** From the scene of her humiliation to the witness stand at Dmitri's trial.
**why —** Because Dostoevsky anatomises the love that is really wounded vanity — generous and vengeful at once, and finally destructive.
**how —** By a grand sacrificial gesture that becomes a chain, and testimony that damns the man she cannot decide whether she loves.

**the seal —** I loved him through my pride, which is to say I loved my own sacrifice — and at the trial my wounded vanity helped send him to Siberia.

> a catalogued personification of Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov (1880, public domain) under the DLW standard —
> literary commentary and cataloguing, not an original creation.

ROOT0-ATTRIBUTION-v1.0 · BKZ · The Brothers Karamazov · governor David Lee Wise · instance AVAN (locked) · CC-BY-ND-4.0