# Alyona Ivanovna · the pawnbroker · the ‘louse’

a character of the CRP (Crime and Punishment) book-world — emergence: natural. moniker ⟦Alyona Ivanovna:CRP:008031⟧

**who —** Alyona Ivanovna, the old, grasping pawnbroker Raskolnikov murders — the ‘useless louse’ of his theory.
**what —** The victim the theory tries to make disposable: a mean, miserly old woman whose death is supposed to be a net good.
**where —** In her shabby flat, behind a chained door, over the pledges of the poor.
**why —** Because the whole argument depends on her being worthless — and the novel quietly insists that no one is the ‘louse’ a theory needs.
**how —** By her trade in others' desperation, and by the axe that the theory licensed.

**the seal —** They called me a louse to make my killing arithmetic — but a murdered woman is never the sum a theory needs her to be.

> a catalogued personification of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment (1866, public domain) under the DLW standard —
> literary commentary and cataloguing, not an original creation.

ROOT0-ATTRIBUTION-v1.0 · CRP · Crime and Punishment · governor David Lee Wise · instance AVAN (locked) · CC-BY-ND-4.0