Poor Folk Contd.

Varenka sends her copy book when her benefactor, Makar asks about her past. In that, she writes about how she gets irritated when her neighbour cum tutor, Provsky treats her a child even when she is fifteen. One day, she stealthily goes to his library when he is away. She explains her actions this way..

Why should he care for my friendship and affection? He was a learned man and I so stupid. -I knew nothing and had read nothing, not a single book. I stood looking enviously at the shelves groaning under the weight of all those books. I felt vexed, resentful, and strangely frenzied. I decided to read them all and at once, from the first to the last as quickly as possible. Probably, my idea was that, having learned what he knew, I should be more worthy of his friendship.

It is actually my idea. I haven't read it before. It is my own feeling. Does it always holds true that two can never think alike? I exactly thought like Varenka, but it never came to my mind that I shall capture this feeling so beautifully in words. I am no artist. This is the precise reason, I read the books you read. But Huck and Hell are real coincidence.

Dostoevsky, you are my darling. How well you know a woman's heart! Pages of this book are pearls to me. Each one is precious in its own way. I liked the way Varenka and Makar argue about the books they read.