A Gentle Creature
novella by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
"A Gentle Creature" (Russian: Кроткая, romanized: Krotkaya), sometimes also translated as "The Meek One", is a short story by Fyodor Dostoyevsky written in November 1876. A first-person stream of consciousness narrative, the piece comes with the subtitle of "A Fantastic Story", and it chronicles the relationship between a pawnbroker and a girl that frequents his shop. The story was inspired by a news report that Dostoyevsky read in April 1876 about the suicide of a seamstress. Dostoyevsky referred to it as a "meek suicide" that "keeps haunting you for a long time."
Plot summary
The story opens with the narrator in a frenzy about an apparent tragedy that has just befallen his household. His wife has apparently died, as he makes repeated references to her being laid out on a table, presumably lifeless. The narrator proceeds to make an attempt to relate the story to the reader in an effort to make sense of the situation.
The narrator is the owner of a pawnshop, and one of his repeated customers was a young girl of sixteen who always pawns items to earn money to advertise as a governess in the newspaper. The narrator could see that she was in a dire financial situation, and he often gave her much more for her pawned items than they were reasonably worth. The narrator slowly develops an interest in the girl.
The narrator investigates the girl's background, and finds that she is at the mercy of two greedy aunts.
The public source identifies “A Gentle Creature” as novella by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Gentle, Creature and novella.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1215953. VIAF identifies the subject as 308645787. 2 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1876.
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This entry incorporates text from “A Gentle Creature” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.