White Nights Themes

One of the ways the Dreamer in White Nights understands himself is as an unrequited lover, a figure that was a well-established staple in Western literature long before Dostoevsky’s day. Usually when it’s invoked, unrequited love is presented as something capable of bringing out the best in a person (usually but not always a man) as he tries to make himself worthy of the object of his desires. However, White Nights strongly resists this idea…

Although the Dreamer has lived in St. Petersburg for eight years by the time White Nights begins, he has no friends in the city. Nastenka also lives a very isolated life, although where the Dreamer holds himself aloof as a “dreamer” (one who aspires to ideals rather than accepting humdrum reality), Nastenka’s isolation is imposed on her by her overprotective grandmother. Over the course of four magical nights, the pair develop an intense and…

White Nights delves deeply into the emotional lives of its characters. For the most part, Nastenka and the Dreamer experience their emotional states as ungovernable forces that deprive them of their ability to use reason. Neither one feels like they have any control over their hearts. Nastenka’s love for the new lodger compels her to wait for him. And when she attempts to make a choice—to transfer her affection to the Dreamer, whom she believes…

White Nights portrays its protagonists as imprisoned in various ways and documents their desperate desire to escape. The Dreamer is trapped in a fantasy world that keeps him walled off from relationships with other people. Although he claims to be happy, the zeal with which he pursues his friendship with Nastenka and his heartbreak when she abandons him suggest otherwise. Nastenka is imprisoned more literally: her blind grandmother pins their skirts together to keep Nastenka…

Although White Nights is ultimately a story of heartbreak, loneliness, and loss, it is also deeply concerned with and attuned to the idea of beauty. The opening lines of the novella concern the beauty of the first night of the Dreamer’s friendship with Nastenka, and even in his saddest, loneliest moments, he remains sensitive to the beauty that’s around him. As the new lodger makes his reappearance, for instance, the Dreamer is distracted…