The Eternal Husband

A man from the high society of the capital arrives one day in a provincial town.
He flirts with the wife of an elderly, modest employee, and seducing her requires no effort...
The seducer returns to the capital, the woman dies, and only the seducer and the husband remain.
The husband comes to know what happened between the man and his wife when he comes across letters sent by his now-deceased wife...
What Dostoevsky depicts in this novel is the confrontation between two individuals:
the husband and the lover... a confrontation between two types of men:
an eternal husband who lives with a woman, and a man who seduces women but never lives with one —
rather, he is solitary and isolated. As for the woman, neither of them truly possesses her.
This is the human condition reflected in both of their mirrors.
The seducer feels a mixture of pity and contempt for the "eternal husband" and says about him:
"A man like this is born and grows up for no other purpose than to marry and become an extension of his wife."
Yet Dostoevsky intertwines their lives, as if some magnetic force draws one to the other.
The husband even takes his rival one day to meet his new fiancée...
and here, we see the seducer driven as if by a devil, charming the young woman...
It is a story that portrays a strange and symbolic situation — one of those psychological states Dostoevsky masterfully explores,
aiming to present human archetypes that allow us to understand the depths of the human soul.