When I first saw this painting by Makovsky, in which a desperate wife tries to stop her husband from stumbling into a tavern, I pictured a scene from the life of the Marmeladov family

Perhaps the figures in Vladimir Makovsky's painting “I Won't Let You!” of 1892 do not quite match the portrait details of Dostoevsky's characters, but perhaps, had Katerina Ivanovna succeeded in restraining Semyon Zakharovich from his ruinous passion, there would be a few more happy heroes in Russian literature.

Dostoevsky describes Marmeladov, a retired civil servant of over 50 with the rank of titular counsellor, as follows:

He was a man already past fifty, of middle height and stout build, greying, with a large bald patch, with a face yellow, even greenish, and bloated from constant drinking, and with swollen eyelids, from behind which gleamed tiny, slit-like, but lively reddish eyes.

His face was shaved, in the clerkly fashion, but long since, so that a thick bluish stubble had begun to show. And in his manner there really was something solidly clerkly...

He was dressed in an old, utterly tattered black tailcoat, with its buttons dropping off. Only one still hung on somehow, and it was by this one that he fastened himself, evidently wishing to keep up the proprieties. From under his nankeen waistcoat stuck out a shirt front, all crumpled, soiled and stained

...on his clothes and even in his hair here and there clung stalks of hay. It was very likely that he had not undressed or washed for five days. His hands especially were dirty, greasy, red, with black nails...

Katerina Ivanovna, “the daughter of a court counsellor and knight of the order, and therefore in truth almost a colonel's daughter”, a woman of about 30, “was indeed no match for Marmeladov…”.

… I… am afraid of her eyes… yes… her eyes… I am afraid of the red patches on her cheeks too… and of her breathing, besides… Have you seen how people breathe in this illness… when their feelings are stirred?...

There was so much that was pitiful, so much suffering in this face, twisted with pain, withered and consumptive, in these dried lips, caked with blood...

..on Katerina Ivanovna is her only dress, a dark calico one with stripes.