Nastasya Filippovna Barashkova (pre-reform and post-reform Russian: Настасья Филипповна Барашкова, romanized: Nastásʹya Filíppovna Baráshkova) is the principal heroine of Fyodor Dostoevsky's 1869 novel The Idiot.
"[3] Myshkin, himself a pure-hearted man, represents for her this second voice, and he unreservedly affirms her innocence even when she is fully immersed in her destructive role as the corrupted and condemned woman.
Totsky has offered a large sum of money for the arranged marriage, but Nastasya Filippovna distrusts Ganya's motives and is aware that his family disapproves of her.
She deliberately increases the tension in the room by mocking them and behaving insultingly, and when Rogozhin suddenly arrives with a retinue of drunken rogues, she laughingly encourages his inebriated attempts to buy her away from Ganya.
In the stunned aftermath, Nastasya Filippovna maintains, somewhat less assuredly, her sarcastic tone, and Myshkin reproaches her with feeling: "Aren't you ashamed?
In the presence of all the interested parties and a number of other guests (including Myshkin, who has turned up uninvited), she is to announce her decision on the proposed marriage.
She is temporarily stunned as she realizes that Myshkin is the embodiment of her long dreamed-of innocence, but quickly falls back into her destructive persona.
According to Joseph Frank: "Facing the insurmountable contradiction of inner purity and her outward disgrace, Nastasya Filippovna as a character is irremediably doomed, and she will function to bring down 'her saviour', the Prince, in her own tragic end.
Although Rogozhin continues his tortured pursuit of Nastasya Filippovna and maintains an ambivalent friendship with Myshkin, he shows himself to be capable of doing violence to both of them.
In Parts 2 and 3 the main narrative focus shifts to the second triangle, in which Nastasya Filippovna plays a secondary but essential role in the course taken by the relationship between the Prince and Aglaya Epanchin.
She seeks, largely successfully, to publicly disgrace an apparent suitor to Aglaya—the Epanchins' friend Yevgeny Pavlovich, and writes long letters to Aglaya telling her she is in love with her and pleading with her to marry Myshkin.
Aglaya interprets this as an indication that Nastasya Filippovna is in love with Myshkin herself, and is trying to keep a hold on him by playing the role of tragic victim.
Overcome, not for the first time, with the pain and despair in Nastasya Filippovna's face, Myshkin turns to Aglaya and reproaches her for the attack.