Perhaps when Stavrogin said that manual labour, the work of a serf, was an idea that had never occured to him.. what he was saying was that being viciously, sadistically threatened every single time he made the slightest attempt to do academic, scholarly work.. the work of a student.. left open the idea that it could be personally fulfiling to do the manual work of a serf instead, as an alternative...

.. and observation from Stephan Strange on Dostoevksy's "The Possessed"...