Financial Times, February 23, 1997, p. VI.
Either decorative or bestial lives
Feminism in Russia is still viewed as an alien, western
fad, writes John O'Mahony
RUSSIA THROUGH WOMEN'S EYES
edited by Toby Clyman and Judith Vowels
Yale University Press L25. 393 pages.
When Aleksandra Kobiakova first unveiled her literary
ambitions, the occasion was marked by a fanfare of
denunciation and derision. Young women of the 19th-century
Russian merchant classes were earmarked for a life of
domestic servility, leavened with ignorance. And the suitor
to whom she divulged her first tentative attempts at poetry
had more than a vested interest in maintaining the status
quo: "Woman is created not for the pen," he snorted, "but
for the needle and oven prongs".
This is a message that resounds not only through the
19th-century autobiographical narratives that make up
"Russia Through Women's Eyes," but along the entire length
and breadth of Russian history. Tsarist society prized only
two qualities in womanhood: humility and self-sacrifice.
Daily life for the fair sex, when not confined to the
merely decorative, was often downright bestial: newly
married peasant women were routinely deflowered in village
squares, and if the groom proved unequal to the task, a
substitute was nominated by the rabble.
By providing a platform for the female voice in Russian
autobiography, the editors aim not only to throw light into
the murky corners of female experience, but also to counter
a more far-reaching injustice: the indifference of Russian
literary history even to those women who successfully
struggled to be heard.
In total, 11 fragments have been extracted from obscurity.
In their introduction, the editors stress that the texts
owe their existence to the revolutionary pressures that had
been building steadily throughout the 19th century,
challenging social norms and widening traditional female
roles. The writers also owe a substantial debt to the
"Great Reforms" of Alexander II, which prompted a
burgeoning public debate of "The Woman Question". This was
as close as Russia ever came, it seems, to a grand era of
progressive liberalism.
Not that the women themselves noticed. The collection opens
with its most pessimistic and poignant extract, a piece by
a writer of gentry origin named Nadezhda Sokhanskaia, whose
star rose moderately in the 1850s. On returning from the
Kharkov Institute for girls in St. Petersburg to her
mother's small estate in the Ukraine, she is struck by the
barrenness of the physical and emotional landscape: "To my
right - steppe; to my left - steppe; staring me in the face
- steppe; and beyond the steppe - steppe."
Only the aphoristic vigour of Sokhanskaia's style offsets
the underlying hopelessness of her account, a feeling that
she must have shared with so many others of her sex who
faced the same constraints, though silently: "The soul
struggles," she concludes, "But it weakens in a futile
burst of emotion. It strains feebly, like a flower in the
shade, and soon wilts, its buds unopened, its feelings
untapped, its strength untried. And time will pass, and
soon, no matter what you do, it will be too late!"
Next comes the above-mentioned Aleksandra Kobiakova, who
wisely dumped her unsupportive suitor and, after a
monumental effort spanning decades, managed to get her tale
of merchant life published. It was instantly successful. "I
wrote 'The Podoshvin Family' to serve the class from which
I came," she notes, "I wanted to describe the consequences
of a despotic and senseless upbringing that unfortunately
defeats even the best of intentions."
Surprisingly, the most gripping autobiographies come not
from writers, but from women who attended the St.
Petersburg Medical Surgical academy, which ran pioneering
courses for female doctors from 1872-1887. In "House Calls:
A day in the Practice of a Duma Woman Doctor in St.
Petersburg," Ekaterina Slanskaia describes the unbelievable
squalor of the city's slums where the vast majority of the
population lived in ignorance, superstition and filth: "As
the woman lifts the curtain and begins to unswaddle the
child," writes Slanskaia of one visit, "I see blackish dots
jumping on the dirty diapers, the pillow, the little shirt,
and the child's tiny, bare legs and arms. I look closer and
see that they are bedbugs ... Everything, absolutely
everything is crawling with bedbugs."
The quality of the material varies as widely as the
objectives of the authors, some of whom wrote only for
their immediate family. Social restrictions are reflected
in the repetitiveness and uniformity of the subject matter,
particularly in the case of the aristocratic women whose
leaden accounts dwell on favourite nannies and French
lessons. This isn't helped by a rather dusty, scholarly
introduction.
But these flaws are eclipsed by the emotional power evident
in many of the autobiographies and the occasional flashes
of brilliance. And even though these texts have lain
dormant for so long, the vivid, damning portrait of the
society that emerges has lost none of its relevance.
Contemporary Russia is still the same trammelled,
aggressive patriarchy, a place where feminism is viewed as
an alien, western fad. Despite the upheavals and
revolutions of a century, through the prism of female
experience, everything looks appallingly the same.
[End]
Either decorative or bestial lives
Feminism in Russia is still viewed as an alien, western
fad, writes John O'Mahony
RUSSIA THROUGH WOMEN'S EYES
edited by Toby Clyman and Judith Vowels
Yale University Press L25. 393 pages.
When Aleksandra Kobiakova first unveiled her literary
ambitions, the occasion was marked by a fanfare of
denunciation and derision. Young women of the 19th-century
Russian merchant classes were earmarked for a life of
domestic servility, leavened with ignorance. And the suitor
to whom she divulged her first tentative attempts at poetry
had more than a vested interest in maintaining the status
quo: "Woman is created not for the pen," he snorted, "but
for the needle and oven prongs".
This is a message that resounds not only through the
19th-century autobiographical narratives that make up
"Russia Through Women's Eyes," but along the entire length
and breadth of Russian history. Tsarist society prized only
two qualities in womanhood: humility and self-sacrifice.
Daily life for the fair sex, when not confined to the
merely decorative, was often downright bestial: newly
married peasant women were routinely deflowered in village
squares, and if the groom proved unequal to the task, a
substitute was nominated by the rabble.
By providing a platform for the female voice in Russian
autobiography, the editors aim not only to throw light into
the murky corners of female experience, but also to counter
a more far-reaching injustice: the indifference of Russian
literary history even to those women who successfully
struggled to be heard.
In total, 11 fragments have been extracted from obscurity.
In their introduction, the editors stress that the texts
owe their existence to the revolutionary pressures that had
been building steadily throughout the 19th century,
challenging social norms and widening traditional female
roles. The writers also owe a substantial debt to the
"Great Reforms" of Alexander II, which prompted a
burgeoning public debate of "The Woman Question". This was
as close as Russia ever came, it seems, to a grand era of
progressive liberalism.
Not that the women themselves noticed. The collection opens
with its most pessimistic and poignant extract, a piece by
a writer of gentry origin named Nadezhda Sokhanskaia, whose
star rose moderately in the 1850s. On returning from the
Kharkov Institute for girls in St. Petersburg to her
mother's small estate in the Ukraine, she is struck by the
barrenness of the physical and emotional landscape: "To my
right - steppe; to my left - steppe; staring me in the face
- steppe; and beyond the steppe - steppe."
Only the aphoristic vigour of Sokhanskaia's style offsets
the underlying hopelessness of her account, a feeling that
she must have shared with so many others of her sex who
faced the same constraints, though silently: "The soul
struggles," she concludes, "But it weakens in a futile
burst of emotion. It strains feebly, like a flower in the
shade, and soon wilts, its buds unopened, its feelings
untapped, its strength untried. And time will pass, and
soon, no matter what you do, it will be too late!"
Next comes the above-mentioned Aleksandra Kobiakova, who
wisely dumped her unsupportive suitor and, after a
monumental effort spanning decades, managed to get her tale
of merchant life published. It was instantly successful. "I
wrote 'The Podoshvin Family' to serve the class from which
I came," she notes, "I wanted to describe the consequences
of a despotic and senseless upbringing that unfortunately
defeats even the best of intentions."
Surprisingly, the most gripping autobiographies come not
from writers, but from women who attended the St.
Petersburg Medical Surgical academy, which ran pioneering
courses for female doctors from 1872-1887. In "House Calls:
A day in the Practice of a Duma Woman Doctor in St.
Petersburg," Ekaterina Slanskaia describes the unbelievable
squalor of the city's slums where the vast majority of the
population lived in ignorance, superstition and filth: "As
the woman lifts the curtain and begins to unswaddle the
child," writes Slanskaia of one visit, "I see blackish dots
jumping on the dirty diapers, the pillow, the little shirt,
and the child's tiny, bare legs and arms. I look closer and
see that they are bedbugs ... Everything, absolutely
everything is crawling with bedbugs."
The quality of the material varies as widely as the
objectives of the authors, some of whom wrote only for
their immediate family. Social restrictions are reflected
in the repetitiveness and uniformity of the subject matter,
particularly in the case of the aristocratic women whose
leaden accounts dwell on favourite nannies and French
lessons. This isn't helped by a rather dusty, scholarly
introduction.
But these flaws are eclipsed by the emotional power evident
in many of the autobiographies and the occasional flashes
of brilliance. And even though these texts have lain
dormant for so long, the vivid, damning portrait of the
society that emerges has lost none of its relevance.
Contemporary Russia is still the same trammelled,
aggressive patriarchy, a place where feminism is viewed as
an alien, western fad. Despite the upheavals and
revolutions of a century, through the prism of female
experience, everything looks appallingly the same.
[End]