The Formation of a New Female Identity in the Russian

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Abstract of the Thesis

The Early Women’s Emancipation Movement: Formation of a New Female

Identity in the Russian and Late-Victorian Novel

by Elena V. Shabliy

Thesis Director: Professor Raymond C. Taras

Women's emancipation altered the course of Victorian and Russian literature by challenging the literary conventions that governed the portrayal of women and women's experience at the fin de siècle. Emancipationist writing either explicitly advocated social change or embodied a feminist impulse in their treatment of particular themes and questions. The second half of the nineteenth century was marked by the emergence of the women’s movement; this focused primarily on women’s social and moral emancipation.

In the 1830s and 1850s, in the German Federation of States, Denmark, England, France,

Poland, Russia, and Spain women began to mobilize under the influence of emancipationist novels, discussing the role of women and shifting gender relations. This dissertation The Early Women’s Emancipation Movement: The Formation of a New

Female Identity in the Russian and Late-Victorian Novel is comprised of two parts. The first part focuses on the women’s liberation movement in Russia and literary responses to the social change. The second part is dedicated to the women’s movement in Victorian

England and its feminist literary discourse. Relatively little research exists on the

Russian women’s movement in the nineteenth century, while there is a vast scholarship on the early women’s movement in England. To date, there is no scholarship that treats Russian and Victorian emancipationist work comparatively. The choice of female (S. V.

Kovalevskaya, E. N. Vodovozova, E. A. Gan, Sarah Grand, Ella Hepworth Dixon, N. D.

Khvoshinskaya) and male (Grant Allen, Thomas Hardy, George Gissing, A. I. Herzen, N.

G. Chernyshevsky, F. M. Dostoevsky) writers is representative, but by no means exhaustive. In addition to literary texts, this dissertation also offers a close reading of women’s emancipationist reminiscent writing. It scrutinizes women’s memoirs of S. V.

Kovalevskaya and E. N. Vodovozova. Sofia Kovalevskaya has been underappreciated by literary scholars, since she is considered as a European female scientist.

The phenomenon of the new femininity in literature is not limited to the Russian or British context, but it is interesting to study it from a comparative angle, since these politically and culturally different landscapes have similar formations of emancipationist thought. As this dissertation suggests, the new femininity is part of vaguely hostile

"others" (de Beauvoir), the abject (Kristeva), and an autonomous subject (Bakhtin, de

Beauvoir). The ambiguity and volatility of the fictional New Woman characters reflect the prevalent artistic, social, and moral confusion into which Russian and Victorian societies were suddenly thrown at the fin de siècle. However, it is evident that the literary form and the social movement existed in closeness in Russia and England, and that the literature of the time was influenced considerably by new developments.

Feminist writer Sarah Grand (1854-1943) is considered to be the first to have coined the term “New Woman” in 1894 in England. New Woman writers (in Victorian literature the New Woman novel forms a separate genre) participated in the feminist debate. Whereas the New Woman novel genre in England was predominantly occupied by women, the theme of female emancipation as well as the image of the New Woman in Russian literature was often featured by male writers. Herzen (1812-1870) and

Chernyshevsky (1828-1889) are considered to be the ideological leaders of the early

Russian women’s movement. The Russian and British women’s movement intersect by many means, including John Stuart Mill’s work that influenced and inspired Russian women. This work attempts to identify some important links between Russian and late-

Victorian novels as well as the diversity of literary responses to the social movement. The theme involving women’s subjection to their husbands or parents, criticism of the institution of marriage, and double moral standards in patriarchal societies is central to works of the emancipationist writers. Most writers fictionalizing new female identities attempt to deconstruct the traditional marriage plot and explore new possible alternatives.

Contents

Acknowledgements ...... i Dedication ...... iv A Note on Translation and Transliteration ...... vi

Introduction: En Route to the New Womanhood and the New Woman as European Phenomenon ...... 1 Part I: The Women’s Liberation Movement in Russia Chapter 1: Women’s Emancipation and the “Woman Question” in Russian Literature and Society ...... 36 1.1 The Emergence of the Women’s Movement ...... 36 1.2 Per Aspera ad Astra, or From Terems to Palaces...... 47 1.3 The First Architects of the “Woman Question” ...... 52 1.4 Educational Achievements: From Nadezhda Suslova to Women’s Higher Education...... 64

Chapter 2: Who Is To Blame? and What Is To Be Done?: Male Advocates of the “Woman Question”...... 80 2.1 The Apotheosis of the Russian Woman...... 80 2.2 Herzen’s Who is To Blame? as One of the First Serious Literary Discussions of the “Woman Question” ...... 87 2.3 What is To Be Done, or the Eulogy of the New Woman ...... 100 Chapter 3: Reading Emancipationist Writing of Two New Women...... 125 3.1 Women’s Contribution to the “Woman Question” ...... 125 3.2 Sofia Kovalevskaya’s A Russian Childhood ...... 137 3.3 Elizaveta Vodovozova’s A Russian Childhood ...... 162 3.4 Sofia Kovalevskaya’s A Nihilist Girl ...... 169

Part II: From a Victorian Angel in the House to the Female Savior ...... 188 Chapter 4: The Women’s Movement in England ...... 189 4.1 The Emergence of the Women’s Rights Movement ...... 189 4.2 Women’s Educational Struggles in England ...... 202 4.3 Women and Philanthropy ...... 207 Chapter 5: The New Woman Through the Male Gaze ...... 214 5.1 The Woman Who Did? Or the Woman Who Did Not? ...... 214 5.2 Thomas Hardy’s New Woman ...... 225 Chapter 6: The New Woman Through the Female Gaze ...... 242 6.1 Sarah Grand’s Ideala and Elena Gan’s The Ideal ...... 242 6.2 Hepworth Dixon’s The Story of a Modern Woman ...... 258

Conclusion ...... 271 Bibliography ...... 278 Vita ...... 293

Acknowledgments

Thanks are due to more people than I can name individually. I am indebted to my advisor Professor Raymond Taras and Professor J. Celeste Lay. This work would not have been written without my advisor’s help, inspiration, and encouragement. I benefited immensely, both academically and personally, from the insightful guidance I received from Professor Taras. I feel extremely fortunate to have been able to study under his supervision. I also feel fortunate that I could attend his seminar; I was exposed to very interesting ideas. I would like to thank Professor J. Celeste Lay for helping me at the critical juncture. I also would like to thank all the committee members. I was delighted to work with such professors at Tulane as Sarudzayi Matambanadzo, Dauphine Sloan,

Ronna Burger, and Katie Acosta. I am thankful to Professor Sloan that she agreed to serve on the committee. I am also grateful to Professor Matambanadzo for all her support and encouragements and for being a real inspiration. Professor Ronna Burger made it possible for me to earn Master of Liberal Arts degree from Tulane. A very special thank you goes to Professor Martin Thompson for his teaching. I would like to express my sincere thanks to the Tulane Interlibrary Loan. Particularly, I also would like to thank

Anquienetta Dickerson for her assistance at the Howard-Tilton Library.

I would like to say thank you to all my friends, colleagues from Moscow State

University and the University of Rostock. I would like to express my gratitude to Berta

Semenovna Piloyan (and her husband Grachiy Velikhanovich), my teacher of the German language and Tatyana Semenovna Andreeva, my dear teacher of Russian and Literature.

I’d like to thank all my professors at M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University. Special thanks to my classmates and friends. I would like to thank Tulane Karate Club, especially

Kyriakos Popadopolous. I would like to thank my friend Tatyana Zaroslova

(Maksimova), her husband Yuriy, and their children. Thank you very much Fathers

Alexander and Lubomir. I especially am thankful to my grandmother Valentina, who constantly prayed for me to the Virgin Mary. Very many thanks to my cousin Alexey

Grotte. I am so happy for my uncle Taras Shabliy. Also many thanks to my grandfather

Ivan, as well as his brother Anatoly.

Also, I am appreciative to Tel François Bailliet, Tulane Russian Club’s advisor who supported me in exciting process of running Tulane Russian Club. I am grateful to my husband Dmitry who always was there for me and our little Daniel. Thank very much to Dmitry’s parents for a constant support. I was lucky to meet Yingzhi Zhao at the

American Comparative Literature Association at the Brown University meeting and

Professor Nalini Natarajan. Thanks to Liyan Shen who along with Professor Eugene

Eoyang organized a wonderful panel on “Women and Historical Transitions” at

American Comparative Literature Association. I am happy that I was surrounded by many enthusiastic people at Tulane University. I learned eagerly from everyone – consciously or unconsciously. The dissertation writing workshop at Tulane University was very helpful in finishing this work. A very special thank you goes to my parents, my grandparents, and my grandmother Yanina, who received her degree in medicine, my great-grandmother Nina who worked as director of women’s high school in St.

Petersburg (then Leningrad), and my aunt Oksana Ivanovna Shabliy.

I would like to thank Dean of School of Liberal Arts Carol Haber and Ann

Schumacher. I was glad to receive the Dean’s Summer Merit Fellowship at Tulane

University to finalize this dissertation. I am especially thankful to the entire Department

ii of Comparative Literature at Harvard University for providing me with a wonderful opportunity to finish this work. I was inspired by many people at Harvard University.

Thank you all at Divinity School at Harvard University from the depth of my soul.

I always enjoyed the LPO music performances and friends of music concert series. I would like to thank very much all great musicians, workers, and volunteers. I am thankfull to Professor Steven Rosencrans and his wife Nancy, as well as Vendula

Vlasakova, and the Kurganov family.

iii

Dedication

I would like to dedicate this work my husband Dmitry Vladimirovich Kurochkin.

iv v

A Note on Transliteration and Translation

For works in Russian, I use existent English translations where possible. Otherwise, I have translated passages quoted from Russian sources (for example, S.S. Shashkov’s The History of the Russian Woman (1879)), making the translation part stylistically consistent with the rest of my writing. When I have to provide my own translation, I do not give the original text. Lines of Russian poems are given usually in their English translation. In the body of my text I use the U.S. Board on Geographic Names transliteration system, except when I quote critics who use other transliteration systems. In the representation of the names of authors who are familiar to the English- speaking reader, I have eliminated the ii and iy endings, replacing them with the more familiar y as in the case of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, etc.

Introduction: En Route to the “New Womanhood” and the “New Woman” as a European Phenomenon

Because the Word was the glory of mankind, and it alone gave dignity to life. Not just humanism, but humanity itself, man’s dignity and self-respect – they were inseparable from the Word, literature. <…> And politics were bound up with literature, too – or rather they were derived from the oneness of humanity and literature. For the beautiful Word gave birth to the beautiful deed.1 Thomas Mann (1875-1955)

Magic Mountain

That which is heroism in the one becomes brazen-faced effrontery in the other.

George Sand (1804-1876) Indiana

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) Ulysses There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond, nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye all one in Jesus Christ.

Galatians 3:28

Leave everything, Dmitri Fyodorovitch,” Madame Hohlakov interrupted in the most decisive tone. “Leave everything, especially women. Gold-mines are your goal, and there's no place for women there. Afterwards, when you come back rich and famous, you will find the girl of your heart in the highest society. That will be a modern girl, a girl of education and advanced ideas. By that time the dawning woman question will have gained ground, and the new woman will have appeared.

Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) The Brothers Karamazov

Female identities are individual or collective narratives that try to answer one of the most fundamental philosophical questions: “Who am/are/I/we?” The intensive search for an identity as a woman can be also associated with the growth of the women’s movement and proliferation of female authors. It is important to understand, however,

1 Translated from German by John E. Woods, Thomas Mann’s Der Zauberberg (1924). The original text reads: Denn das Wort sei die Ehre des Menschen, und nur dieses mache das Leben menschenwürdig. Nicht nur der Humanismus, – Humanität überhaupt, alte Menschenwürde, Menschenachtung und menschliche Selbstachtung sei untrennbar mit dem Worte, mit Literature verbunden – <…> – und so sei auch die Politik mit ihr verbunden, oder vielmehr: sie gehe hervor aus dem Bündnis, der Einheit von Humanität und Literatur, den das schӧne Wort erzeuge die schӧne Tat. 1 that the impetus for the women’s movement emergence is not necessarily imbalance and injustice experienced by women from men. The existence of the women’s movement also implies the presence of hierarchies and inequality between women such as class or race, not only gender. The class hierarchy and class belonging were especially patent in the nineteenth century, when in Russian society, for instance, women “passing” from lower estates to an upper-class was a rare phenomenon. The Suslova sisters who will be discussed in this work are rather an exception than a rule. Lower class women rarely participated in the social movements and left little or no written evidence of their lives.

While in England, the New Woman figure belonged to a middle-class stratum, emancipated women in nineteenth-century Russia were either from upper-class or the raznochintsy, or people of miscellaneous ranks. Upper-class women often expressed the discontent with their lives in their reminiscent writing, since their function in society was also limited. Art and literature were that haven where women could find an escape, but their participation in social life was not always welcomed in society; more prejudices existed towards a woman writer or artist in Russia than in England.

The second half of the nineteenth century was marked by the emergence of the women’s movement; this focused primarily on women’s social and moral emancipation.

It was that turning point when women collectively realized themselves as historical agents. Throughout Europe and in Russia, the women’s rights movement became an integral part of the process for radical change in women’s history – a history of continuous struggle against social subordination, injustice, and prejudices. In Russia, however, the women’s movement was dismissed and banned by the Soviet regime, as it was seen as a Western phenomenon.

In Tsarist Russia, the radical mobilization of women evolved under the reign of

Tsar Alexander II (1855-1881), while in England, it took place during the Victorian period (1837-1901) of “democracy, educational awareness, religious tolerance and profound social unrest.”2 In the 1830s and 1850s, in the German Federation of States,

France, Poland, Denmark, and Spain women began to mobilize under the influence of

“key novels,” discussing “the role of women and gender relations.”3 Some of these influential key novels that formed the emancipationist narrative will be thoroughly discussed in this work.

There were three distinct groups within the early women’s movement in Russia: feminist, nihilist, and radical. In fact, any woman who sought to change her conventional position could be regarded as “radical.” Sylvia Paletschek and Bianka Pietow-Ennker justly outline two major contributors to the early women’s emancipation movement in the nineteenth century: 1) the involvement of women in the national movements, as well as their national struggle for independence when “women learned how to participate in public affairs” and 2) “literary feminism” that had a great “impact all over Europe.”4

They point out that the “height of literary feminism” in Russia was associated with N.V.

Chernyshevsky’s novel What Is To Be Done? From Tales About New People (1863), as have argued many other literary scholars and historians.5 Although this novel was seen as

2 Barad, Dilipsinh P. The Women Characters in the Novels of Thomas Hardy (New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers & Distributors, 2009), p. 32. 3 Paletschek, Sylvia, and Bianka Pietrow-Ennker. Women's Emancipation Movements in the Nineteenth Century: A European Perspective (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2004), p. 310. 4 Ibid., p. 310. 5 Ibid. See also Engel, Barbara A. Mothers and Daughters: Women of the Intelligentsia in Nineteenth Century Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Stites, Richard. The Women's Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism, Nihilism, and Bolshevism, 1860-1930 (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1978), pp. 90-96. See also Pietrow-Ennker, Bianka. Russlands "neue Menschen": Die Entwicklung Der Frauenbewegung Von Den Anfängen Bis Zur Oktoberrevolution.( Frankfurt: Campus, 1999). 3 an artistic failure, in terms of style and composition, it documents the appearance of new femininity in Russian literature.

Many nineteenth-century Russian and British writers fictionalized the formation of new female identity at the fin de siècle.6 World literature, particularly the emancipationist discourse, demonstrated signs of “globalization” – the term that appeared in the twentieth century, circa 1945, but the global interchange has existed for centuries.

However, the debate whether feminism is a global phenomenon is still ongoing.7 The women’s movement had a rather national than transnational character. Undoubtedly, the

European women’s movement was not isolated, but areas of contacts were either fragmented or presented in an intensive literary dialogue.

The phenomenon of the new femininity in literature is by no means limited to the

Russian or British context, but it is interesting to study it from a comparative angle, since

“historically, culturally and politically different landscapes can share discursive formations of thought and conceptualize ideological frameworks in remarkably similar ways.”8 For Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin (1895-1975), the philosopher living in the

Great time (the Bakhtinian term), literature and imagination are, in fact, dialogical. For him, every meaning will celebrate its rebirth, since there is nothing absolutely dead.

There is no horizon for the dialogic context; and there is the unitary language in linguistics and stylistic thought that operates in the heteroglossia (a diversity of voices, the coexistence of varieties within a single language):

6 I use the term “identity” exactly as Livia Wittmann: Old and New woman is a construct, “implying psychical and emotional contractedness as well as social situatedness.” See Wittmann, Livia Z. "The New Woman As A European Phenomenon." Neohelicon: Acta Comparationis Litterarum Universarum 19.2 (1992): 49. 7 It is interesting to note that some scholars reject the term “feminism.” They prefer to use the term “womanist” instead, since they define feminism through class, race, religion etc. 8 Heilmann, Ann. New Woman Fiction: Women Writing First-Wave Feminism (Hampshire England: Macmillan Press, 2000), p. 13. 4

There is no first or last discourse, and dialogical context knows no limits (it disappears into an unlimited past and in our unlimited future). Even past meanings that is those that have arisen in the dialogue of the past centuries can never be stable (completed once for all, finished), they will always change (renewing themselves) in the course of the dialogue’s subsequent development, and yet to come. At every moment of the dialogue, there are immense and unlimited masses of forgotten meanings, but, in some subsequent moments, as the dialogue moves forward, they will return to memory and live in renewed form (in a new context).9 (original emphasis)

When one wants to comprehend what the unitary language is, one could think about music that is a universal language. Metaphorically speaking, the voices of emancipationist writers merged into one influential symphony liberating and awakening consciousness of slaves – males and females. Language, according to Bakhtin, narrates consciousness; and word is in a constant struggle to be heard among other words: “The word is not a material thing, but rather the eternally mobile, eternally changing medium of dialogic interaction. It never gravitates towards a single consciousness or a single voice. The life of the word is contained in its transfer from one mouth to another, from one context to another context, from one social collective to another, from one generation to another generation” (my emphasis).10 The idea of the dialogue is not exclusively

Bakhtinian. Bahthin writes in Problems of Dostovesky’s Poetics (1963) about the role of the Socratic dialogue for Dostoevsky.

In addition to the idea of the continuous dialogue, not only within the nineteenth century, but throughout centuries, the concept of intersectionality is crucial for this work as an important analytic and methodological tool. It must be highlighted that the feminist

9 Todorov, Tzvetan. Mikhail Bakhtin: The Dialogical Principle (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), p. 110. 10 Bakhtin, M. M. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Caryl Emerson, ed. and trans. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1963), p. 202. 5 thought and feminist world was born in a dialogue. It awaited and is awaiting an adequate solution for women’s liberation world-wide. The American legal scholar Kimberlé W.

Crenshaw coined the concept intersectionality that is widely used today in women’s studies and other disciplines. This concept brings more understanding of hierarchies and inequalities between women, addressing the most central theoretical and normative concern within feminist scholarship: namely, the acknowledgment of differences among women. This is because it touches on the most pressing problem facing contemporary feminism – the long and painful legacies of its exclusions. Class belonging was central to a woman’s life experience transnationally and transculturally. Contemporary scholars find that race, class, gender, ethnicity, age, and sexuality are those issues that are necessary to take into account to discuss an individual’s position in the world. The novel did not play the last role in disseminating transnational feminist ideas and ideals. We cannot, of course, compare literature with history, but literary works give us an addition to the dry historical facts adding an emotional flavor and vivacity. Women’s memoirs, for instance, could be considered as a meticulous documentation of women’s lives – whether these documents are exact or part of mythologization. In Walter Benjamin’s interpretation, “History is the subject of a structure whose site is not homogeneous, empty time, but time filled by the presence of the now [Jetztzeit]. Thus, to Robespierre ancient Rome was a past charged with the time of the now which he blasted out of the continuous history. The French Revolution viewed itself as Rome reincarnate. It evoked ancient Rome the way fashion evokes costumes of the past.”11

Chandra Talpade Mohanty suggests in her book Feminism without Borders:

Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity (2003) that it is crucial to internationalize

11 Benjamin, Walter, and Hannah Arendt. Illuminations. (New York: Schocken Books, 1986), p. 261. 6 women’s studies, since “comparative feminist studies” is one of the most useful pedagogical strategies for feminist cross-cultural work.12 In her study, that addresses many complex issues of contemporary feminism, she invites scholars to learn more about women’s experiences through the historical and literary lenses, to study “women as category of analysis” that is not a stable category, according to Chandra Talpade

Mohanty. As this postcolonial and transnational feminist theorist convincingly argues,

“Writing is itself an activity marked by class and ethnic position. However, testimonial life stories and oral histories are a significant mode of remembering and recording experience and struggles. Written texts are not produced in a vacuum.”13 Walter

Benjamin (1892-1940) writes that the continuous class struggle is a “fight for crude and material things without which no refined and spiritual things could exist.”14 A Similar idea belongs to Y. M. Lotman (1922-1993) and perhaps not only to him that good cannot exist without evil.15

This work attempts to identify some important links between Russian and late-

Victorian novels as well as the diversity of literary responses to the social movement that was dictated by “the prevalent artistic, social, and moral confusion” into which these two societies were suddenly thrown.16 The paradigm of intersectionality helps exploring how such factors as class and gender shaped women’s experiences in nineteenth century

Russia and England. The “height of literary feminism” almost coincides in Russian and

English literature. In nineteenth-century England it can be traced to the emergence of the

12 Mohanty, Chandra T. Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), p. 238. 13 Ibid., p. 22. 14 Benjamin, Walter, and Hannah Arendt. Illuminations. (New York: Schocken Books, 1986), p. 254. 15 There is also an old Russian proverb: “There is no good without evil.” 16 Fernando, Lloyd. "New Women" in the Late Victorian Novel (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1977), p. 1. 7

New Woman novel that forms a separate genre in the late-Victorian era.17 Describing the main characteristics of the New Woman novel, Kate Flint writes:

[The New Woman novel’s] plotting is rarely complex in the sense of involving the reader in concealment and suspense: it is not predicated upon the reading process gratifying a desire for clarification and resolution. Its preferred form is the Bildungsroman, and it shares a certain number of characteristics with nineteenth- century women’s autobiography. Frequently, it privileges childhood, both as a nostalgic realm which cannot be recaptured, and as recognized site of gendered injustices. More noticeably, it presents life as process, stressing the value of continuity, even endurance, and adhering to often painfully learnt principles: principles which are self-generated and rationally arrived at, rather than being imposed by dominant social beliefs.18

An English essayist William Rathbone Greg wrote in his essay Why are Women

Redundant? (1869): “The cry of ‘Woman’s Rights’ reached us chiefly from America, and created only a faint echo here.”19 New Woman fiction tradition started in the 1880s and ended in the 1930s when the first-wave of feminism came to its end. It must be mentioned that feminist thought began much earlier. Mary Wollstonecraft’s (1759-1797) book A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792) was a significant discussion of women’s plight written in response to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s (1712-1778) Emile, or on

Education (1762). Between 1883 and 1900, more than a hundred novels were written about the New Woman in England.20 This genre was more than a literary response to the women’s movement; “it constituted, and conceived itself as an agent of social and

17 This genre was outside of the mainstream canon and hence was forgotten. Many relatively recent good studies have been done on New Woman fiction in England. For instance, Ardis, Ann L. New Women, New Novels: Feminism and Early Modernism (New Brunswick N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1990); Kranidis, Rita S. Subversive Discourse: The Cultural Production of Late Victorian Feminist Novels (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995); Ledger, Sally. The New Woman: Fiction and Feminism at the Fin De Siècle (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1997); Heilmann, Ann. New Woman Fiction: Women Writing First-Wave Feminism (Hampshire England: Macmillan Press, 2000); and Richardson, Angelique, and Chris Willis. The New Woman in Fiction and in Fact: Fin De Siècle Feminisms (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave, 2001). 18 Flint, Kate. The Woman Reader, 1837-1914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), pp. 194-195. 19 Greg, William Rathbone. Why Are Women Redundant? (London: Trübner, 1869), p.1. Electronic source: accessed 02/09/2015 https://archive.org/details/whyarewomenredu00greggoog. 20 Ibid., p. 4. Richardson, Angelique, and Chris Willis. The New Woman in Fiction and in Fact: Fin De Siècle Feminisms (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave, 2001), p. 1. 8 political transformation.”21 The New Woman writers are often “interpolated into the ideology of liberal feminism” which “seeks equality with men for women”; most novelists representing the New Woman did believe in the female emancipation.22 They did not always support the women’s movement explicitly; some writers were ambiguous in their position (N. S. Leskov, A. P. Chekhov, F. M. Dostoevsky, Thomas Hardy, Henrik

Ibsen), but for the most part they were sympathetic to the figure of the New Woman, a foremother of feminists.

In Victorian England as well as in Russia, at the fin de siècle the image of the

New Woman caused many controversies and discussions, since her image of odd, superfluous femininity did not correspond to conventional women’s roles. The purpose of the fictional New Woman can be interpreted as an “attempt to gain entry into the dominant discourses, be it Law, higher education, professional work, sexual autonomy, or artistic achievement.”23 In late-Victorian literature, the quest for the New Woman figure is associated with such writers as Grant Allen (1848-1899), Mona Caird (1854-1932),

George Egerton (1859-1945), George Gissing (1857-1903), Sarah Grand (1854-1943), and Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) – to name but a few.24 Whereas the New Woman novel genre in England was predominantly occupied by women, the theme of female

21 Heilmann, Ann. New Woman Fiction: Women Writing First-Wave Feminism. (Hampshire Engand: Macmillan Press, 2000), p. 4. 22 Wittmann, Livia Z. "The New Woman As A European Phenomenon." Neohelicon: Acta Comparationis Litterarum Universarum 19.2 (1992): 52. 23 Wittmann, Livia Z. "The New Woman As A European Phenomenon," p. 52. 24 Other New Woman writers are Olive Schreiner (1855-1920), George Meredith (1828-1929), British- American writer Henry James (1843-1916), Ella Hepworth Dixon (1857-1932), Annie Sophie Cory (1868- 1952), Ella D'Arcy (1857-1937), H.G. Wells (1866-1946), and an American writer Kate Chopin (1850- 1904). 9 emancipation as well as the image of the New Woman in Russian literature was generally featured by male writers.25

In England, the “woman question” was a largely middle-class broad discussion in which both men and women participated.26 In Russia, a small group of upper-class women and men, “alienated, socially conscious intellectuals,” were actively involved in the women’s emancipation movement and the development of the “woman question.”27

A. I. Herzen (1812-1870) and N. G. Chernyshevsky (1828-1889) are considered to be the ideological leaders of the early Russian women’s movement.28 Being perceptive social observers, they popularized the burning “woman question” that became fashionable in the

1850s and 1860s. Some of the first commentators on the “woman question” were, among others, I. S. Turgenev (1818-1883), I. A. Goncharov (1812-1891), and V. G. Belinsky

(1811-1848), who was the arbiter of Russian literary taste in the 1840s and an architect of the “woman question.”29

In the 1840s, V. G. Belinsky argued women writers lacked ideas in their works and were mere imitators judging about reality superficially. It is known, however, that

Belinsky did not welcome George Sand’s writing in the beginning, but later he highly praised her oeuvre. In 1843, Belinsky changed his view on women’s writing and the

“woman question” and published an influential review of Elena Gan’s (1814-1842) work.

25 Vanessa Warne points out that there was an anxiety in men’s participation in the production of New Woman Literature. See Warne, Vanessa, and Colette Colligan. "The Man Who Wrote A New Woman Novel: Grant Allen's The Woman Who Did And The Gendering Of New Woman Authorship," Victorian Literature And Culture 33.1 (2005): 22. 26 Helsinger, Elizabeth K, Robin A. Sheets, and William R. Veeder. The Woman Question: Society and Literature in Britain and America, 1837-1883 (New York: Garland, 1983), p. xiii. 27 Engel, Barbara A. Mothers and Daughters: Women of the Intelligentsia in Nineteenth Century Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 3. 28 Kelly, Catriona. A History of Russian Women's Writing, 1820-1992 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), p. 64. 29 Hermann, Lesley Singer. "George Sand and the Nineteenth-Century Russian Novel: The Quest for a Heroine" (Dissertation, Columbia University, 1979), p. 26. See also Filippova L. D. “Iz Istorii Zhenskogo Obrazovaniia V Rossii,” Voprosy Istorii. 2.(1963): 209-218. 10

According to him, few Russian women wrote well, but few male writers wrote well, too, since Russian literature was young at that time. He did accolade Gan’s female characters for not being naïve and rosy dreaming women. In his reviews of Maria Zhukova’s (1805-

1855) tales, he emphasized that women copied their characters from themselves or others and did not create anything original. Female and male readers largely relied on

Belinsky’s opinion. Belinsky, as well as D. I. Pisarev (1840-1868), argued that women could only be focused on the realm of feelings. The latter also claimed that women could not participate actively in social life. Unfortunately, this unserious attitude towards women writers shaped the opinion of the Russian public for decades, but in response to their criticism, women developed new female identities capable of action in their works.30

Maria Trubnikova (1835–1897) was one of the first female leaders of the women’s movement and the daughter of an exiled Decembrist V. P. Ivashev. In 1855,

Trubnikova established a salon, a meeting spot for radicals and liberals. Inspired by the example of Vassar College, under the initiative of the Trubnikova circle, a plan was made to open the first Russian women’s university so that women could obtain professional training. The circle was also aware of European search for higher education; the struggle for women’s higher education in England started earlier than in Russia. Participants in the promotion of women’s higher education in England included such prominent figures as

Emily Davies (1830-1921), Josephine Butler (1828-1906) and Anne Jemima Clough

(1820-1892). Under the leadership of Emily Davies, Girton College was founded in 1868,

30 If the female Victorian writers have been studied well, the scholarship on Russian women’s writing is growing each year. Among influential publications on the Russian female writers are Barbara Heldt’s Terrible Perfection: Women and Russian Literature (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987); Joe Andrew’s Women in Russian Literature: 1780-1863 (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan, 1988); Barker, Adele M, and Jehanne M. Gheith. A History of Women's Writing in Russia (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 11

“the first step in women’s higher education.”31 The first female student was admitted to study at the University of Cambridge in 1869. There were a number of Russian and

British female students who went to study abroad in order to pursue higher education.

Among them, were Nadezhda Suslova (1843-1918), Sofia Kovalevskaya (1850-1891), and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (1836-1917), and many others. In 1867, Suslova was awarded the degree of Doctor of Medicine, Surgery, and Midwifery in Switzerland.

Elizabeth Garrett studied medicine in France. Sofia Kovalevskaya studied under the supervision of Karl Weierstrass (1815-1897), the “father of modern mathematical analysis,” and in 1874 earned her doctorate degree in mathematics in Germany. The

University of Zurich began admitting female students since 1864. US women went to study there since 1868.32 Rebecca Rice was the first US woman, who entered Heidelberg

University as a hearer in 1873.33 Later, in 1896, at Göttingen University, Margaret Eliza

Maltby obtained a Ph.D. in physics. Historian Anja Werner writes about US and foreign women studying in Germany: “Within the German university, US women thus formed a tiny, doubly foreign group on account of their nationality, whereby, interestingly, in the early days, German authorities were more comfortable with admitting foreign women. It was only after women had been granted regular student status at German-speaking universities in the first decade of the twentieth century that German authorities underwent a nationalist shift, now favoring German over foreign women” (my emphasis).34

31 Fernando, Lloyd. "New Women" in the Late Victorian Novel (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1977), p. 4. 32 Werner, Anja. The Transatlantic World of Higher Education: Americans at German Universities, 1776- 1914. (New York: Berghahn Books, 2013), p. 88. 33 Ibid. 34 Werner, Anja. The Transatlantic World of Higher Education: Americans at German Universities, 1776- 1914. (New York: Berghahn Books, 2013), p. 88. 12

The New Woman Sofia Kovalevskaya, whose work will be discussed in detail, became the center of everyone’s amazement in Russia and abroad. In her lifetime she received a lot of attention in the European press. Sometimes, she was even considered as

“something of a tourist attraction.”35 Kovalevskaya was by no means exceptional because many women studied mathematics. Other famous female mathematicians are a Greek philosopher in Egypt Hypatia (c. A.D. 350-370-415), a German secular nun of the

Benedictine Abbey in Saxony Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim (c. 935- c.1002), an Italian philosopher Maria Gaetana Agnesi (1718-1799), the first female professor in physics

Laura Maria Caterina Bassi (1711-1778), a Swedish scholar Aurora Liljenroth (1772-

1836), an Italian scholar and poet Christina Roccati (1732-1797), an Italian philosopher

Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia (1646-1684), a French philosopher Marie Germain

(1776-1831), a French mathematician Gabrielle Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, marquise du Châtelet (1706-1749), a German-British astronomer Caroline Lucretia

Herschel (1750-1848), an English mathematician Ada Lovelace (1815-1852), an English mathematician Charlotte Angas Scott (1858-1931), a Scottish scholar Mary Fairfax

Somerville (1780-1872), an English mathematician Grace Chisholm Young (1868-1944), the first American woman who received a Ph.D. in mathematics Winifred Edgerton

Merrill (1862-1951), an English scholar and inventor Hertha Marks Ayrton (1854-1923), a self-taught mathematician Mary Everest Boole (1832-1916), Mary’s Boole’s daughter

Alicia Boole Stott (1860-1940), and an American mathematician Olive Clio Hazlett

(1890-1974) among of others.36 As Lynn M. Osen points out, “Athenaeus, a Greek writer

35 Koblitz, Ann H. A Convergence of Lives: Sofia Kovalevskaia: Scientist, Writer, Revolutionary (Boston etc.: Birkhäuser, 1983), p. 6. 36 This list is by no means exhaustive. Other female mathematicians are an American mathematician and astronomer Ellen Amanda Hayes (1851-1930), and American mathematician Gabriel Kendall (1889-1965), 13

(ca. A.D. 200) in his Deipnosophistoe, mentions a number of women who were superior mathematicians, but precise knowledge of their work in this field is lacking. It is probable that there were many women who were well educated in the general science of numbers at this time, judging from the pervasive interest in the subject and the rigor with which women sought an education.”37 In addition, as Lynn M. Osen notices, over long period of time, education was limited to monasteries and nunneries that “guarded well the sacred mysteries of mathematics, enfranchising only those who subscribed to the religious faith of ecclesiastics.”38 During the Renaissance, Italy saw the rise of women’s education; some Italian women distinguished themselves in the universities.39

The figure of the New Woman was often a focus of attention and arose from the intensive debates on the “woman question” in the European popular press. At times, New

Women were ridiculed in the press, especially on the pages of Punch, a renowned magazine in late-Victorian England. Where did this term “New Woman” come from?

Feminist writer Sarah Grand (1854-1943) is considered to be the first to have coined the term “New Woman” in 1894 in England.40 Interestingly enough, Sally Ledger suggests

a Polsih mathematician Sof'ja Aleksandrovna Janovskaja (1896-1966), a Russian mathematician Pelageya Yakovlevna Polubarinova-Kochina (1899-1999), and American mathematician Christine Ladd-Franklin (1847-1930), and American mathematician Edna Ernestine Kramer Lassar (1902-1984), a British mathematician Ada Isabel Maddison (1869-1950), an American mathematician Helen Abbot Merrill (1864-1949), an American mathematician Mary Frances Newson (1869-1959), a German mathematician Emmy Noether (1882-1935), and American mathematician Mary Emily Sinclair (1878-1955), an American mathematician Pauline Sperry (1885-1967), an American mathematician Anna Johnson Pell Wheeler (1883-1966), an English Grace Chisholm Young (1868-1944), and many other. Please see Henrion, Claudia. Women in Mathematics: The Addition of Difference. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997). 37 Lynn M. Olsen. Women in Mathematics. (The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1974), p. 21. 38 Ibid., p. 34. 39 Ibid., p. 37. 40 Sage, Lorna, Germaine Greer, and Elaine Showalter. The Cambridge Guide to Women's Writing in English (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 465. See also Heilmann, Ann, and Margaret Beetham. New Woman Hybridities: Femininity, Feminism and International Consumer Culture, 1880-1930 (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 465. See also Mitchell, Sally. Victorian Britain: An Encyclopedia (New York: Garland Pub, 1988), p. 539. 14 that Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) invented the New Woman in England, considering his profound impact on Victorian culture at the fin de siècle, especially after the first production of A Doll’s House (1879) at London’s Novelty Theatre on June 7 1889.41

Although the term “New Woman” is considered to be British origin, it is hard to determine who first conjured the figure of the New Woman, for it occurred in the literary works of various nations in the nineteenth century.42 It is evident that the literary form and the social movement existed in “remarkable closeness” in Russia and England, and that the literature of the time was influenced considerably by new developments.43

It is also interesting that Ibsen unconsciously contributed to the women’s rights movement, since it is known that, after writing A Doll’s House (1879), he rather distanced himself from a direct contribution to the “woman question,” positioning himself as a perceptive observer and poet, but not social philosopher and women’s rights movement advocate. In fact, Victorian and Russian male writers who featured the New

Woman, were not necessarily “wholeheartedly committed to women’s emancipation” either.44

41 Richardson, Angelique, and Chris Willis. The New Woman in Fiction and in Fact: Fin De Siècle Feminisms (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave, 2001), p. 79. 42 Agata Schwartz studies the New Woman in Austrian and Hungarian literature. See Schwartz, Agata. Shifting Voices: Feminist Thought and Women's Writing in Fin-De-Siècle Austria and Hungary (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2008). Viola Parente-Čapková reads the notion of the New Woman in Finnish literature. Mona Russell, using a variety of materials, studies the New Woman in Egypt. See Russell, Mona L. Creating the New Egyptian Woman: Consumerism, Education, and National Identity, 1863-1922 (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). The New Woman was analyzed in a Finnish- Swedish context by Birgitta Holm. She reads a Swedish speaking Finnish poet Edith Södergran. See Holm, Birgitta. "Edith Södergran And The Sexual Discourse Of The Fin-De-Siècle," Nora: Nordic Journal Of Women's Studies 1.1 (1993): 21-31. Livia Wittmann focuses on the literary discourse of France, Germany and Hungary. See Wittmann, Livia Z. "The New Woman As A European Phenomenon." Neohelicon: Acta Comparationis Litterarum Universarum 19.2 (1992):49-67. 43 Fernando, Lloyd. "New Women" in the Late Victorian Novel (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1977), p. 25. 44 Sage, Lorna, Germaine Greer, and Elaine Showalter. The Cambridge Guide to Women's Writing in English (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 465. See also Heilmann, Ann, and Margaret Beetham. New Woman Hybridities: Femininity, Feminism and International Consumer Culture, 1880-1930 ( London: Routledge, 2004), p. 465. 15

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), for example, had ambivalent views on the New

Woman and the women’s rights movement. Hardy appreciated New Women in literature, but in real life, as well as F. M. Dostoevsky, he found them “somewhat overwhelming.”45

F. M. Dostoevsky (1821-1881) was personally acquainted with the New Women.

Although his personal relationships with Polina Suslova and Anna Jaclard (née Korvin-

Krukovskaya), Sofia Kovalevskaya’s sister, were not met with success (since both women refused to marry him), these New Women undoubtedly influenced him by bringing “the feminist impulse” to his work.46 Thus, when we discuss the nineteenth century literature, it is more appropriate and accurate to speak about the “feminist impulse,” rather than strictly about feminism. As Victorian Britain: An Encyclopedia formulates: “The notion of the New Woman differs from feminism largely in being less anchored in specific programs for political change and political analyses of women’s position and always remained more a literary and social concept than an accurate description of women’s changing lives.”47 However, the influence of the New Woman on feminist ideology is undisputable until World War I; “the line is difficult to draw, and many critics closely connect the two impulses, partly because contemporary reviewers tended to identify any iconoclastic or independent female of the period as a New

Woman.” (my emphasis)48

Barbara Alpern Engel, historian of Russian women, suggests in Mothers and

Daughters: Women of the Intelligentsia in Nineteenth Century Russia (1983) many

45 Dutta, Shanta. Ambivalence in Hardy: A Study of His Attitude to Women (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000), p. 206. 46 Straus, Nina P. Dostoevsky and the Woman Question: Rereadings at the End of a Century (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994), p. 14. 47 Mitchell, Sally. Victorian Britain: An Encyclopedia. (New York: Garland Pub, 1988), p. 540. 48 Ibid. 16 invaluable sources to further her research on women’s position and existence in nineteenth-century Russia. Among others, she mentions Elizaveta Vodovozova’s A

Russian Childhood (1911) and Sofia Kovalevskaya’s (née Korvin-Krukovskaya) A

Russian Childhood (1889), representing a “vivid description of the social ferment of the early 1860s.”49 Richard Stites in The Women's Liberation Movement in Russia:

Feminism, Nihilism, and Bolshevism, 1860-1930 (1978) provides the most comprehensive study of the origin of women’s activism of the fin de siècle. Bianka

Pietrow-Ennker’s Russlands "Neue Menschen": Die Entwicklung Der Frauenbewegung

Von Den Anfängen Bis Zur Oktoberrevolution (Russia’s New People: The Development of the “Woman Question” from the Origins until the October Revolution) (1999) continues and expands upon Stites’ study. The women’s movement in Russia and the origin of the “woman question” was thoroughly discussed in the 1980s, but since then no more detailed studies have followed. Comparatively little research exists on the Russian women’s movement in the nineteenth century. Christine Johanson in Women's Struggle for Higher Education in Russia, 1855-1900 (1987) focuses on the woman’s fight for higher education in Russia.50 Rochelle G. Rutchild observes, however, that discussions of the “woman question” mostly concentrate on men’s perspectives.51

49 Engel, Barbara A. Mothers and Daughters: Women of the Intelligentsia in Nineteenth Century Russia, p. 226. 50 Also, among other successful works on history of Russian women published outside of Russia are: Atkinson, Dorothy, Alexander Dallin, and Gail W. Lapidus. Women in Russia (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1977); Farnsworth, Beatrice, and Lynne Viola. Russian Peasant Women (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); Engelstein, Laura. The Keys to Happiness: Sex and the Search for Modernity in Fin-De-Siècle Russia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992); Pushkareva, N. L, and Eve Levin. Women in Russian History: From the Tenth to the Twentieth Century (Armonk, N.Y: M.E. Sharpe, 1997); Engel, Barbara A, Clifford N. Rosenthal, Alix K. Shulman, Mollie Steimer, and Ahrne Thorne. Five Sisters: Women against the Tsar (New York: Knopf : distributed by Random House, 1975); Noonan, Norma C., and Carol Nechemias. Encyclopedia of Russian Women's Movements (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 2001); Edmondson, Linda H. Feminism in Russia, 1900-17 (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1984). There is little research on the origin of women’s movement done in Russia, the major works were produced outside of Russia. Among Russian major works on women’s 17

In order to draw an accurate portrait of the New Woman in Russian and late-

Victorian culture, it is not sufficient to read the literary images of new female identities, but in addition, it is interesting to read memoirs of actual New Women. Livia Witmann suggests that the process of formation for a New Woman “can be traced in different discourses of the time” – “in the societal, political, economic, “scientific” and literary.”52

Ann Heilmann observes that the “New Woman constitutes a complex historical phenomenon which operates at both cultural (textual and visual) and socio-political levels.”53 The visual fin de siècle images of the New Woman, primarily cartoons and posters, are out of scope for this research, but could make a separate and very interesting study. This interdisciplinary work attempts to bridge together – (New Woman) fiction, women’s personal reminiscences and letters. Novels of the fin de siecle, according to

Erich Auerbach, “had to follow the social and political development of the time.”54

Chandra Mohanty suggests that the relationship between a “represented” woman and a real woman is “one of the central questions the practice of feminist scholarship seeks to address.”55 As for the experience of the women in the nineteenth century, we can

movement written after Perestroika: Aivazova, S.G. Russike Zhenshchiny V Labirinte Ravnopraviia: Ocherki Politicheskoi Teorii I Istorii: Dokumental’nye Materialy (Moskva: RIK Rusanova, 1998). Khasbulatova, O. A.Opyt I Traditsii Zhenskogo Dvizheniia V Rossii, 1860-1917 (Ivanovo: Ivanovskii gos. Universitet, 1994). Khasbulatova, O. A, and N. B. Gafizova. Zhenskoe Dvizhenie V Rossii: Vtoraia Polovina XIX – Nachalo XX Veka (Ivanovo: Izd-vo “Ivanovo”, 2003). Iukina, I. I. Istoria Zhenshchin Rossii: Zhenskoe Dvizhenie I Feminizm V 1850-1920-e Gody: Materialy K Bibliografii (Sankt-Peterburg: “Aleteiia,” 2003). Koroleva, T. A. Zhenskoe Dvizhenie V Rossii Kak Politicheskii Aktor Na Rubezhe XIX- XX Vekov (Sankt-Peterburg: Izvestiia, 2010). It has to be mentioned that gender studies are still at very early stage of development in Russia. 51 Worobec, Christine. The Human Tradition in Imperial Russia (Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2009), p. 71. 52 Wittmann, Livia Z. "The New Woman As A European Phenomenon." Neohelicon: Acta Comparationis Litterarum Universarum 19.2 (1992): 49. 53 Ibid., p. 2. 54 Auerbach, Erich. Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1968), p. 497. 55 Mohanty, Chandra T. Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), p. 19. 18 talk rather about the “represented” women, since even when we read women’s biographies or autobiographies we have only a certain representation or even mythologization of a particular woman or women. It does not imply, however, that these representations are not worth studying, since these representations still contribute to our better understanding of their lives, but women’s autobiographies and memoirs could be categorized as rather an imaginative realm. However, according to Mikhail Bakhtin,

“literature is capable of penetrating into the social laboratory,” where the ideologemes

“are formed and shaped.”56 The author, writes Bakhtin further in The Formal Method in

Literary Scholarship (1978), anticipates and foresees the ideological problems in a state of being born:

The generation of ideas, the generation of esthetic desires and feelings, their wandering, their as yet unformed groping for reality, their restless seething in the depths of so-called “social psyche” – the whole as yet undifferentiated flood of generating ideology – is reflected and refracted in the content of the literary work” (my emphasis).57

Bakhtin’s theories about discourse and the concept of “Otherness” and the Other were developed and discussed at the same time that the feminist discourse became popular.58 In his view, we live in a world of other’s words.59 Bakhtin’s understanding of the Other is very broad. In his philosophical system, we are all in the position of the other to one another, since each of us has his or her own language, system of beliefs, and mindset. Moreover, our thought is not independent, but it is always in a constant dialogue with others’ thoughts. One of Bakhtin’s definitions of the Other is related to the image of

56 Medvedev, P. N, and M. M. Bakhtin. The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship: A Critical Introduction to Sociological Poetics (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), p. 17. 57 Ibid. 58 See Straus, Nina P. Dostoevsky and the Woman Question: Rereadings at the End of a Century (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994). 59 See Bakhtin, M. M. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Caryl Emerson, ed. and trans. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), p. 143. 19 the New Women, who awaken human consciousness by their consciousness, since

“human consciousness awakens surrounded by the consciousness of the others.”60 The powerful imagination and spirit of an emancipated woman influenced people – male and female – around them; and the idea of female liberation became widespread, shaking the fundamental and patriarchal world. This world could not change in an instant, but the idea was already born. Bakhtin, however, never refers directly to “Soviet or gender politics in his literary analysis, his critique of subjection is as implicitly feminist as it is implicitly antihierarchical and anti-Soviet.”61 In this work, we read both male and female voices advocating the New Woman because of the existence of “authoritative discourse” that is seen by Bakhtin as hierarchically higher and associated with “the word of the fathers.”62 One must take into account, however, that female voices are often in collision with dominant discourses. Bakhtin writes about authoritative discourse:

The authoritative word demands that we acknowledge it, that we make it our own; it binds us, quite independent of any power it might have to persuade us internally; we encounter it with its authority already fused to it. The authoritative word is located in a distanced zone, originally connected with a past that is felt to be hierarchically higher. It is, so to speak, the word of the fathers. Its authority was already acknowledged in the past. It is a prior discourse. (original emphasis)63

However, the authoritative discourse was important for feminist thought in the very beginning, in its embryonic philosophical state, but today it can function as an independent ideology, still respecting the “word of the fathers,” “the words of predecessors” (Bakhtinian terms) but being more on its own where it is possible. A child

60 Todorov, Tzvetan. Mikhail Bakhtin: The Dialogical Principle (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), p. 96. 61 Straus, Nina P. Dostoevsky and the Woman Question: Rereadings at the End of a Century, p. 4. 62 Bakhtin, M. M, Pam Morris, V. N. Voloshinov, and P. N. Medvedev. The Bakhtin Reader: Selected Writings of Bakhtin, Medvedev, and Voloshinov (London: E. Arnold, 1994), p. 75. 63 Bakhtin, Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination. Ed. by Michael Holquist. Translated by Caryl Emerson and Mikhail Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), p. 342. 20 starts leading an independent life without parents, leaving home, but remembering and honoring their legacy from parents. In best cases, a child selects the best and ignores and tries to forget the worst from their parental household. Benjamin Walter in Theses on the

Philosophy of History (1939) describes Klee’s painting “Angelus Novus” that shows an

“angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating.”64 The angel’s face is turned toward the past; the angel’s wish is to stay and awake the dead, but the storm of progress brings the angel of history to the future.

Similarly, an emancipated woman, turns her face towards the past, but gravitated by the future. She cannot dwell, however, in the future and investigate it, for “every second of time” is a “straight gate through which Messiah might enter.”65

Julia Kristeva, acknowledging Bakhtin’s philosophical system, points out: “The rhetorician does not invent a language; fascinated by the symbolic function of paternal discourse, he seduces it in the Latin sense of the verb – he “leads it astray,” inflicts it with a few anomalies generally taken from writers of the past, thus miming a father who remembers having been a son and even a daughter of his father, but not to the point of leaving cover.”66

According to Bakhtin, the idea of trial and testing preserves its organizational significance in the novel throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The New

Woman novel is usually organized around this concept. Bakhtin writes:

64 Benjamin, Walter, and Hannah Arendt. Illuminations. (New York: Schocken Books, 1986), p. 257. 65 Ibid., p. 264. 66 Kristeva, Julia, and Leon S. Roudiez. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), p. 106. 21

trial of the Nitzscheanean man, of the emancipated woman and so forth – these are the very widespread organizing ideas in the European novel of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. (my emphasis)67

To date, there is no scholarship that treats Russian and Victorian emancipationist works comparatively. The paucity of scholarship is a catalyst for this research. This work consists of two major parts – one on Russia and another on Victorian England. Through literary texts, this work intends to map the evolution of the “woman question” in Russia and Victorian England and explore various identities of new femininity in both literatures. The choice of female and male writers in this work is representative, but by no means exhaustive. The contacts of the women’s movement in Russia and England were fragmentary. In the first part, Chapter 1 “Women’s Emancipation and the “Woman

Question” in Russian Literature and Society” focuses on the emergence of the early women’s movement in Russia. A brief history and overview of the main developments of the early Russian women’s movement will be given, since the focus of this work is not the history of the women’s movement, but the New Woman writers’ fiction and the emancipationist literary discourse. According to Fernando Lloyd, writers reflecting on women’s emancipation, “complete our understanding, build on historical and sociological studies.”68 Chapter 2 “Who Is To Blame? and What Is To Be Done?: Male Advocates of the ‘Woman Question’” analyzes works of A. I. Herzen and N. G. Chernyshevsky.

Female liberation is one of the main themes of two novels – Alexander Herzen’s Who Is

To Blame? (1840) and Nikolay Chernyshevsky’s What Is To Be Done? From Tales About

New People (1863). As Robert McNeal points out, these two novels “propagandized a sense of guilt among privileged” men and portrayed the “self-formation” of “new

67 Bakhtin, Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination, p. 390. 68 Fernando, Lloyd. "New Women" in the Late Victorian Novel, p. 1. 22 women.”69 Chapter 3 “Reading Emancipationist Writing of Two New Women” divulges memoirs of S. V. Kovalevskaya’s A Russian Childhood (1889), and E. N. Vodovozova’s

Russian Childhood (1911), as well as Kovalevskaya’s novel A Nihilist Girl (1890). The figure of Sofia Kovalevskaya as a writer has been underappreciated by literary scholars, since she is considered, first and foremost, as a European female scientist. Nonetheless, her semi-autobiographical novel A Nihilist Girl (1890) is a significant contribution to the

“woman question” and documentation of the formation of the female nihilist. The images of nineteenth-century revolutionary Russian women are out of scope of this project, because they form a completely different political discourse. The Russian revolutionary women and their reminiscent writings also would make a separate study. The second part,

Chapter 4 “The Women’s Movement in England,” gives an overview of key phases from the early women’s movement. Chapter 5 “The New Woman Through the Male Gaze” includes two literary responses to the phenomenon of the New Woman – Thomas

Hardy’s Jude the Obscure (1895) and Grant Allen’s The Woman Who Did (1895).

Chapter 6 “The New Woman through the Female Gaze” suggests a comparison between the new female identity representation in Elena Gan’s novel The Ideal (1837) and that represented by Sarah Grand’s Ideala (1888). Grand’s Ideala (1888) exemplifies an ambiguous and contradictory new femininity, whereas Gan’s Olga Goltsberg is a rather

Romantic heroine. Sarah Grand’s narration in Ideala is written from a male perspective, although Grand openly reveals her feminist critique of contemporary masculinity: “It is for the death of manliness we women mourn.”70 Chapter Six also discusses Dixon’s novel

The Story of a Modern Woman (1894). Grand’s female readers as well as Ella Dixon’s

69 Robert H. McNeal. “Women in the Russian Radical Movement,” Journal of Social History 5:2 (Winter, 1971-1972): 145. 70 Grand, Sarah. Ideala. (New York: Optimus Print. Co, 1894), p. 20. 23 were predominately middle-class or non-professional women. Not every woman could realize herself in motherhood, so Grand considered that professional development was especially necessary for women. In Ideala (1888) she expresses her anger at Victorian sexual double standards. She also attempts to introduce feminist ideas and “seduce” middle-class domestic women with her progressive thoughts. Grand believes, as well as

Chernyshevsky, that society can be changed if the political action is collective. However, in Chernyshevsky’s view, societal change could bring only New People. Grand considers the role of the New Woman to be one of moral superiority; the New Woman, according to her, is the moral conscience of the nation, agitating for full female citizenship rights.

For Chernyshevsky, the moral conscience does not necessary belong to women, but to the new people – be they males or females.

The theme involving women’s subjection to their husbands or parents, criticism of the institution of marriage, and double moral standards in society is central to works of the emancipationist writers. Most writers fictionalizing new female identities attempt to deconstruct the traditional marriage plot and explore new possible alternatives.

Specifically, Nikolay Chernyshevsky and Sofia Kovalevskaya see this alternative in fictitious marriages as a path to personal liberation. Ella Dixon (1855-1932) and Charles

Grant Blairfindie Allen (1848-1899) choose female celibacy for their female protagonists. Dixon’s Mary Erle and Allen’s Herminia choose celibacy as a sign of female solidarity and sisterhood. This “silent strike” of celibacy and “glorified spinsterhood” was a necessity, however, at the end of the century because of the reality that the number of women was in “vast disproportion to men.”71

71 Williams, Erin. "Female Celibacy In The Fiction Of Gissing And Dixon: The Silent Strike Of The Suburbanites," English Literature In Transition (1880-1920) 45.3 (2002): 261. 24

William Rathbone Greg (1809-1881) investigates thoroughly in “Why are women redundant?” (1869) the problem of disproportion of men and women in the middle of the nineteenth century, stating that “Nature makes no mistakes; Nature has no redundancies.”72 He wrote in his essay: “The residue – the large excess over this proportion – who remain unmarried, constitute the problem to be solved, the evil and anomaly to be cured. (original emphasis).73 He names several causes of the disproportion problem. The main is not only wars, as one can assume, but emigration. Starting from beginning of the nineteenth century, more than 5,000,000 left to live in colonies or the

United States. An assumption is that the vast majority of those who emigrated were men.

William Rathbone Greg proposes women to emigrate and thus reach a natural proportion of the sexes – both in Great Britain and colonies where also the disproportion is evident, only men excess women in colonies. However, mostly lower estates women were needed in colonies. Unmarried women in England were for the most part women from upper class.74

In all countries of which there is any accurate statistics, there are rather more women than men; the excess varying from two to five percent: “In countries where the natural proportion has not been materially distributed by emigration, immigration, desolating or prolonged wars, or other artificial causes, the excess of females would appear to be about two percent.”75 Another main reason is mortality that among males in all ages exceeds that of females.76 There were around thirty spinsters to every 100

72 Greg, William Rathbone. Why are Women Redundant? (London: Trübner, 1869), p. 13. Electronic source: accessed 02/09/2015 https://archive.org/details/whyarewomenredu00greggoog. 73 Ibid., p. 11. 74 Ibid., p. 18. 75 Ibid., p. 8, p. 11. 76 Ibid., p. 11. 25 females.77 William Rathbone Greg estimates 750,000 spinsters in 1851; and there were in

England and Wales 1,248,000 women at that time, between ages twenty and forty.78 The excess of women over twenty years of age was 405, 000 in 1851.79 The number of women servants who remained single was also excessive: in 1851 it was 905,165 and later reached one million.80 Almost half were around twenty years old and more. The reason these girls did not marry was that luxury they lived in their work places in upper- class families. They did not give up these comfortable positions for a family and married life. The same problem also existed in many other countries, including Imperial Russia.

However, William Rathbone Greg does not count servant girls as redundant, since these girls were independent and “usefully employed.”81 The English essayist also criticizes men for an excessive female celibacy. He states that men’s licentiousness causes the reason of women’s choice of single life: “Unhappily, as matters are managed now, thousands of men find it perfectly feasible to combine all the freedom, luxury, and self- indulgence of a bachelor’s career with the pleasures of female society and the enjoyments they may seek for there. As long as this is so, so long, we fear, a vast proportion of the best women in the educated classes – women especially who have no dowry beyond their goodness and their beauty – will be doomed to remain involuntarily single. ”82 Summing

77 Ibid., p. 12. 78 Ibid., p. 12-13. 79 Ibid., p. 14. 80 Ibid., p. 25. Domestic service was the second largest source of employment in Victorian England, with about one million workers. See Seaman, L C. B. Victorian England: Aspects of English and Imperial History, 1837-1901 (London: Methuen, 1973), p. 41. 81 Ibid., p. 26. 82 Ibid., p. 27. 26 up his essay, William Rathbone Greg, points out that half a million women out of one and a half million adult unmarried women are wanted in colonies to eradicate the problem.83

Why is it important to study the New Woman figure in the literary discourse?

Sally Ledger persuasively argues, the “textual configurations of the New Woman are as significant historically as the day-to-day lived experiences of women. To a certain extent, the history of the New Woman is only available to us textually, since the New Woman was largely a discursive phenomenon.” 84 The New Woman was a distinct opposite of the mid-century “angels” in Russian and British literatures. Reading the emancipationist writers, we study the origin of the women’s movement and the development of its discourse, since these narratives and the “New Woman fiction opened up a largely gynocentric space for the discussion and dissemination of feminist thought.”85 Walter

Benjamin writes in Theses on the Philosophy of History (1939):

A chronicle who recites events without distinguishing between major and minor ones acts in accordance with following truth: nothing that has ever happened should be regarded as lost for history. To be sure, only a redeemed mankind receives the fullness of its past – which is to say, only for a redeemed mankind has its past become citable in all its moments. Each moment it has lived becomes a citation à l’ordre du jour – and that day is Judgment Day.86 (original emphasis)

M. M. Bakhtin states about the main protagonist of Turgenev’s celebrated novel of 1861, “The hero of the novel, Bazarov of Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons, if taken out of novelistic structure, is not a social type in the strict sense, but only the ideological refraction of a given social type. Socioeconomic historical scholarship defines Bazarov as a raznochinets. But he is not a raznochinets in his actual being. He is the ideological

83 Greg, William Rathbone. Why are Women Redundant? (London: Trübner, 1869), p.37. Electronic source: accessed 02/10/2015 https://archive.org/details/whyarewomenredu00greggoog. 84 Ledger, Sally. The New Woman: Fiction and Feminism at the Fin De Siècle (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1997), p. 3. 85 Heilmann, Ann. New Woman Strategies: Sarah Grand, Olive Schreiner, Mona Caird. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), p. 2. 86 Benjamin, Walter, and Hannah Arendt. Illuminations. (New York: Schocken Books, 1986), p. 254. 27 refraction of a raznochinets in the social consciousness of a definite social group, the liberal nobility to which Turgenev belonged.”87 In this sense, the New Woman is also

“the ideological refraction of given social type,” but at the same time, as Bakhtin puts it, if the New Woman is “presented to us as a structural element of a literary work,” then,

“this is essential for the sociologist” and historians.88 Moreover, the New Woman is interesting from the perspective that “she is on the move from breaking out the ideological and economic restrictions of traditional womanhood in search for a new identity”89 (my emphasis).

In addition, as Bakhtin point out in The Dialogical Imagination, there is an importance of transmitting and interpreting the feminist thought, or in Bakhtin’s definition, the words of others, since it is the foundation of the philology. He writes: “In the humanities – as distinct from the natural and mathematical sciences – there arises the specific task of establishing, transmitting and interpreting the words of others (for example, the problem of the methodology of the historical disciplines). And of course in the philological disciplines, the speaking person in the fundamental object of investigation.”90

Throughout the work, the Other, Otherness, and Abjection (the last is the term of

Julia Kristeva) are organizing elements serving as a device to read the (literary) formation of new female identities in two patriarchal societies, since the New Woman (as well as a female writer in the nineteenth century) is the abject and the Other in the narratives of the

87 Ibid., p. 21. Raznochinets is a term for people of diverse ranks. 88 Ibid. 89 Wittmann, Livia Z. "The New Woman as a European Phenomenon," p. 49. 90 Bakhtin, Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination. Ed. by Michael Holquist. Translated by Caryl Emerson and Mikhail Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), p. 351. 28 emancipationist novelists.91 Simone de Beauvoir uses the notion of the Other, but it differs from Bakhtin’s concept. According to Simone de Beauvoir, otherness is a fundamental category of human thought.

Abjection occupies the novelistic landscape of the emancipationist writers. The abject(ified) emancipationists create a new discourse, unveiling the truth of repression, control, and myths about the Ideal Femininity. According to Kristeva, abjection occurs in the space of threshold and taboo. In her essay The Powers of Horror (1980) Julia

Kristeva writes about abjection: “The looms, within abjection, one of those violent, dark revolts of being, directed against a threat that seems to emanate from an exorbitant outside or inside, ejected beyond the scope of the possible, the tolerable, the thinkable. It lies there. Quite close, but it cannot be assimilated.”92 Similarly, the New Woman and the

New Woman male and female writers faced revolts and intolerance, since they touched upon the unthinkable. If male writers faced the abjection from outside, the emancipationist female novelists experienced abjection from the inside and outside, since they were only in the process of formation of their identities as writers, especially, in

Russia. The reaction of the patriarchal society in form of abjection to the otherness of the new female identity was her distinct opposition. In Kristeva’s definition: “The abject has only one quality of the object – that of being opposed I.”93 For Kristeva, the “I” goes through the painful realization of self-awareness and individuation in the process of the

91 Galina Siarheiuk also suggests to read Russian and Poilsh women’s prose through the critical lens of Kristeva in her dissertation “(Un)Veiling the Abject: Deviance, Defiance and Degradation in Russian and Polish Women’s Prose 1890-1924” (Ph.D. Disseration, University of Colarado, 2010). 92 Kristeva, Julia, and Leon S. Roudiez. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), p. 229. 93 Kristeva, Julia, and Leon S. Roudiez. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, p. 230. 29 formation. En route to self-identity formation, a female writer, her subjective “I,” encounters rejection of the patriarchal world.

An interdisciplinary work on women by a woman – Simone de Beauvoir’s The

Second Sex (1949) is a study of women in their contemporary and historical situation from many points of view – biological, psychoanalytical, historical, philosophical, and literary. Chapter X of her book The Myth of Woman in Five Authors analyzes the feminine myth as it appears in works of such authors as Stendhal (1783-1842), D. H.

Lawrence (1885-1930), Claudel (1868-1925), Breton (1896-1966), and Montherlant

(1895-1972). For this work, this analysis is important, for the New Woman opposes the myth of an Ideal Woman and Feminine Mystique, and Eternal Feminine. In Russian literature, the Ideal Woman was praised by A. S. Pushkin, I. S. Turgenev, I. A.

Goncharov, L. N. Tolstoy, and many other novelists and poets. The New Woman of the fin de siècle destroys this myth, becoming an autonomous subject. Beauvoir highlights that each separate writer reflects “the great collective myth of woman.”94 In works of five writers she chooses to analyze, according to her, the woman appears as a “privileged

Other.”95 (original emphasis) Women, according to Beauvoir, belonged to the Other for a long time: “she is the Other in a totality of which the two components are necessary to one another.”96 According to her, there is no group that sets itself as the One without setting up the Other over against it. The Other is usually a hostile entity, as it is perceived by a group. Thus, the new femininity in fiction and in life, in fact, is part of “vaguely hostile “others.”97 As in the village, Beauvoir argues, people not belonging to the village

94 De Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex (New York: Knopf, 1957), p. 248. 95 Ibid., p. 248. 96 Ibid., p. xx. 97 Ibid. 30 are “strangers”; the New Woman, as a “stranger,” awakens “most archaic senses through a burning sensation.”98 She brought her own perspective on many conventional beliefs and thus was the “stranger” and suspect in society. She is, to a certain extent, a

“foreigner” in any nineteenth-century patriarchal society. By posing herself above societal norms, she causes phobias of the vast majority (male and female), since she is the

Other. The otherness and her intermediary position in the eyes of the public are frightening – she is not a conventional woman and not a man. According to Beauvoir, the

“woman’s independent successes are in contradiction with her femininity,” because she has a claim on the role of subject, not object.99

In her essay Strangers to Ourselves (1991), Julia Kristeva writes that the foreigner is actually within us – “he is the hidden face of our identity.”100 According to her, “the foreigner comes in when the consciousness of my difference arises, and he disappears when we all acknowledge ourselves as foreigners, unnamable to bonds and communities.”101 The New Woman’s “failure” that was documented by many emancipationist writers is relative, because in spite of everything, as the “foreigner” in society, she is happy. Julia Kristeva explains why happiness prevails in foreigners: “The strange happiness of the foreigner consists in maintaining that fleeting eternity or that perpetual transience.”102 She also explains the confidence of the foreigner in society; similarly, the new female identity, estranged and alienated, remains confident: “Between the two pathetic shores of courage and humiliation, against which he [the foreigner] is

98 Kristeva, Julia, and Leon S. Roudiez. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), p. 266. 99 Ibid., p. 262. 100 Kristeva, Julia, and Leon S. Roudiez, p. 264. 101 Ibid. 102 Ibid. 31 tossed by the clashes of others, the foreigner persists, anchored in himself, strengthened by such a secret working out, his neutral wisdom, a pleasure that has been numbed by an unattainable solicitude.”103

Nineteenth-century society tried to find labels for the “foreign” New Woman – the Odd, Superfluous, Wild, Novissima, Revolting Daughter. The New Woman was far from superfluous, however. George Gissing answers with his novel Odd Women (1894) that “superfluous” and “odd” women, who chose celibacy, were the trend at the turn-of- the century. The New Woman was not Wild, either. Rather the patriarchal society acted

“wild,” lampooning her and pointing her place of a mother, daughter, sister, or housewife. She was attacked at the time when it was already transparent that the women’s roles in society had to shift. Simone de Beauvoir writes: “One of the consequences of industrial revolution was the entrance of women into productive labor, and it was just here that the claims of the feminists emerged from the realm of theory and acquired an economic basis, while their opponents became the more aggressive.”104

George Gissing and Nikolay Chernyshevsky document in their novels the women’s entrance into productive labor. The New Woman, the Novissima, was, indeed, the

Revolting Daughter, who fought until her hope was almost lost. She sometimes is depicted as a disillusioned femininity (Gan’s female protagonist Olga, Grand’s Ideala,

Kovalevskaya’s female narrator in A Nigilist Girl, Herzen’s Lyubonka, Dixon’s Marie,

Hardy’s Sue Bridehead) at the end, but always remains self-sufficient, since she refuses to be a mere supplement. The writers emphasize the unpreparedness of the nineteenth- century society for the new femininity. The “failure” of the New Woman reflected

103 Ibid., p. 270. 104 De Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex, p. xxiii. 32 inability of the patriarchal society to “accept new modalities of otherness.”105 Her spirit, however, was contagious and seductive for female readers. Despite her failure, as many

New Woman novelists document, she tries to change people’s attitudes. She has the audacity to think independently, to act, to pose herself as an autonomous subject, and to reason. She constantly copes with the belief of the Eternal Feminine or Feminine

Mystique. The New Woman’s goal is simple: to make a step towards happiness.

According to Benjamin Walter, “In other words, our image of happiness is indissolubly bound up with the image of redemption. The same applies to our view of the past, which is concern of the history. The past carries with it a temporal index by which it is referred to redemption.”106

William Rathbone Greg underlines the equality of men and women in Why are

Women Redundant? (1869). However, he points out the difference between male and female brain, indicating that the cerebral organization of the female is far more delicate than that of man.107 The English essayist concludes that there are occupations for which single women will always be in demand. For instance, female novelists are of an inestimable importance: “Then there is a large and increasing call for a supply of literary food, such as many well-educated women find themselves fully able to furnish; and if only those who are really competent to this work were to undertake it, it would them in ample independence. Novels are now almost as indispensable a portion of the food of

English life as beef of beer; and no producers are superior to women in this line, either as

105 Kristeva, Julia, and Leon S. Roudiez. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, p. 265. 106 Benjamin, Walter, and Hannah Arendt. Illuminations. (New York: Schocken Books, 1986), p. 254. 107 Greg, William Rathbone. Why are Women Redundant? (London: Trübner, 1869), p. 32. Electronic source: accessed 02/09/2015 https://archive.org/details/whyarewomenredu00greggoog. 33 delicate handling or abundant fertility.”108 According to William Rathbone Greg, the women’s movement in England was greatly influenced by American women’s fight for equal rights. One must mention that the women’s movement in America was “associated with the abolition of slavery movement and both were influenced by the evangelical revivals of the Second Great Awakening.”109 For feminists in America, as well as for the abolitionists, the Bible was one of the most important books. Feminists had their own interpretations of the Holy Scripture, especially controversial passages concerning gender issues.110 In the story of Adam and Eve, for example, feminists blamed both and considered both as responsible for the sin.111 Moreover, women often discussed the role of women, for example, Deborah, Miriam, Huldah, Jael, Anna, Priscilla, and Phoebe in the New and Old Testament; and “how God had often called them to be prophets.”112

Also, they highlighted that Jesus was always accepting toward women.113

108 Ibid., p. 37. 109 Hankins, Barry. The Second Great Awakening and the Transcendentalists. (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 2004), p. 109. 110 Ibid., p. 112. 111 Ibid. 112 Ibid., p. 112, p. 114. 113 Ibid. 34

Part I: The Women’s Liberation Movement in

Russia

Chapter One: Women’s Emancipation and the “Woman Question” in Russian Literature and Society

1.1 The Emergence of Women’s Movement in Tsarist Russia

I see a huge building. A narrow door in its front wall is open wide. Inside the doorway looms a dark fog. A young woman is standing before its high threshold – a Russian young woman. The impenetrable fog exudes icy streams of frost, and a slow, toneless voice is carried out from the depths of the building along with those steams. “Oh you who wishes to cross this threshold – do you know what awaits you?” “I know,” the young woman answers. “Cold, hunger, hatred, mockery, scorn, resentment, imprisonment, illness, and even death?” “I know.” “Utter alienation, isolation?” “I know. I’m ready. I’ll bear all the suffering, all the blows.” “Not only from your enemies, but also from your relatives, your friends?” “Yes…even from them.” “Very well. You are prepared for any sacrifice?” “Yes.” “For anonymous sacrifice? You will perish, and no one…no one will even know whose memory to honor!” “I don’t need either gratitude or pity. I don’t need a name.” “Are you prepared to commit a crime?” The young woman bowed her head… “I’m even prepared to commit a crime.” The voice didn’t immediately continue its questions. “Do you know,” it eventually spoke up again, “that you may cease to believe what you believe now, that you may realize you have deceived yourself and have destroyed your young life in vain?” “I know this as well. Nonetheless, I want to enter.” “Then enter!” The young woman crossed the threshold – and a heavy curtain fell behind it. “Fool!” someone shrieked from behind. “Saint!” came from somewhere in reply. 1

Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev (1818-1883) Poem in prose “Threshold”

The second half of the nineteenth century was ferment and contradictory; it also is considered as the most exciting period of progress, modernization, and change in

European intellectual and social history. The struggle for female liberation began during the period of Enlightenment rationalism, lasting throughout the French Revolution,

1 Translated by Elizabeth Cherish Allen. The original Russian text reads: Я вижу громадное здание. В передней стене узкая дверь раскрыта настежь, за дверью - угрюмая мгла. Перед высоким порогом стоит девушка... Русская девушка. Морозом дышит та непроглядная мгла, и вместе с леденящей струей выносится из глубины здания медленный, глухой голос. - О ты, что желаешь переступить этот порог,- знаешь ли ты, что тебя ожидает? - Знаю,- отвечает девушка. - Холод, голод, ненависть, насмешка, презрение, обида, тюрьма, болезнь и самая смерть? - Знаю. - Отчуждение полное, одиночество? - Знаю. Я готова. Я перенесу все страдания, все удары. - Не только от врагов - но и от родных, от друзей? - Да... и от них. - Хорошо... Ты готова на жертву? - Да. - На безымянную жертву? Ты погибнешь - и никто... никто не будет даже знать, чью память почтить! - Мне не нужно ни благодарности, ни сожаления. Мне не нужно имени. - Готова ли ты на преступление? Девушка потупила голову. - И на преступление готова. Голос не тотчас возобновил свои вопросы. Знаешь ли ты,- заговорил он наконец, - что ты можешь разувериться в том, чему веришь теперь, можешь понять, что обманулась и даром погубила свою молодую жизнь? - Знаю и это. И все-таки я хочу войти. - Войди! Девушка перешагнула порог - и тяжелая завеса упала за нею. - Дура!- проскрежетал кто-то сзади. - Святая! - принеслось откуда-то в ответ. 36 continued at the turn of the nineteenth century, and culminated in World War I when the movement celebrated a “turning point for the majority of European women’s emancipation movements.”2 Up to the time of the fin de siècle, women’s organizations existed in most European countries, including Imperial Russia. In the Scandinavian countries, for example, women’s organizations appeared a bit later than in Imperial

Russia and Europe, in the 1870s and 1880s. The appearance of such associations was well-prepared by intensive international literary discussions and active participation of male and female writers.

According to Ann Heilmann, “marked by social, political and cultural crises on a national and international scale,” the fin de siècle, “contested old, and generated new, ideologies, art forms and aesthetics.”3 The 1860s, the watershed between the Old and the

New, saw the emergence of the Russian women’s movement.4 At this time, the Russian intelligentsia “developed into an influential social group”5 This development was not

2 Paletschek, Sylvia, and Bianka Pietrow-Ennker. Women's Emancipation Movements in the Nineteenth Century: A European Perspective (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 2004), p. 3. See also Evans, Richard J. The Feminists: Women's Emancipation Movements in Europe, America, and Australasia, 1840- 1920 (London: Croom Helm, 1977). 3 Heilmann, Ann. New Woman Fiction: Women Writing First-Wave Feminism (Hampshire Engand: Macmillan Press, 2000), p. 10. 4 Linda Edmonson discusses the periodization of the Russian women’s movement. She suggests it starts in the 1820s, when “women created a cultural identity for themselves as writers” and closes down by the October Revolution in 1917. She argues that the periodization is still vague and will probably be specified by future historians. See Paletschek, Sylvia, and Bianka Pietrow-Ennker. Women's Emancipation Movements in the Nineteenth Century: A European Perspective, pp. 224-228. 5 Koblitz, Ann H. A Convergence of Lives: Sofia Kovalevskaia, Scientist, Writer, Revolutionary (Boston: Birkhäuser, 1983), p. ix. The word “intelligentsia” came into widespread use in the 1860s; the roots of the concept, however, can be traced to the late eighteenth century. There are many definitions of the intelligentsia. The debates over the composition of this social category – whether it mainly consisted of the nobility or the raznochintsy – are still ongoing. First, the education was the key criterion of intelligentsia, but it was redefined in the 1890s. In the second half of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century, the intelligentsia consisted largely of the nobility. The intelligentsia of the beginning of the nineteenth century was strongly influenced by philosophy of German Romanticism. In the 1820s, the literary intelligentsia turns into revolutionary inclined ideologists, primarily, becoming anti-government critics. It was a moral duty of the intelligentsia to criticize the government and existing injustices. The literary intellectuals played a crucial role in initiating political changes in Tsarist Russia. The literary intelligentsia believed that literature was a 37 feasible earlier because of the régime of Nicholas I. At this juncture, in the 1860s, the

“woman question,” adjoined with the other “burning questions,” first and foremost, the abolition of serfdom, became a painful splinter in the side of Russian society, suddenly attracting public attention through the active participation of radically inclined women, social philosophers, writers, and publicists. The division of the Old and New epoch is well documented by historians. The beginning of women’s emancipation, educational reforms, the emancipation of serfs, the economic transformation, the construction of railroads, and the development of commerce brought Russia to a new historical phase.

The Russian women’s movement during the reign of Tsar Alexander II (1855-

1881) was as successful as in any other country, although “economically, socially, and culturally, Russia remained at an earlier stage of development than the industrializing

West.”6 Late Tsarist Russia was not an open society, but sexual egalitarian rights and respect for the autonomous individual rights were gradually becoming well established.7

The reign of Alexander II, in contrast with the intolerable atmosphere of Nicholas’s

Russia, was marked by progressiveness and openness, despite the fact that it still displayed many ambiguities and contradictions.8 As W. E. Mosse points out, “Finally, a

perfect medium for political propaganda. For a detailed discussion, see: Frede, Victoria. Doubt, Atheism, and the Nineteenth-Century Russian Intelligentsia (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2011); See also Daniel R. Brower. “The Problem of the Russian Intelligentsia,” Slavic Review 26.4 (1967): 638- 647; and Raeff, Marc. Origins of the Russian Intelligentsia: The Eighteenth-Century Nobility (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1966). 6 See Whittaker, Cynthia H. “The Women's Movement during the Reign of Alexander II: A Case Study in Russian Liberalism,” The Journal of Modern History 48.2 (1976): 35; and Engel, Barbara A. Mothers and Daughters: Women of the Intelligentsia in Nineteenth Century Russia, p. 6. See also Mosse, Werner E. Alexander II and the Modernization of Russia. (New York: Collier Books, 1962). 7 Paletschek, Sylvia, and Bianka Pietrow-Ennker. Women's Emancipation Movements in the Nineteenth Century: A European Perspective, p. 229. 8 Engel, Barbara A. Mothers and Daughters: Women of the Intelligentsia in Nineteenth Century Russia, p. 21. The greatest reform during the reign of Alexander II was the emancipation of serfs on February 19, 1861. Between 1855 and 1859, contemporary problems were discussed either in literary form, or on the pages of such “thick journals” as The Contemporary, The Notes of Fatherland, and The Library for Reading. 38 relaxation of the censorship regulations allowed the growing intelligentsia to engage in the public discussion of political questions. Russian political journalism, and with it the growing influence of ‘public opinion,’ date essentially form the time of Alexander II.”9

However, as Chershire notes, the “Russians themselves have never been able to decipher the character of Alexander II,” one of the most contradictory personalities in Russian history.10 The relative freedom of the Russian press under Alexander II, in comparison to

Nicholas I’s (1796-1885) rigid control, led to many open debates about social structure; therefore, it became feasible to discuss a broader range of topics with more liberty than before.11

One of the burning topics of that time was a critique of women’s education that inevitably led to educational reform that will be discussed later in detail. This reform, which allowed women to study, showed a favorable, but very long-awaited outcome. It is a great achievement that the discussion of women’s education took place during the liberal reforms of Alexander II. It must be mentioned that Alexander II was a supporter of his father’s régime in the beginning. His father, Nicholas I, opposed the development of higher education not only for women, but also for men. Science and critical thinking were not welcomed during his reign. He rigorously controlled the curriculum of existing higher education institutions.

9 Mosse, Werner E. Alexander II and the Modernization of Russia. (New York: Collier Books, 1962), p. 10. 10 Chershire H. T. “The Radicals of the Sixties and Their Leaders.” The Slavonic Review. 1. 1 (1922): 110. 11 Moser, Charles A. Antinihilism in the Russian Novel of the 1860's (The Hague: Mouton, 1964), p. 14. The censorship was an important element of social control in 19th-century Russia as well as in Europe. Through at times rigid censorship the government tried to regulate and influence public opinion. Russian censorship during the reign of Nicholas I was known for its absurdity. It was particularly strong during his reign and that period was called “censorship’s reign of terror.” Nonetheless, literary productivity during the time of Nicholas’s reign was exceptionally high. The relaxation of censorship took place in 1860s. For instance, in the 1860s radical and liberal thoughts about society and government were published legally in Tsarist Russia, considering that writers often used so-called Aesop language, so that blind censors did not even see danger in texts. Chernyshevsky, for instance, publishes his What Is To Be Done? (1863) as a discussion of women’s oppression. In fact, he also implies the oppression of peasant serfs. 39

After the Crimean defeat in 1855, however, he realized the importance of science for the development of country. In 1835, Nicholas I refused to build railways because it was not only costly, but first and foremost, a “danger to public morals.”12 It is known that the city of New Orleans lost its great positions in the antebellum America because of the failure to quickly build railroads, although New Orleans was even better developed than

New York in the first half of the nineteenth century.13 The growth of the city slowed down notably. The first line was constructed in Russia only seven years later – between

1842 and 1851 – by American engineers and with American capital, linking Moscow and

St. Petersburg.14 The entire country was “frozen” for seven years. Corruption at all possible levels was another problem in nineteenth century Russia. During the reign of

Nicholas I, the “Iron Curtain” added to the tension between the government and its people. The Russian intelligentsia could not easily go abroad, especially to study.

In this stifling atmosphere, women could not demand rights for education. It is interesting to point out, however, that despite this hostile environment, many great literary figures appeared already in the first half of the nineteenth century. In fact, this period is called the Golden Age of Russian Literature. A. V. Zhukovsky (1783-1852), N.

V. Gogol (1809-1852), I. A. Krylov (1769-1844), the philosopher P.Y. Chaadaev (1794-

1856), A. S. Pushkin (1799-1837), A.S. Griboedov (1795-1829), M. Y. Lermontov

(1814-1844), the literary critic V.G. Belinsky (1811-1848), and many others.

Educational reform was not the only enterprise initiated by women, nonetheless as

Christine Johanson convincingly argues, the early women’s movement “in striking

12 Moser, Charles A. Antinihilism in the Russian Novel of the 1860's (The Hague: Mouton, 1964), p. 11. 13 See the detailed discussion of Marler, Scott. The Merchant’s Capital New Orleans and the Political Economy of the Nineteenth-Century South. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 14 Moser, Charles A. Antinihilism in the Russian Novel of the 1860's (The Hague: Mouton, 1964), p. 11. 40 contrast to the Western feminist movement, campaigned on a variety of social and political issues, Russian women concentered almost exclusively on education and employment.”15 It is not surprising that most women avoided the dangerous sphere of politics, due to their fear of being exiled or imprisoned. They made one of their priorities the expansion of employment opportunities in Tsarist Russia, especially after the serfdom abolishment in 1861.

The emancipation of the serfs in 1861 was a significant step towards the urbanization of Russia which led to the alteration of the economic and social positions of women of all classes.16 The urbanization changed women’s life style drastically. They were forced to seek employment. In the 1850s, conditions in the countryside were worsening, and the fear of peasant rebellions was strengthening; thus, Alexander II was

“convinced of the necessity” for abolishing serfdom from above before large scale peasant revolts took place.17 By Alexander II’s autocratic power, “he gave Russia what the United States of America won only after four years of bloody civil wars.”18

Presumably Alexander II was afraid of the ubiquitous chaos; and it is known that he for the unity and integrity of the country.

It is also important to remember that Alexander II’s character was formed by the influence of a very prominent literary figure – the poet V. A. Zhukovsky (1783-1852).

Vassiliy Andreevich Zhukovsky was mentor of the young tsar; and he was the one who implanted ideas of humanism. Zhukovsky also introduced A.S. Pushkin to the literary

15 Johanson, Christine. Women's Struggle for Higher Education in Russia, 1855-1900 (Kingston: McGill- Queen's University Press, 1987), p. 5. 16 Stites, Richard. The Women's Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism, Nihilism, and Bolshevism, 1860-1930, p. 44. 17 Koblitz, Ann H. A Convergence of Lives: Sofia Kovalevskaia: Scientist, Writer, Revolutionary, p. 126. 18 Moser, Charles A. Antinihilism in the Russian Novel of the 1860's (The Hague: Mouton, 1964), p. 10. 41 world. V. A. Zhukovsky also inspired Alexander II to visit the Decembrists who were so cold-bloodedly punished by his father Nicholas I after their uprising in 1825. V. A.

Zhukovsky took a lively part in lives of the punished Decembrists, convincing Alexander

II to supplicate his father about changing their unbearable living conditions in Siberia.

Alexander II met personally with the Decembrists and spoke to them respectfully.

Eventually, Nicholas I agreed to improve living conditions of the Decembrists. He did not free A. I. Herzen (1812-1870), but again, under the influence of V.A. Zhukovsky, he relocated A.I. Herzen from the city of Vyatka to a town near Moscow, where he continued his exile.

Thus, many of Alexander II’s liberal reforms, in fact, can also be attributed to the influence of the Russian poet V. A. Zhukovky. Zhukovsky himself was a “Westernizer” and a founder of an influential journal The Herald of Europe. He translated Goethe and

Schiller into the Russian language and represented Sentimentalism and Romanticism.

His biography is very interesting and his understanding of serfs traces back to his own origins. He was born as an illegitimate son of a landowner and his Turkish housekeeper.

There were many protests against the emancipation of serfs from landlords worried about their wealth which was often measured by the number of peasants they possessed. Of the sixty millions of people in Russia, about fifty were peasants.19 Most peasants lived in villages. In 1853, some 10.9 million male serfs lived on estates belonging to landowners; and 10.6 million lived on state lands. In 1859, the number was almost the same.20 Landowners had an almost absolute power over their serfs. They could sell them, marry them off, or send them to the army, especially in cases of disobedience.

19 Ibid., p. 11. 20 Ibid. 42

The service in the army usually was about six years. Serfs had to regularly pay cash or in form labor. Landowners could be very frivolous towards their female serfs, which caused conflicts between serfs and landowners. As British historian W. E. Moser points out,

“Not every Russian landowner – they numbered a quarter of a million – was whether a monster or libertine. Cases of sadism and inhuman cruelty, although far from infrequent, were exceptional.”21

However, it was cruel enough that peasant women often married against their will. It is known that in the antebellum America, landowners wanted their female slaves to have as many children as possible. Women could be easily separated from their children by the owners. Women were encouraged to have frequent pregnancies. During pregnancy, women were often freed form hard field work. Russian peasant women were expected to have many children as well.

It was not easy for Tsar Alexander II to liberate serfs because society was divided into two parts – the abolitionists and the planters. Alexander II himself was not against the reforms, but his surrounding influential figures, such as Panin, Muraviev, and Orlov, for example, who were the favorites of Nicholas I, had conservative views of landowning. Besides, Alexander II, although a tactful person, was considered by many as a weak ruler. The Empress Mary, Alexander II’s wife, was an ardent supporter of abolitionism. Another female figure, an aunt of Alexander II, who influenced him as well as the public regarding abolitionism, was the Grand Duchess Elena Pavlona (1784-1803), bringing together intellectuals in her literary salon.

The law did not apply to the masses in Imperial Russia, especially for peasants.

The legislation system was corrupt; and the “judges enjoyed neither independence nor

21 Ibid., p. 15. 43 respect.”22 It was quite dangerous to speak up for women. They found their niche not in demand for political rights, as in more advanced countries as America and England, but in educational reforms.

As urbanization and modernization slowly progressed, women moved from villages to large cities and realized a sudden need for obtaining professional education.

The Russian intelligentsia, a very small group, supported women’s educational access and believed in women’s potential and capabilities, despite some public discussions influenced by the ideas of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865) and Jules Michelet

(1798-1874) about conventional women’s roles in society and the wide-spread belief in women’s intellectual differences from men. As Ann Koblitz points out, the Russian intelligentsia was “far more concerned with women’s rights than were most European intellectuals.”23

The corrupted legislation system irritated the Russian public. Student protests took place in St. Petersburg in one of the Universities, but the Tsar did not punish them and did not close universities for reorganization, as he was advised by the Council of

Ministers. Students were dissatisfied with the serfdom abolition conditions, and they insisted on the election of judges, marriage annulment, educational reform, and closing monasteries. The series of great fires in St. Petersburg added to the chaos. The atmosphere of disbelief and nihilism began to reign in the Tsarist Russia. In one of the reports to Alexander II it was written: “The younger generation was steeped in atheism, materialism, and socialism, inculcated not only by teachers but also by the radical

22 Moser, Charles A. Antinihilism in the Russian Novel of the 1860's (The Hague: Mouton, 1964), p. 21. 23 Koblitz, Ann H. A Convergence of Lives: Sofia Kovalevskaia, Scientist, Writer, Revolutionary, p. ix. 44

‘progressive’ press.”24 One of the statesmen ascribed this chaos to the fact that science was included in the curriculum of universities and schools and therefore a materialistic world view prevailed.

Some historians argue that this was the time when the revolutionary movement began. Among revolutionaries many students were expelled. It is considered that

Alexander II signed his own death sentence and perhaps death sentence of the entire ruling dynasty with the inappropriate (as it was seen by his contemporaries) abolition of serfdom. Peasants still were impoverished and jobless after this long-awaited reform. On the other hand, Tsar Alexander II personally travelled to the provinces of northern Russia to resolve the problem of peasant emancipation and to discuss with the nobility the abolition of the serfdom. In the provinces of northern Russia there were more supporters of the reforms than those who opposed changes in the peasant’s plight. Alexander II could not foresee the consequences of his reforms.

The nihilists believed that it was men’s moral obligation to help women obtain education by any means possible. The nihilist groups were the first to make real and serious attempts to question the institution of marriage and the nuclear family. “Children of the sixties,” as the early Russian nihilist intelligentsia called themselves, contributed enormously to the development of the “woman question,” but they endured many obstacles on the road to women’s liberation. In this ferment atmosphere, the women’s movement began to spread in Russia. There were several attempts to kill Tsar Alexander

II, but he did not want to give up his power. He believed that in this case Russia could fall apart. The moral prestige of Alexander II was destroyed in the eyes of the Russian

24 Mosse, Werner E. Alexander II and the Modernization of Russia. (New York: Collier Books, 1962), p. 113. 45 public, when the Tsar began a long-lasting affair with Princess Catherine Dolgoruky

(1847-1922). She bore three children out of wedlock. It was judged by Russian society and negatively perceived. This affair alienated Alexander II and his people. It could also have contributed to the nihilistic attitude of youth.

Sofia Kovalevskaya (1850-1891), one radically inclined woman and a leader of the women’s movement, vividly recalls the drastic change of the 1860s. She shows in her memoir just how suddenly this change occurred – this dividing line between the Old epoch and New:

And now suddenly, from out of the blue, signs of some strange ferment had appeared, approached closer and closer, no doubt about it, and threatened to undermine the very structure of their quiet, patriarchal way of life. And not from one direction only did the danger threaten; it seemed to come from all sides at once (my emphasis).25

Educated women contributed to this dichotomy as well. Although they suffered social criticism for being bluestockings and acting manly, it did not stop them from seeking higher education and leaving their patriarchal households. Many went abroad in search for a better life and hunger for knowledge. Sofia Kovalevskaya (1850-1891) herself was that rebellious young woman, who dared to enter the brutal world of science in the nineteenth century.26 This path, however, was already known by other women, as above-mentioned in the introduction. In fact, in the seventeenth century the Italian woman Elena Cornaro Piscopia (1646-1684) obtained her doctorate from the University if Padua in 1678. In the eighteenth century, also in Italy, Maria Gaetana Agnesi, a mathematician philosopher, was the faculty member at the University of Bologna.

25 Kovalevskaia, S. V. A Russian Childhood (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1978), p. 146. 26 Grace Chisholm Young was the first English woman, who officially obtained an advanced degree in mathematics from Göttingen University in 1895. Sofia Kovalevskaya obteained her degree in absentia. 46

1.2 Per Aspera ad Astra, or From Terems to Palaces

Woman and devil are near relatives. Beat the child from infancy, beat the wife from the beginning. 27 A chicken is not a bird; a woman is not a human being.

Old Russian sayings

It is tempting to look at the historical roots of women’s subordination. Was the

Russian woman always in an inferior position? We should take a look at the earlier historical stages women’s emancipation. Although, as Shashkov in The History of the

Russian Woman (1879) and Elnett in Historic Origin and Social Development of Family

Life in Russia (1927) point out, the matriarchate was the original form of family existence in ancient Russia, gradually the patriarchal system was strengthening because of the influence of Byzantium and the Asiatic tribes. 28 Especially, the Asiatic influence on the development of the patriarchal system is evident, considering the long “Tatar Yoke”

(1237-1480) period that introduced “unnatural attitude toward the woman.”29 Elaine

Elnett writes: “The Russian mixed less rapidly with the civilized western nations than with numerous Asiatic tribes. Blending their blood they also made additions to their language, copied customs, manners, traditions, beliefs, and developed and preserved the

27 As quoted in Elnett, Elaine P. Historic Origin and Social Development of Family Life in Russia (New York: Columbia University Press, 1926), p. 111. 28 See Shashkov, S. S. Istoriia Russkoi Zhenshchiny (S.-Peterburg: Tip. A. S. Suvorina, 1879) and Elnett, Elaine P. Historic Origin and Social Development of Family Life in Russia. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1926). Frederick Engels writes in his work The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (1884) that because of polygamy in the early stages of family development mothers were the only parents of the younger generation that were known certainly, therefore, they had a position of higher respect and honor. See Engels, Friedrich. The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State: In Light of the Researches of Lewis H. Morgan (New York: International Publishers, 1964), p. 8. 29 Ibid., p. 27. 47 patriarchal system, under which those Asiatics have lived for centuries and millenniums.”30 The ancient Russian married women (the historian E. Elnett did not specify the period) were independent economically and highly honored in the early society. Women, for example, could possess lands or take part in battles. They had a free and independent spirit. The independence that the Russian woman experienced in the early historical stages was lost because people began cultivating suspicions of such self- sufficient female figures, claiming they possessed superhuman, unholy power and even evil character.31 As the idea of woman as an evil creature progressed, women developed the characteristic of passiveness. It can be explained by the isolation of women (usually the nobility) experienced for a long period of time, since her body was considered as a man’s property. Women were often locked in their houses (terem). Even brothers could not have access to her room; young women were not allowed to show their faces to strangers. The degree of isolation depended on social status: the higher her status the more isolated she was. Inasmuch women of lower social estates were active workers and important agents, contributing economically.

The pre-Petrine epoch was accustomed to the Domestic Ordinance (the

Domostroy) that formed many people’s attitude towards family life.32 According to the

Domestic Ordinance, the woman was placed in a position of dependence, at the same level as children. The battering of women and children, woman’s slave position, blind obedience and fear were prescribed and preached in the rules of the household. The

30 Ibid., p. 26. 31 According to Alan Macfarlane, even later in European history, between 1450 and 1700 thousands of women were burned throughout Europe for practicing witchcraft. See Macfarlane, Alan. The History of the English Speaking People (Purnell Press, 1970). 32 The Domestic Ordinance (The Domostroi, or Household Guide) was a set of rules, issued during the reign of Ivan the Terrible in the middle of sixteenth century, popularizing the range of patriarchal authority and the role of the woman in the family inferior to man. It also contained detailed instructions on wife- beating and children-beating. 48 main principles of the Domestic Ordinance reigned not only in the sixteenth century, but also throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth century and onwards; they [the principles] were only slightly transformed.33 The first Russian female radicals can be considered as pioneers in the gradual demolition of the Domestic Ordinance phenomenon.34 The foundation of any family was based on unlimited parental power over daughters and sons of any age. Fear of losing inheritance or the fear of corporal punishment often made them slaves. Parents forfeited their power and authority only if their child left to study, work, or got married. Corporal punishment was equal for men and women – pregnant women also could be tortured. Catherine the Great freed privileged women from being subjected to corporal punishment.35 On April 17, 1863, under the reign of Alexander II, women were completely freed from punishment.

Peter the Great, strongly influenced by Western culture, first liberated women from their isolation and the terem. It took a while for once-isolated women to adjust to

33 Tatishev’s Will written in the eighteenth century was called the Domestic Ordinance of the eighteenth century. There are many deviations from the original Ordinance in his will. For example, in his will, he also insists that parents should choose a bride or groom, but the attitude towards women within a family should be indulgent, which significantly differs from Silvester’s rules. Parents’ right to find a second half was often dictated by mercenary motives. Parents could “sell” their children. Women could be literally sold or even lost at cards even in the nineteenth century. Thus, after Tatishev’s Will, there was at least a slight change in women’s plight – from a husband’s slave to becoming his friend, “The patriarchal family, softened by the European influence remained as usual a desired ideal.” See Shashkov, S S. Istoriia Russkoi Zhenshchiny (S.-Peterburg: Tip. A.S. Suvorina, 1879), p. 243. 34 Shashkov, S S. Istoriia Russkoi Zhenshchiny, p. 9. 35 There were several women rulers in Russia. Grand Princess Olga (c.890-964), who belongs to the saints of the Russian Orthodox Church, ruled the Russian state from 945 to 964. She was one of the first rulers, who opened the window on the West. Another woman ruler was Grand Prince Vladimir’s (980-1015), the “Red Sun,” wife Princess Anna (963-1011). It was common for princesses from the eleventh to fourteenth centuries to be involved in governance on the same footing with their husbands. Sofia Alexeevna (1657- 1704) ruled from 1682 until Peter the Great deposed her government in 1689. Russia in the eighteenth century was marked by female rule: Catherine I (1684-1727), the second wife of Peter the Great, a daughter of a Lithuanian (?) peasant, ruled after Peter’s death only two years (1725-1727) until she died; Anna Ivanovna (1693-1740) ruled for ten years (1730-1740); Elizaveta Petrovna (1709-1762) reigned Russia from 1741 until her death (1672); and Catherine the Great (1729-1796) reigning from 1762 until her death was one of the most outstanding rulers of Russia; she concluded the “Russian matriarchate” of the eighteenth century. See also Women in Russian History: From the Tenth to the Twentieth Century (Armonk, N.Y: M.E. Sharpe, 1997). 49 new European traditions. Dancing, new clothes, socializing with men, luxury, and beauty in the European style became an inseparable part of the new women’s social life.

Catherine the Great contributed to the introduction of new educational practices for women. She founded women’s schools to bring up a new generation of young people.

However, she was not a pioneer in the popularization of education for girls.36 The success of such schools was dubious because the image of the “institute” girl (institutka) was still a laughingstock in society. The institutka’s education was very limited and was not related to real life. Elizaveta Vodovozova (1844-1923), for example, in her At the Dawn of Life (1911) recalls that her mother was educated in the institute and was very naïve after finishing it.

Thus, three main emancipation waves can be determined and underscored. The first important women’s emancipation wave was evident in the epoch of Peter the Great

(1672-1725). Peter the Great also contributed to some significant changes in the institution of marriage. Before the Petrine epoch, marriages were mostly arranged by parents and family. After that, women could choose whom they married, but the tradition of arranged marriages lasted throughout the nineteenth century. Vodovozova in her memoir A Russian Childhood (1911) tells the story of her older sister Nyuta who was married off to her neighbor, although she threatened her mother to throw herself in the lake. Her mother thought, however, she knew better what was good for her child:

No one disputed Mother’s observations about marriage and parental authority. In those days it was customary for marriages to be arranged; but Mme Voinov

36 Already in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, monastic schools for girls existed. The Russian state adopted its traditions of education from Byzantium. The founders of schools for girls were Russian aristocratic women. They often traveled to Byzantium at that time. Generally, women from the Kievan aristocracy were very educated. They studied as rigorously as their brothers. The curriculum included grammar, mathematics, the healing arts, astronomy, philosophy, rhetoric, Latin and Greek. See Eve Levin. Women in Russian History: From the Tenth to the Twentieth Century, p. 15. 50

[their neighbor and mother of the groom] knew from a personal experience what it was like to be married to someone she did not love, must have been terribly sorry for my sister. (my emphasis)37

During the nineteenth century, Russian women, despite the Petrine marriage reform, often entered into marriages without love. Parents wanted to marry off their daughters due to economic reasons. As Carol Diethe observes describing the case of

Germany: “Not all parents who married their daughters off to older men were monsters: there was a widespread belief that material ease was more important than unreliable emotional attachments.”38

The second women’s emancipation wave took place in the epoch of Catherine the

Great (1729-1796) who not only founded the Smolny Institute, but also was a supporter of the “new generation” and new women. The more significant fight for women’s liberation (the third wave) starts in the second half of the nineteenth century and is the focus of this dissertation. Although Russian women enjoyed many privileges, the historian S. Shashkov is skeptical about this “advantageous” plight. In The History of

Russian of the Russian Woman (1879) he wrote that pseudo-patriots use every chance to claim about the advantage of Russian marriage law over European marriage law. Even in

England, he claims, they envied Russian inheritance law. In all other cases, however, the legal status of the Russian woman could only arouse a deep feeling of compassion. There was an obvious need in family law reforms.39 The first half of the nineteenth century provided almost no options for a woman who thought critically about her life and rejected

37 Vodovozova, E. A Russian Childhood (London: Faber and Faber, 1961), pp. 264-265. 38 Diethe, Carol. Towards Emancipation: German Women Writers of the Nineteenth Century (New York: Berghahn Books, 1998), p. 10. 39 See Shashkov, S S. Istoriia Russkoi Zhenshchiny, p. 75. 51 the existing values.40 The old authorities were losing their power and influence; everything old was neglected and ignored. The respect of the patriarchal family was abolished during the reign of Alexander II (1855-1881).

1.3 The First Architects of the “Woman Question”

It was Ibsen not Mrs. Ibsen, who wrote the Doll’s House. It was women, not men who ostracized George Eliot. The slavishness of women begotten by the régime of man is what we have most to fight against, not the slave-driving instinct of the men – now happily becoming obsolete, or even changing into a sincere desire to equal justice.

Grant Allen (1848-1899) “Plain Words on the Woman Question”

Russian feminist women’s groups first emerged in 1859, almost at the same time as the nihilist movement that remained underground. The same year was marked by the appearance of the first thick literary journal Rassvet (The Dawn), created exclusively for women.41 Up until the late nineteenth century, as elsewhere in Europe, a small group of intellectuals criticized women’s plight in Russian society, mainly through the lens of the

Russian novel that served as an alternative platform for political and social debates.

Women and men alike were involved in discussions about the question of women’s emancipation, but the majority of women’s liberation advocates were men, since women were slowly entering the literary market, unlike England; and their voices were unconfident due to the public’s attitudes.

40 Engel, Barbara A. Mothers and Daughters: Women of the Intelligentsia in Nineteenth Century Russia, p. 17. 41 See Worobec, Christine. The Human Tradition in Imperial Russia. Lanham, p. 72. 52

The first commentators on the “woman question” were N. G. Chernyshevky, I. S.

Turgenev, I. A. Goncharov, and V. G. Belinsky. Belinsky, however, first critiqued

George Sand only to later praise her work and personality, especially after appearance of

Mauprat (1837). He also found first that Russian women writers used only the Romantic language for their expression. Attitudes toward the “woman question” varied among the

Russian intelligentsia, especially depending on whether they were a group of

Westernizers or Slavophiles.42

Chernyshevsky was the leader of the women’s movement. He propagandized ideas of women’s political and civil rights and explained that women’s educational rights were an integral and inseparable part of the “woman question.”43 Women were influenced and electrified by intense discussions and debates about women’s emancipation and education. The resulting sudden appearance of female students in the universities of St. Petersburg left the city shaken. Russian as well as European universities had been “bastions of male privilege” until the end of the century.44

Switzerland, the German Federation of States, and France had been the first countries in

Europe to open their doors to female students.

Many Russian male and female students flocked to Europe to seek higher education. One may assume that Russian women also became infected with the contagion of feminist ideas abroad. In addition to Russian literature, contacts with the feminist

42 Westernizers and Slavophiles ideologies were developed by the Russian intelligentsia of the nineteenth century. Westernizers believed in the successful adoption of Western European social and political models in Russia, whereas Slavophiles advocated patriarchal and conservative models for Russia. They believed that Russia had its unique way. Therefore, they idealized women’s traditional roles in society. 43 Filippova L.D. “Iz Istorii Zhenskogo Obrazovaniia V Rossii.” Voprosy Istorii. 2.(1963): 210. 44 Diethe, Carol. Towards Emancipation: German Women Writers of the Nineteenth Century (New York: Berghahn Books, 1998), p. 2. 53 movements in other countries had been inspirational for Russian female activists.45 Ideas of female emancipation and the issue of feminine inequality penetrated Russia along with the writings of George Sand, who popularized ideas of women’s emancipation and made women “reconsider their attitudes toward love, marriage, and the role of women.”46 F. M.

Dostoevsky calls George Sand a “Russian poet,” since she also was one of the first architects of the “woman question” in Russian society:

But everything in the life of this poet that constituted the “new word” she uttered, everything was “universally human” in her – all of this at once created a deep and powerful impression among us, in our Russia at the time. It touched us, and thus it proved that any poet and innovator from Europe, anyone who appears there with new ideas and new force, cannot help but become a Russian poet, cannot but influence Russian thought, cannot but become almost a Russian force.47

The enormous Sandean heritage could not remain unnoticed; George Sand created about one hundred novels, stories, plays, and memoir Story of My Life: The

Autobiography of George Sand (1854-55). Her novels were translated into Russian and published widely in literary thick journals and in book form. Closer to the fin de siècle,

Russia saw the appearance of the twenty-seven volume edition of Sand’s collected work.

Her early novels, Indiana (1832), Valentine (1832), Jaques (1834), and Mauprat (1837) immediately won popularity among the reading public after their publication. Most educated women could read French in the nineteenth century, thus the translation was not necessary, but renowned journals – The Contemporary (Sovremennik) and The Notes of the Fatherland (Otechestvennye Zapiski) – published translations of some of Sand’s

45 Goldberg, Rochelle L. “The Russian Women's Movement, 1859-1917.” Dissertation, University of Rochester, 1976, p. 71. 46 Engel, Barbara A. Mothers and Daughters: Women of the Intelligentsia in Nineteenth Century Russia, p. 22. 47 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, and K. A. Lantz. A Writer's Diary (Evanston, Ill: Northwestern University Press, 1993), p. 507. 54 novels. A popular hobby among upper-class women was the translation of Sand’s work.

The very first reactions to George Sand were negative, as elsewhere in Europe; however, little by little the public started to accept this progressive Western feminist. S. S.

Shashkov in The History of Russian Woman (1898) writes about Sand’s reception in

Russia: “Whereas mothers and fathers were indignant at G. Sand, sons and daughters read her eagerly and were carried away with her literary models, warm feeling, and bright ideas. George Sand’s women’s idealization and apotheosis of love had a favorable softening influence on our feelings and family relationships” (my translation).48 In fact, love, according to Sand, legitimizes everything, as she writes in Indiana.

The “cultural phenomenon” of George Sand (1804-1876) was a “symbol of everything contemporary”; the great influence of the French writer even has a special term in Russian describing it: “Zhorzhsandism.”49 In the 1830s, “zhorzhsandism” described a social and cultural phenomenon related to the origin of the “woman question.”50

Sand inspired many Russian writers to advocate and propagandize women’s rights in the 1840s and 1850s with her reflections and productions; they could hardly escape

Sand’s philosophical, moral, and aesthetic influence and neither could many western writers who felt a deep connection to her thoughts about the social position of women.

Right after George Sand’s first novel publication, the Western New Woman, her oeuvre, ideas, position, and literary heroines had been thoroughly discussed in the Russian press

48 See Shashkov, S. S. Istoriia Russkoi Zhenshchiny, p. 267. 49 See also Eve Levin. Women in Russian History: From the Tenth to the Twentieth Century. Armonk, N.Y: M.E. Sharpe, 1997 and Hermann, L. S. “Sand and the Nineteenth-Century Russian Novel: the Quest for a Heroine,” Columbia University, PhD, 1979, p. 15. 50 Skaftymov, A, and E Pokusaev. Nravstvennye Iskanija Russkich Pisatelej: Statʹi I Issledovanija O Russkich Klassikach (Moskva: Chudozestvennaja literatura, 1972). 55 and literary salons. Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Chernyshevsky, Herzen, and many other

Russian writers imitated her new techniques of novel-writing, spirit, and style.

In the 1860s, female fictional characters, following the Sandean image of Edmée de Mauprat, transformed themselves from the rescued to the rescuers and became responsible for shaping their own lives. Sand’s novels were deep and timely, since

Russian women were starving for a female hero.51 Her novels were about noble women chasing their ideals and fighting social prejudices; they were a gulp of fresh air for many women dreaming about their independence and self-realization. Russian women had become used to the idea that they were perceived as weak, unable, and backward creatures.

Under the influence of Sand, the famous literary images of Olga Ilinskaya, Dunya

Raskolnikova, Vera Pavlovna Rozalskaya, Lyubonka Negrova, perhaps Anna Karenina as well, and many others, were represented as individuals no longer inferior to men.52

They became an embodiment of the new female identity. Olga Ilynskaya in Oblomov

(1859), like the heroine of Mauprat (1837) Edmée, also attempts to rescue and educate

Ilya Oblomov. Olga succeeds in the beginning by resurrecting Oblomov: “She, in turn, did not recognize him. His foggy, sleepy face was instantly transformed and his eyes opened; color played on his cheeks; his thoughts quickened; and desires and will flashed in his eyes. She also read clearly in this mute play of his face that Oblomov had instantly found his life’s purpose.” (p. 255) However, Olga fails in her attempt to become a New

Woman and change Oblomov by rooting out his “Oblomovism”. This word

“oblomovism” becomes a separate term that embodies fatalistic slothfulness of this type

51 Medvedev, P. N, and M. M. Bakhtin. The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship: A Critical Introduction to Sociological Poetics, p. 19. 52 L. N. Tolstoy was against “zhorzhsandizm,” since he had a patriarchal view of world. 56 of people. Olga instead marries Oblomov’s friend Stolz, an energetic young man – a complete counterpart of Ilya.

Prince Mirsky in History of Russian Literature (1958) calls Sand the “mother of

Russian realism,” while one may argue that Mérimée, Balzac, Stendhal, Zola, and

Flaubert were fathers of Russian realism. Erich Auerbach writes in Mimesis: The

Representation of Reality in Western Literture: “With the first great realists of the century, with Stendhal, Balzac, and even with Flaubert, the lower strata of the people, and indeed the people as such in general, hardly appear.”53The plot of Chernyshevsky’s

What Is To Be Done?(1863) – the novel that will be discussed further in detail – reminds one in many aspects of Sand’s Jacques (1834), where the protagonist also rescues a nineteen-year-old girl from her parents by marrying her. The heroine of Jacques

(1834), like Vera Pavlovna, falls in love with another man right after the wedding.

Jacques, as well as Lopukhov, does not want to be in their way. Whereas Sand’s novel has a tragic end – Jacques kills himself, Lopukhov steps aside. Lopukhov stages his own suicide to let Vera Pavlovna marry her beloved without any complications. Not surprisingly, Chernyshevsky believes that so-called “rational egoism” is inherit in every person, causing one to act only in his or her best interest; thus the tragic finale of Jacques (1834) involving suicide is unacceptable for his characters.

Russian women writers were influenced by Sand’s ideas as well. Elena Gan (1814

– 1842), a woman writer, whose work was highly praised by Belinsky, was called the

“Russian George Sand,” because she was one of the first followers and imitators of the

French author. Elena Gan dwelled on the problems of women enslaved by marriage, as

53 Auerbach, Erich. Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1968), p. 497. 57 well as the abuse and grief that married women had to endure from their husbands.54 Her heroines are intelligent, sensitive, and learned women (as Gan was herself) coping with the cruel reality of subordination. Elena Gan’s first novel The Ideal (1839) that will be analyzed in a comparative perspective with Sarah Grand’s Ideala (1888) imitates Sand’s style and plot of Indiana (1832), where the unhappily married heroine leaves her husband. Gan’s literary career was quite brief. She died from tuberculosis at the age of twenty-eight. Nonetheless, feminine inequality became the subject of much thought from that time onward. Other female writers such as Avdotya Yakovlevna Panaeva (1820-

1893) and Evdokiya Petrovna Rostopchina (1811-1858), also emulated Sand’s writing style.

Meanwhile, another admirer of Sand, the Russian poet M. L. Mikhailov (1829-

1865) also contributed to the development of the “woman question,” publishing articles between 1859 and 1865 as well as some short stories. One of the leitmotifs of his work was the status of women; Mikhailov was an advocate of the advanced woman’s plight and insisted that “there should be nothing feminine except sex. All other traits should be neither masculine nor feminine, but purely human.”55 He wrote an article “Women, their

Education and Significance in the Family and in the Society” in 1860. Mikhailov’s critique was aimed at women’s education. He was strongly influenced by Western feminists such as Jenny d’Héricourt (1809-1875). After writing his pamphlet To the

Younger Generation (1861), Mikhailov was arrested and exiled to Siberia, where he died tragically four years later. In addition, Mikhailov translated John Stuart Mill’s work “On the Emancipation of Women,” publishing it in The Contemporary journal. He did not

54 Smyrniw, Walter. "Turgenev's Emancipated Women." The Modern Language Review 80.1 (1985): 97. 55 Quoted in Stites, Richard. The Women's Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism, Nihilism, and Bolshevism, 1860-1930, p. 40. 58 have a chance to answer and develop the “woman question” theoretically, yet he still progressed defining the philosophy of the new type of Russian woman for the

19th century: “The New Woman, according to Mikhailov, was one who renounced the

“eternally feminine” attributes of the traditional lady, allowing the human characteristics that she held in common with men to emerge.”56 Mikhailov’s case was the first political trial during the reign of Alexander II.57

The translation of Mill’s work into Russian was an important contribution to the theorization of the “woman question.” John Stuart Mill’s political pamphlet The

Subjection of Women (1869) became influential in Europe. Mill (1806-1873) meticulously discusses the legal inequities of women in society and marriage. He calls the wife a servant and a slave in his pamphlet, supporting equal employment, education, property, and suffrage rights for women. Mill’s pamphlet was widely accepted and discussed in Russia. John Stuart Mill’s election to Parliament was seen by feminists as a success and brought hope for change to women’s plight in England. Indeed, Mill did not just rebut in theory, he also fought for women’s rights in practice. Thus, in 1870, during

Mill’s term in Parliament (1865-1868), the Married Woman Property Act was passed, followed by another Act in 1882 that also remedied women’s rights.

The influence of Western ideas on Russian women, however, created “a profound conflict” within them, since “notions about the individual’s right to self-development and self-fulfillment directly contradicted their traditional role without suggesting a new one.”58 Nineteenth-century Russia was a traditional society with strong family and

56 Ibid., p. 46. 57 Mosse, Werner E. Alexander II and the Modernization of Russia. (New York: Collier Books, 1962), p. 110. 58 Ibid., p.21. 59 religious values that “still commanded respect at all levels.”59 Russian family law required women’s unconditional subordination to her parents; and after marriage she was expected to be subordinate to her husband. Although religion favored women’s subordination to men and their family, on the other hand, it “also elevated and sanctified women’s endurance and allowed women to feel a certain moral superiority.”60

The “woman question,” as an impetus for the growth of the women’s movement, occurred inevitably after the Crimean War (1853-1856), when the Russian press became a “forum for discussing of the county’s social problems.”61 It also was a time of development and advancement in the fields of science. In the first half of the nineteenth century Russia was not advanced in sciences. After a humiliating defeat in the Crimean

War, the Nicholas I changed his views on the importance of scientific studies, since he witnessed England’s and France’s advantage related to the scientific development.

School curriculum did not include natural sciences until the end of the Crimean War.

After the War, natural sciences and advanced mathematics were added to high school and university programs, in order to increase the number of skilled people with technical degrees such as, first and foremost, engineering. The Nicholas I régime was reluctant to liberalize and modernize the educational system, only his son changed this predisposition. As a direct result, in the first half of the nineteenth century upper-class men and an insignificant number of women received their education only in the humanities: Old Greek, Latin, foreign languages, literature, and history.62

59 Ibid., p.4. 60 Ibid., p. 5. 61 Johanson, Christine. Women's Struggle for Higher Education in Russia, 1855-1900, p. 5. 62 It must be mentioned that the nobility and the raznochintsy constituted less than 10 % of the population; there was no middle class in Russia, and the remaining 90 % were desperately poor and illiterate people. It was until 1861. 60

Women actively participated in the Crimean War serving as nurses and volunteers, proving by their abilities to be more than the “Angels of the

House.” Ironically, it was English women who were inspired by the Russian woman’s audacity. In the post-war atmosphere of disillusionment, people started questioning critically the nature of their social and domestic life, education, and social structure.

When women took part in the war, showing their dedication and care by risking their lives side by side with male soldiers, the “woman question” inevitably began to ripen.

Another advocate of the “woman question” was Nikolay Pirogov (1810-1881), a prominent Russian surgeon. Nikolay Pirogov, a scientist, was also one of the first pedagogues to question vocational education in Russia. He insisted that if women had only an opportunity to study and develop their skills in the field of science and medicine, they could then demonstrate performance equal to or greater than that of men. He criticized the educational system available to women at that time: “Her education turns her usually into a doll. It consists of dressing her up, putting her on display before a class of idlers, keeping her behind a curtain, and having her perform like some marionette. But as the rust eats away the wires, she begins to see through the holes and tears in the curtain that has been so carefully hidden from her.”63 Pirogov supervised female nurses during the Crimean War, even though he faced hostility and opposition from his colleagues.

Following Pirogov’s publications on education, the “woman question” took a new course in the Russian press. As a result, several women’s journals were founded in Russia. One of the journals, called Daybreak, was founded in 1859 by a former artillery officer named

Valerian Krempin.

63 Stites, Richard. The Women's Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism, Nihilism, and Bolshevism, 1860-1930, p. 32. 61

At the same time, Maria Trubnikova (1835-1897), the daughter of the exiled

Decembrist V. P. Ivashev (1797-1841), established “a salon within salon,” – a meeting spot for radicals and liberals, redefining her salon “as venue for empowering and uniting women.”64 Their organization provided inexpensive lodgings for working women and opened cafeterias, schools, and childcare centers for the poor.65 As progressive women’s rights advocate, she had contacts with such Western feminists as Josephine Butler (1828-

1906) and Marie Gögg (1826-1899). It is symbolic that she was born to the family of the exiled Decembrist V. P. Ivashev and French Camille LeDantieux. She was well read and her reading circle included but was not limited to Vico, Heine, Proudhon, Lassalle, Saint-

Simon, Lois Blanc, and Henzen.66 She lost her parents fairly early in life and the figure of her father as a “saint” was idealized in the household of her aunt, Princess Khovanskaia.

Trubnikova’s personal life was an unhappy one. She married a man who was an admirer of A. I. Herzen’s (1812-1870) socialist ideas, but hostile to her feminist activity.

Along with Nadezhda Stasova (1835-1895), godchild of Alexander I (1777-1825) and daughter of an architect, and Anna Pavlovna Filosofova (1837-1912), Maria

Trubnikova (1835-1897) became a pioneer of the early women’s movement in Russia in the 1860s. These women collaborated closely in the 1860s and 1870s.67 They did not leave any autobiographical account of their lives, only their friends and relatives worked on their biographies. Filosofova and Stasova were attracted to the strong and charismatic figure of Trubnikova, who took on the role of mentor and leader for the group.

64 Worobec, Christine. The Human Tradition in Imperial Russia, p.73. 65 Johanson, Christine. Women's Struggle for Higher Education in Russia, 1855-1900, p. 36. 66 Broido, Vera. Apostles into Terrorists: Women and the Revolutionary Movement in the Russia of Alexander II. (London: Temple Smith, 1978), p. 46. 67 Stites, Richard. The Women's Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism, Nihilism, and Bolshevism, 1860-1930, p. 68. 62

Trubnikova, Stasova, and Filosofova created the Circle, a philanthropic organization, advocating equal rights and education for women.68 The primary goal of the

Circle was to help women with their lives, studies, and their work. It served as an example for women to organize; inspired by the Circle initiatives, another women’s club was opened in Vologda. These circles were alternatives of various salons of that time. In

1859, Trubnikova, Stasova, and Filosofova opened the Society of Cheap Lodgings to provide inexpensive places for poor families to live.69 In addition, under the supervision of Maria Trubnikova, a Women’s Public Cooperative was founded in 1863 to involve women in creative projects such as writing, editing, publishing, and other activities. The

Circle also planned another ambitious project – a Society of Women’s Work, but the project was never completed. The assassination attempts of Alexander II (there were several attempts) threw a shadow over the women’s movement, since they cooperated closely with nihilists. The movement was forced to slow down its activities. Rochelle G.

Rutchild, summing up the activity of the Trubnikova group, writes:

By taking advantage of a society in flux, the triumvirate, three women of the Russian privileged class, answered the woman question in their own lives. The process

68 For a long time, philanthropy was the only open arena for women’s active social engagement. Women wanted to be involved in philanthropy for many reasons: for the sense of self-fulfillment and self- accomplishment that stemmed from helping others and to satisfy the desire to be in the center of something important. In 1900, for example, a new philanthropic organization – the Russian Society for Protection of Women – was founded by two women Evgeniya Oldenburgskaya and Elena Saksen-Altenburgskaya. The organization was oriented to help poor women and orphans; in addition, in 1905, they began to provide help to “fallen” women. Five years prior to the establishment of the Russian Society for Protection of Women, the Mutual Philanthropic Society was founded by two women, Anna Filosofova and Anna Shabanova. Filosofova was not as active in the beginning of the twentieth century as before, perhaps because feminist ideas were not welcomed by the Bolsheviks. Filosofova’s dream was to unite all of the women’s organizations, clubs, and societies under one roof, to create a platform where all women’s organizations could interact. The Mutual Philanthropic society initiated the women’s suffrage movement in 1905 after the establishment of the International Women’s Suffrage Association within the International Council of Women in 1904. 69 Stites, Richard. The Women's Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism, Nihilism, and Bolshevism, 1860-1930, p. 69. 63

transformed them, and this transformation informed the ways in which they acted out their ideals in the public and private spheres of their lives.70

This triumvirate did not grow into anything significant, but these three women made an important contribution to the early women’s movement. These women could not demand political rights so early; inasmuch the ferment atmosphere of that time could cast a shadow on their Circle. Trublikova was well aware of the autocratic power of Nicholas

I and his son Alexander II. She learned it early in her childhood because her father was exiled to Siberia. In fact, she was born in Siberia. Alexander II, under the influence of his mentor A. V. Zhukovsky, changed the position of exiled. Besides, the operating Secret

Police was active during the years of Nicholas I and Alexander II. Feminists had to be very careful about their demands and activities. Thus, Count Shuvalov (1827-1889), the head of the Third Section, reported to Alexander II that some feminist were

“unreliable.”71 It is very important that the Trubnikova Circle first initiated the question of women’s higher education. The process of winning educational access for women was exhausting because of opposition from and disapproval by officials.

1.4 Educational Achievements: From Nadezhda Suslova to Women’s Higher

Education

The renaissance of the Russian woman in the last twenty years is undeniable. The upsurge in her strivings has been lofty, frank, and fearless. The upsurge has inspired respect from the very first; it has at least caused people to think, despite several superfluous irregularities that have turned up in this movement. Now, however, one can already make an accounting and not fear to reach a conclusion. The Russian woman has chastely ignored obstacles and mockery. She has firmly declared her wish to participate in the common cause and has applied herself to it not only disinterestedly but even self-denyingly. The Russian man, in these last decades, has become terribly prone to the vices of acquisition, cynicism, and materialism; woman has remained much more purely devoted to the idea and to serving the idea. In her eagerness for higher education she has displayed seriousness and patience and showed an example of the greatest courage.

70 Worobec, Christine. The Human Tradition in Imperial Russia, p. 80. 71 Broido, Vera. Apostles into Terrorists: Women and the Revolutionary Movement in the Russia of Alexander II. (London: Temple Smith, 1978), p. 53. 64

F. M. Dostoevsky (1821-1881) The Diary of a Writer

Long on hair, short on brains.72 Traditional Russian saying

The discussion of the “woman question” in Russia was limited to the small upper class elite, whereas in England middle class was very supportive of the advancement of women’s rights. The concern for women’s emancipation grew in direct proportion to the height of one’s social level: the lower the social class, the less regard was shown for issues of women’s emancipation.73 Most historians of the nineteenth century emphasize the backwardness of Tsarist Russia in many respects but during the reign of Alexander II upper-class Russian women were in a more advantageous position compared to some

European women. Russian women enjoyed such privileges as land inheritance and the ability to control property after marriage.74 Women of lower social estates also had the same legal rights as upper-class women. Yet still, these laws had not been kept in practice throughout the nineteenth century. In Russia, Barbara Engel notes, “as elsewhere in

Europe, law, custom, and tradition defined women primarily as daughters, wives, and

72 Волос долог, да ум короток. As quoted in Dalʹ, Vladimir I. Poslovitsy Russkogo Naroda: Sbornik (Moskva: Gosudarstvennoe izdatelʹstvo khudozhestvennoi literatury, 1957), p. 350. 73 See Göller, K.H. “The Emancipation of Women in Eighteenth-Century English Literture,” Anglia - Zeitschrift für englische Philologie. (1983): 78-98. In Central and Eastern Europe, the women’s movement was supported mainly by upper-class women. Noblewomen participated predominantly in the women’s movement of Russia, Poland, and Hungary. The British women’s movement was largely supported by middle-class elite. 74 See Rule, Wilma, and Norma C. Noonan. Russian Women in Politics and Society (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1996); Whittaker, Cynthia H. “The Women's Movement during the Reign of Alexander II: A Case Study in Russian Liberalism.” The Journal of Modern History. 48.2 (1976): 35-69; Engel, Barbara A. “Women’s Rights a la Russe.” Russian Review, 58.3 (1999): 355-360; Engel, Barbara A. Mothers and Daughters: Women of the Intelligentsia in Nineteenth Century Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). 65 mothers.”75 Moreover, women were still “more helpless” than women in Western Europe,

“because the authoritarianism that characterized Russia’s autocratic political system also shaped family relations, laws and customs subordinated Russian women to men more absolutely than was the case for their European sisters.”76

Tsarist Russia was also one of the most backward countries in terms of average level of education of any single person among its population. In the 1860s, about 10 % of the Russian population was literate. People with higher education constituted 1% of the entire population.77 In the beginning of the twentieth century, the number of peasant students in gymnasiums grew to 6% in comparison to 56% of upper class children.78

Alexander II’s (1855-1881) achievement in the field of education was tremendous: “In higher education the Ministry promoted the autonomy of the universities, severely impaired in the days of Nicholas.”79 After students protested in St.

Petersburg, Alexander II did not close universities and did not punish revolting students.

The statesmen did not like, however, that many students went to study abroad. Among these people were many female students who will be discussed further in detail.

The successor of Nicholas I (1796-1855), Alexander II, made several changes in liberalizing the educational system. First of all, he allowed more students to be admitted to the universities. As a result, between 1855 and 1859, the number of (male) students increased significantly – from 3659 to 5555.80 Secondly, the curriculum in the universities was changed, especially after the Crimean War (1853-1856). By 1868,

75 Engel, Barbara A. Mothers and Daughters: Women of the Intelligentsia in Nineteenth Century Russia, p. 4. 76 Ibid., p. 7. 77 Filippova L.D. “Iz Istorii Zhenskogo Obrazovaniia V Rossii.” Voprosy Istorii. 2.(1963): 209. 78 Ibid., p. 210. 79 Moser, Charles A. Antinihilism in the Russian Novel of the 1860's (The Hague: Mouton, 1964), p. 83. 80 Johanson, Christine. Women's Struggle for Higher Education in Russia, 1855-1900, p. 17. 66

Russia could boast 125 secondary schools established primarily in big cities with an enrollment of over 10,000 girls of all social classes, leaving behind England which opened its public school fourteen years later and France which founded its public lycées thirty years later.81 In 1856, there were 8,000 elementary schools in Russia.82 By 1880 the number was 23,000 in European Russia.83 In St. Petersburg the number of municipal schools rose from sixteen to eighty-eight; and the funding spent on education rose from

27,000 rubles in 1871 to 270,000 in 1881.84 In 1858-59, four schools were opened in St.

Petersburg and named after the ruling Empress Maria.85 These schools were attended by upper-class women. In some provincial cities similar schools were opened as well, but the teaching was of worse quality.86 The St. Petersburg Public Library gave more reading rights to women than before in the 1860s.87

Most European women’s organizations were concerned with educational reforms.88 Access to university education was closed to women until the 1870s, even though they could attend secondary schools, and later – after a long battle – obtain

81 Ibid., p. 29. 82 Mosse, Werner E. Alexander II and the Modernization of Russia. (New York: Collier Books, 1962), p. 81. 83 Ibid. 84 Mosse, Werner E. Alexander II and the Modernization of Russia. (New York: Collier Books, 1962), p. 82. 85 Broido, Vera. Apostles into Terrorists: Women and the Revolutionary Movement in the Russia of Alexander II. (London: Temple Smith, 1978), pp. 50-51. 86 Ibid., p. 51. 87 Ibid., 51. 88 The first women’s organizations in Europe appeared in the 1850s. The main issues concerning the first women’s organizations in Europe were women’s employment and change of legal status, predominantly in matrimonial and family law. In Germany, Russia, France, Bohemia, and England women’s organizations emerged during the 1860s, whereas in the Scandinavian countries they occurred in the 1870s and 1880s. Sylvia Paletschek and Bianka Pietow-Ennker, for example, identify six primary European women’s organizations’ goals: 1. Debate on rights and women’s duties; 2. women’s education; 3. employment opportunities; 4. improvement of women’s civil and political rights; 5. the fight against the double standard in sexual morality and prostitution; 6. philanthropy and social work. See: Paletschek & Pietow-Ennker, Women’s Emancipation Movements in the Nineteenth Century, p. 318. 67 teaching certificates and take part in special educational courses.89 These training courses offered certificates in midwifery, nursing, elementary teaching, “all of which met immediate needs.” 90 The enrollment of women in secondary schools began in the late

1850s; before, between 1764 and 1858, secondary schools were few in number and exclusively upper-class women could actually attend them. Rarely could parents afford to hire private tutors. In Germany, for instance, parents were not eager to send girls to schools; many wealthy families hired private tutors and gymnasium was “the only route to university” in nineteenth-century Germany.91 In Victorian England, there was also debate over whether girls should be home-schooled or sent to boarding school, since boarding schools were seen as dangerous for moral development.

In 1764, Catherine II established the Society of Training for Well-Born Girls, known as The Smolny Institute; however, only upper-class women could be admitted to the exclusive educational training there.92 The quality and importance of education in such schools gave rise to many questions and discussions at that time. Nicolay Gogol’s quote from Dead Souls (1842) illustrates the “artificial and removed from everyday life” training girls received in these kinds of schools for “social rather than for creative”93 needs:

89 One of the significant liberal reforms made during the reign of Alexander II was the establishment of secondary education for girls of all classes. For a detailed discussion, see: Whittaker, C. H. “The Women's Movement during the Reign of Alexander II: A Case Study in Russian Liberalism.” The Journal of Modern History. 48.2 (1976): 38. 90 Broido, Vera. Apostles into Terrorists: Women and the Revolutionary Movement in the Russia of Alexander II. (London: Temple Smith, 1978), p. 49. 91 Diethe, Carol. Towards Emancipation: German Women Writers of the Nineteenth Century, p. 2. 92 To be admitted to Smolny Institute, girls had to be able to speak French, count to a thousand, and memorize some prayers. 93 Stites, Richard. The Women's Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism, Nihilism, and Bolshevism, 1860-1930, p. 4. 68

It is a well-established fact that a proper upbringing is obtained in boarding schools where three subjects are considered the foundation of all human virtue: the French language indispensable to family happiness, the pianoforte to afford pleasant moments to one’s spouse; and, finally, the subject which touches directly upon the running of one’s future home – the knitting of purses and other presents with which to surprise one’s husband.94

Besides, the Smolny Institute reminds one of the Russian Army. Elizaveta

Vodovosova recalls the torturously strict atmosphere at Smolny:

Strict discipline, cold buildings, early risings and continuous hunger made our existence at the Institute extremely hard. The worst thing of all was going to bed, for the dormitories were almost completely unheated. Our nightdresses were so low-cut that they practically fell off our shoulders, and night jackets could only be worn on doctor’s orders. We would dive into bed shivering and then be unable to get warm; a sheet and a light blanket worn thin with long use offered poor protection from the cold, and the flimsy mattresses were so much the worse for wear that, when you turned over, the frame of the bed stuck into you and woke you up.95

Elizaveta Vodovozova in A Russian Childhood also criticizes the impracticality of education at The Smolny Institute. She notes that “like everything else” they were taught at Smolny, “culinary lessons were of little practical value”; “sometimes girls spent their entire evening embroidering a carpet instead of doing their lessons.”96 Girls never learned how to cook, since everything was prepared in advance. However, they did master

French, for it was considered to be the most important subject, and managed to read (but not much) Pushkin and Lermontov in literature classes. The best education for girls was offered in the orphanages because they prepared the Institute with “cheap instructresses and private families with governesses.”97

94 As quoted in Stites, Richard. The Women's Liberation Movement in Russia, p. 4. 95 Vodovozova, E. A Russian Childhood (London: Faber and Faber, 1961), p. 136. 96 Ibid., pp. 150-151. 97 Broido, Vera. Apostles into Terrorists: Women and the Revolutionary Movement in the Russia of Alexander II. (London: Temple Smith, 1978), p. 49. 69

An educated noble woman at the end of the eighteenth century had a good command of French and German, and sometimes English. They also could dance, draw, sing, play an instrument, and had basic knowledge of geography, and history.98 In the beginning of the nineteenth century, women read more on average than their predecessors had. Reading was an important part of an upper-class woman’s life. A. S. Pushkin writes about Tatyana, the symbol of Russian traditional femininity: “She’s turned up in my garden, bringing / sad meditations in her look, / and, in her hand, a small French book.”

(my emphasis) (p. 185)

The demands of women in the second half of the nineteenth century rose drastically. They were not satisfied with having a good command of French but also desired serious professional training as doctors, lawyers, scientists – not to be mere

“Angels of the House” after graduating boarding school. As a result, the bravest women attended universities covertly, by sneaking into the lecture halls, and later openly, auditing the courses in which they were interested. Their appearance in the university halls was something extraordinary; the first female auditors drew much attention and interest from the public. However, for those who seriously wanted to become scientists or doctors, the only option in the 1850s and 60s was to travel and study abroad. Russian women were the first to obtain doctorate degrees in some of the following fields:

Nadezhda Suslova (1843-1918) and Varvara Kashevarova (1842-1899) – in the field of medicine; Yulia Lermontova (1846-1919) – in Chemistry; Sofia Kovalevskaya (1850-

98 Lotman, Iu. M. Roman A.S.Pushkina “Evgenii Onegin”: Kommentarii (Leningrad: Prosveshchenie, Leningradskoe otd-nie, 1980), p. 55. 70

1891) – in mathematics; Sofia Pereyaslavtseva (1849-1903) – in zoology; Anna

Evreinova (1844-1919) – in law at Leipzig.99

Maria Vernadskaya (1831- 1860) was an accomplished economist and co-editor, working with her husband in an economic journal.100 Vernadskaya defended women’s rights to get an education. Nadezhda Suslova was one such woman pioneer who obtained a doctorate degree in medicine in Switzerland.101 When she was a child, right after she moved with her family from the village, Suslova was inspired by the movement for the emancipation of women in St. Petersburg. Even though she was the daughter of mere

Russian (former) peasants, she managed to receive an excellent gymnasium education and audited courses in medicine at the Medical-Surgical Academy in in 1860-61 in St.

Petersburg until an official ban was implemented by the government proscribing further study by women in the 1860s. The ban spanned six years until the 1870s. Nonetheless, despite her strong desire to get education in Russia, she was forced to seek medical training abroad, since women that were considered as distraction were suddenly forbidden to audit lectures. Switzerland was a tempting place to study; the matriculation process was not complicated for foreigners, while Swiss students had to go through difficult entrance examinations. Nadezhda Suslova had a good command of German; she went to Switzerland, however, without any hope of being officially enrolled in the

99 See Ogilvie, Marilyn B, and Joy D. Harvey. The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science: Pioneering Lives from Ancient Times to the Mid-20th Century (New York: Routledge, 2000), p. 775; Koblitz, Ann H. A Convergence of Lives: Sofia Kovalevskaia: Scientist, Writer, Revolutionary (Boston etc.: Birkhäuser, 1983), p. 4; Filippova L. D. “Iz Istorii Zhenskogo Obrazovaniia V Rossii.” Voprosy Istorii. 2.(1963): 216. Broido, Vera. Apostles into Terrorists: Women and the Revolutionary Movement in the Russia of Alexander II. (London: Temple Smith, 1978), p. 54. 100 Broido, Vera. Apostles into Terrorists: Women and the Revolutionary Movement in the Russia of Alexander II. (London: Temple Smith, 1978), p. 45. 101 Nadezhda Suslova also tried herself in the literary field. In 1900, she wrote an autobiographical novel “From the Recent Past” about two sisters, obviously implying herself and Appolinaria Suslova. One sister defines her identity through love, another through hard work. 71 university. Her goal was not getting a degree, but obtaining professional skills.102 Her dream was to treat people in Russian villages, where she knew no one would ask for her diploma, but rather rely on her skills. Suslova was an assiduous student; and after a while she was accepted to the university officially. In Switzerland, the phenomenon of women studying at the university was an unheard-of practice. The public was indulgent to

Nadezhda Suslova, the foreign female student who also inspired many other women internationally. When she wanted to be officially enrolled in the medical program, the situation became tense and grew even tenser after her “bad” influence on a Swiss woman who expressed a wish to become a medical student as well. In 1867, Suslova did receive the degree of Doctor of Medicine, Surgery, and Midwifery; and many Russian women went to study abroad, following her example. Nadezhda Suslova’s autobiographical account “From the Recent Past” describes well a somewhat hostile attitude of Swiss people towards her. Professors, however, liked her assiduousness.

St. Petersburg University was the first institution that admitted female auditors.103

Another famous university auditor was Natalia Korsini (?-d.1911). She attended the lectures of Konstantin Kavelin (1818-1885) in the fall of 1859, a prominent jurist at St.

Petersburg University. Later on, many other women followed her example. The first female doctor to obtain a medical degree in Russia was Varvara Kashevarova-Rudneva

(1842-1899) in 1868. However, her case was an exception: she pursued education in order to treat Muslim Bashkir women, who, because of their religion, did not want to be treated by male doctors. She continued her education because she was not accepted as a

102 As Elnett observes, Russian women of the 1870s were the most educated in the nineteenth century. They believed in education. The women of the 1880s lost their strong interest for education, focusing more on getting diplomas. Elnett, Elaine P. Historic Origin and Social Development of Family Life in Russia (New York: Columbia University Press, 1926). 103 Johanson, Christine. Women's Struggle for Higher Education in Russia, 1855-1900, p. 33. 72 practitioner anywhere; in 1878, she obtained a doctorate degree from the Medical-

Surgical Academy in St. Petersburg. Although she had an advanced degree,

Kashevarova-Rudneva was never hired in a state hospital.

After Suslova’s example, Russian women were granted the right to attend universities in Russia, and about sixty female students were admitted to the St. Petersburg

Medical-Surgery Academy.104 The reason for the sudden awakening of adamant Minister of Education Count Tolstoy (1823-1889) and the unexpected readiness to permit women to study was the fear of undesired radical influence and penetration by revolutionary ideas from the West. However, this soft inclination did not last long because of the appearance of nihilist women in Russian universities. Vera Broido writes:

“Unfortunately, when the political climate changed again after the announcement of the peasant reform, and tension was expressed in student unrest in 1861 and in the Polish rising in 1863, there was no further question of more concessions to women.”105

Regardless of women’s attendance at universities in St. Petersburg, Kiev, and Kazan,

Kharkov, Odessa, officials in Moscow were still reluctant to allow female students to obtain university degrees. One of the representatives of the Moscow University Council declared that women “were only fit to be wives.”106 That was the logic of many men of that time.

The St. Petersburg Medical-Surgery Academy was a central attraction for nihilist women who underscored their emancipation by sporting an eccentric style: short hair,

104 See Whittaker, Cynthia H. “The Women's Movement during the Reign of Alexander II: A Case Study in Russian Liberalism.” The Journal of Modern History. 48.2 (1976): 40. 105 Broido, Vera. Apostles into Terrorists: Women and the Revolutionary Movement in the Russia of Alexander II. (London: Temple Smith, 1978), p. 52.

106 Ibid., p. 41. 73 cigarettes, bisexual relationships, and ménages à trois.107 Women cut their hair and wore black dresses “to be valued as people, not as decorative but empty-headed dolls.”108 Their rebellious behavior was considered a distraction from studying and was the reason for the sudden exclusion of women from universities in 1864. The officials feared the “spread of dangerous ideas,” since despite “careful controls on curricula,” universities still as always

“generated independent thought and planted the seeds of opposition.”109

Under the initiative of the Trubnikova Circle, a plan was made to open the first women’s university so that women could obtain professional training; however, this project was never approved by Alexander II and Count D. A. Tolstoy (1823-1889), his

Minister of Education (1866-1880). Despite this unfavorable outcome, public consciousness arose and at least women were admitted to public lectures. Like many other governments, the Russian régime of the nineteenth century would not act until the concern was brought to public’s attention. The Trubnikova Circle initiated a petition to open the first Women’s University in Russia, inspired by the opening of Vassar College in America. Although women collected many signatures and approvals, officials were still hesitant to approve this idea. The Minister of Education believed that women were unprepared for rigorous studies at the university level. Another reason lying on the surface for this hesitancy was concern for the lack of resources available to support the opening of such an institution. Women, however, were ready to solicit help from the private sector.

107 Ibid., 42. The term “nihilist” defines a groups of Russians in 1850s and 1860s who later also provoked radical movements. Nihilists could be recognized by their attitudes, social values, manners, even the way they dressed. They believed in the power of the natural sciences. Among nihilists were many chemists, biologists, mathematicians, physicists, geologists, and other scientists. They also believed in education and self-education as a direct path to progress and restructuring of society. 108 Koblitz, Ann H. A Convergence of Lives: Sofia Kovalevskaia: Scientist, Writer, Revolutionary, p. 5. 109 Engel, Barbara A. Mothers and Daughters: Women of the Intelligentsia in Nineteenth Century Russia, p. 20. 74

Even though the Trubnkova Circle was unsuccessful in opening a ladies’ university, many higher education courses started operations in place of the university:

Alarchin Courses (located near Alcharin bridge in St. Petersburg) in 1869, Vladimirskiye courses (named after the city of Vladimir), the Lyubansky Courses in Moscow, and many others. In 1878, the Bestuzhev Higher Courses were opened.110 In the Alcharin Courses participated Sofia Perovskaya, sisters Alexandra, Lyubov, and Vera Kornilovy, Olga

Shleysner, Alexandra, Obodovskaya, and others.111 The ongoing operation of all these courses was allowed only because of the massive emigration of women abroad to obtain higher education. The government would not tolerate this trend, since women socialized with radicals abroad. To prevent this flow, the officials decided not to hinder the development of alternative courses. Richard Stites writes:

The Russian government, through its network of police spies abroad, was painfully aware of this [socializing with radicals and revolutionaries abroad] from the beginning; it may have been a factor in the decision to allow the opening of the Moscow Courses and women’s medical institute in St. Petersburg. It was certainly the major consideration in the decree that allowed women’s higher courses to be opened in all university towns in Russia.112

Since most women primarily sought medical training, women’s medical courses prepared over 200 female physicians by 1882, while, in comparison, there were only twenty-six women doctors in England and seven in France.113 Later, a decision was made to open special courses for the training and preparation of midwives. The first institution

110 Broido, Vera. Apostles into Terrorists: Women and the Revolutionary Movement in the Russia of Alexander II. (London: Temple Smith, 1978), p. 53.

111 Ibid., p. 65. 112 Stites, Richard. The Women's Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism, Nihilism, and Bolshevism, 1860-1930, p. 82. 113 Johanson, Christine. Women's Struggle for Higher Education in Russia, 1855-1900, p. 5. 75 of higher education for women was opened by the University of Moscow. It was called

“Higher Courses for Women.” The full name, “Higher Courses for Women of the

University of Moscow,” was not allowed by the government.114 In 1878, an accredited institution of higher education, the University Courses for Women, was finally opened. Sofia Kovalevskaya participated actively in this project. In contrast, German women did not have state education access until 1908.115 In England, under the leadership of Emily Davies, Girton College was founded in 1868. In America, Vassar

College was founded in 1861.

This great victory for Russian women was achieved in many respects by the efforts of the women’s movement and the Trubnikova Circle. Achievement in educational reforms was evidence of the high level of emancipation among women. John

Stuart Mill underscored the progressiveness of Russian women. In his letter to Marie

Stcherbatov (1820-1879) he venerates Russian women’s efforts in educational enterprises. Here is his full letter written in 1868:

Mesdames: I have learned with pleasure, mingled with admiration, that there are found in Russia, women sufficiently enlightened and courageous to demand for their sex a participation in the various branches of higher historical, philological and scientific education, including the practical art of medicine, and to gain for this cause important support from the scientific world. That is what the most enlightened persons are asking, without having yet attained it, in the other countries of Europe. Thanks to you, Mesdames, Russia is perhaps about to surpass them in speed; it would be a proof that civilization relatively recent, sometimes accepts before the older civilizations great ideas of amelioration. The equal advent of both sexes to intellectual culture is important not only to women, which is assuredly a sufficient recommendation, but also to universal civilization. I am profoundly convinced that the moral and intellectual progress of the male sex runs a great risk of stopping, if not receding, as long as that of the woman remains behind, and that, not only because nothing can replace the mother for the education of children, but also because the influence upon man himself of the character and ideas of the companions of his life cannot be insignificant; woman

114 These Courses were, however, dismissed by the government in 1886. 115 Diethe, Carol. Towards Emancipation: German Women Writers of the Nineteenth Century, p. 2. 76

must either push him forward or hold him back. I applaud with all my heart your efforts and those of the enlightened men who support them, and I reckon upon the perseverance of which you have already shewn proof, as a guarantee that you will not become discouraged, and that you will assert by every means the justice of your cause, which, in an enlightened age, bids fair to meet a short time an assured success. Pray receive, Mesdames, the sincere expression of my high esteem and lovely sympathy.116 J. Stuart Mill

Overall, women’s struggle for higher education was not marked by success until the end of the century. By the end of the nineteenth century, the number of literate women was still too small. Singularly, women’s higher education courses did not change the entire picture. In the 1920s, the Bolsheviks granted women a right to pursue higher education. To build up the new State, they encouraged women to study. However, despite the demonstration of good statistics, many women remained poor and uneducated in the early Soviet period. The Liquidation of Illiteracy programs and new educational opportunities for women were adopted in the 1920s by special women’s educational quotas; women of all classes were encouraged to pursue higher education. The government educational quota constituted 30 percent of women in universities. The 28 percent rate of university enrollment for Soviet women in the 1920s was a success; between 1903 and 1905, 13.7 percent of women were literate.117 Between 1905 and 1906, advanced courses for women were opened in all Russian cities. Starting in 1907, women were able to be granted doctorate and master’s degrees. Upon graduation, it was extremely hard to become a college instructor; however, a teaching position in primary and secondary schools, exactly as at the end of the nineteenth century, was the usual path.

116 Mill, John S. Collected Works (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1963). 117 Marcelline Hutton, Russian Women in Politics and Society (Greenwood Press, 1996), p. 66. Filippova L.D. “Iz Istorii Zhenskogo Obrazovaniia V Rossii.” Voprosy Istorii. 2.(1963): 210. See also Stites, Richard. The Women's Liberation Movement in Russia, p. 166. 77

Nonetheless, not every woman hastened to enter this profession, since teachers were not allowed to get married.

Following the example set by Nadezhda Suslova, many women pursued degrees in medicine. Despite the fact that there were not enough doctors in Russia, professional realization for female doctors was limited.118 Only a few women went on to study other progressive occupations, such as dentistry, law, and pharmaceuticals. In fact, exactly as in America and Europe, Russian female lawyers were not taken seriously as practitioners by male colleagues. The first woman to practice law in America was Mrs. Mary E.

Magoon (b.1856-?) who was practicing in Iowa in the late nineteenth century and the first woman admitted to a state bar in 1869 – was Belle Babb Mansfield (1846-1911).

Relatively few women chose to become attorneys in Russia; the first Russian female attorneys appeared in 1906. These women, like many elsewhere, were forced to volunteer first to prove their professional sincerity.119

In summation, one of the most exciting and intellectually stimulating periods in the history of the “woman question” in Russia was challenging at every level for radically inclined women, since “traditional expectations remained for a long time unaltered”; it, therefore, presupposed “considerable courage and determination for a woman to undertake a life outside the family sphere.”120 Only when educational opportunities somewhat expanded could women claim the right to defy family despotism for the sake

118 Although female graduates form medical schools had the same status as their male colleagues, they usually were employed as pediatricians, gynecologists, and women doctors. See also Stites, R. Women’s Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism, Nihilism, and Bolshevism, p. 175. 119 For more information about women lawyers and their path to the legal profession see also Dolan J., Deckman M., Swers M. L. Women and Politics: Paths and Political Influence (Pearson Prentice Hall, 2007), pp. 323-360. 120 Ibid., p. 4. 78 of their own self-development and devote themselves to society as whole.121 In the first place, women’s advocates wanted to destroy those stagnant rules rooted in the mind of society. The course of desperate resistance began with the emergence of the women’s movement in Russia. As Barbara Engel convincingly argues, “These women brought moral fervor to everything they did. Hundreds devoted their lives to educating or providing medical care for the Russian masses; hundreds more participated in movements for social and political change. All were dedicated to the cause of the Russian people, and some were self-sacrificing almost to the point of martyrdom.”122 In fact, the new female identity was represented often by Russian and Victorian writers as a martyr.

The fundamental ethical impetus behind the feminist movement, according to

Svetlana Grenier, is the “personalist assertion of the woman’s value as a philosophical subject.” 123 In order to achieve a philosophical and social ideal of equality, there was need for a change in “people’s attitudes.”124 This change was largely prepared by Russian male writers and then female writers picked up the baton. The next chapter will analyze two influential texts for the process of women’s liberation: Herzen’s Who Is To Blame?

(1845-46) and Chernyshevsky’s What Is To Be Done? (1863)

121 Engel, Barbara A. Mothers and Daughters: Women of the Intelligentsia in Nineteenth Century Russia, p. 5. 122 Ibid., p. 3. 123 Grenier, Svetlana S. Representing the Marginal Woman in Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature: Personalism, Feminism, and Polyphony (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001), p. 3. 124 Ibid. 79

Chapter Two: Who Is To Blame? and What Is To Be Done?: Male Advocates of the “Woman Question”

2.1 The Apotheosis of the Russian Woman

Tatiana is different. She is a strong character, strongly standing on her own ground. She is deeper than Onyegin and certainly wiser than he. With a noble instinct she divines where and what is truth, and her thought finds expression in the finale of the poem. Perhaps Pushkin would even have done better to call his poem Tatiana, and not Onyegin, for she is indubitably the chief character. She is positive and not negative, a type of positive beauty, the apotheosis of the Russian woman, and the poet destined her to express the idea of his poem in the famous scene of the final meeting of Tatiana with Onyegin. One may even say that so beautiful or positive a type of the Russian woman has never been created since in our literature, save perhaps the figure of Liza in Turgeniev’s A Nest of Gentlefolk. F.M. Dostoevsky

“Pushkin Speech”

When reading literature, listening to classical music, looking into art, one understands and is better able to imagine the world of the nineteenth century. Carolina de

Maegd-Soëp writes that we should not forget that many aspects of life could be discussed only in a literary form at that time.1 Thus, the Russian novel (especially in the period of

Realism) was full of progressive ideas and often reflected the Zeitgeist, since literature was one of the most effective channels of social and political propaganda, as well as rhetoric for women’s liberation.2

The “woman question” has disturbed Russian writers since the late 1820s.

Around the same time, female writers began to form their identities, slowly entering the world of belles lettres. The number of women authors began to slowly increase in the second half of the century. The quest for a new type of female character became an

1 Maegd-Soëp, Carolina. Emansipatsia Zhenchin V Rossii, Literature I Zhizni. =: The Emancipation of Women in Russian Literature and Society (Ekaterinburg: Izd-vo Uralʹskogo Universiteta, 1999), p. 69. 2 The Russian realism begins in the 1840s. 80 important goal for male and female writers. A new image of women, created by Russian writers, was indicative of the transformation in self-consciousness experienced by women. Fiction played a crucial role in forming a “positive ideal” for both men and women.3 One of the most famous “positive ideals” of the nineteenth century was created by the poet Aleksander Sergeevich Pushkin. A. S. Pushkin (1799-1837), who is considered to be one of the first great Russian writers, also was the “first feminist in

Russian literature” and belonged to the Golden Age of Russian literature.4 Russian literature of the 1840s was shaped under the influence of Pushkin, the reigning national literary ideology, and George Sand, who helped to shift the understanding of women as mere “shadow” to the acceptance of women as historical agents.

Pushkin set a standard for both – Russian female and male writers of the nineteenth century, so only talented voices could be heard after his appearance. He completed his Eugene Onegin in 1831, in which Tatyana Larina, the main female protagonist dominates the novelistic structure. Pushkin’s Tatyana is his contribution to the Feminine Ideal, as a very distinctive and independent character, but still she is opposed to the New Woman. Although A. S. Pushkin calls his novel in verse Eugene

Onegin, Tatiana is the central figure. Dostoevsky, for example, suggested that the title of the novel should be “Tatyana Larina.” Onegin for Dostoevsky is an antagonistic hero, an embodiment of Western culture, whereas Tatiana is a protagonistic heroine, morally higher than Onegin. Although it is known that Dostoevsky was against Western influence and the transformation of Russian traditionalism, he admired the early work of George

Sand, especially Mauprat (1837) and created some of his female characters following the

3 Ibid. 4 Ibid., p. 11. 81

Sandean tradition. However, Dostoevsky never supported the women’s movement explicitly. Like Tolstoy, Dostoevsky praised traditional women’s roles. Tolstoy did not accept George Sand’s position. He was also very critical of Chernyshevsky’s What Is To be Done? – the novel about women’s liberation. Dostoevsky also did not value

Chernyshevsky’s work. Perhaps, like Thomas Hardy, Dostoevsky found New Women, the patrons of the movement, to be somewhat overwhelming and eccentric. Dostoevsky was acquainted with an actual New Woman Apollinaria Suslova, whom he loved all his life. Polina, Nadezhda Suslova’s sister, a daughter of a rich peasant, served as the prototype for the emancipated female character Polina in Dostoevsky’s short novel The

Gambler (1866).5 Dostoevsky’s third wife, Anna Grigorievna, was the type of selfless woman, like Tatiana Larina, who was satisfied with occupying the conventional woman’s role.

Pushkin’s Tatyana influenced many Russian writers. As Douglas Clayton notes fairly, “It is perhaps no exaggeration to describe Tatiana as the most important character in Russian literature, for she was to have a decisive impact on the shaping of subsequent heroines in Russian realism, in particular those of Turgenev and Tolstoi.”6 In Vissarion

Grigorievich Belinsky’s words, Eugene Onegin was an “encyclopedia of Russian life.”

Belinsky (1811-1848) also finds parallels between the two novels and the similarity between the two protagonists − Onegin and Pechorin from Lermontov’s celebrated novel

The Hero of Our Time (1840). Later, another critic, Dmitry Ivanovich Pisarev (1840-

5 Suslova also served as a prototype of many other female characters in Dostoevsky’s novels: Katerina Ivanovna Marmeladova in Crime and Punishment (1866), Nastasya Fillipovna in The Idiot (1869), Lizaveta Nikolaevna in The Possessed (1872), Grushenka and Katerina Ivanovna in The Brothers Karamazov (1880). 6 Clayton, J. D. Ice and Flame: Aleksandr Pushkin's Eugene Onegin (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985), p. 116. 82

1868), who was a representative of the so-called New People of the 1860s, considered, on the contrary, that Eugene Onegin was far from an “encyclopedia of Russian life,” since

Pisarev was looking for New People who could change Tsarist Russia (as

Chernyshevky’s characters, for example); and he saw the figure of Onegin as an egoistic, passive, and “superfluous” man.

As in a typical Bildungsroman, we witness Tatiana’s metamorphosis in the novel; in fact, the development of her character “goes too far, too fast.”7 It is as if we have two

Tatianas, “two different, opposing character types,” as Clayton notes, “the ‘Juliet’ and

‘Clèves’ types.”8 When Onegin sees Tatyana again after a while, “Tatiana has become one of the most envied and accomplished ladies in the whole of Russia.”9 The narrator contrasts Old and New Tatyana:

In Tatyana, what a transformation! how well she’d studied her new role! how soon the bounds of rank and station had won her loyalty! What soul would divined the tender, shrinking maiden in this superb, unthinking lawgiver to the modish world? Yet once for him her thoughts had whirled, for him, at night, before the indulgence of Morpheus had induced relief she once had pinned in girlish grief, raised a dull eye to moon’s refulgence, and dreamt that she with him one day jointly would tread life’s humble way! 10

(VIII, XXVIII).

7 Briggs, A D. P. Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 60. 8 Clayton, J D. Ice and Flame: Aleksandr Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, p. 117. 9 Briggs, A D. P. Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin, p. 71. 10 Translated by Charles Johnston. Eugene Onegin (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979).

Как изменилася Татьяна! Как твердо в роль свою вошла! Как утеснительного сана Приемы скоро приняла! Кто б смел искать девчонки нежной В сей величавой, в сей небрежной Законодательнице зал? И он ей сердце волновал! Об нем она во мраке ночи, Пока Морфей не прилетит, Бывало, девственно грустит, К луне подъемлет томны очи, Мечтая с ним когда-нибудь Свершить смиренный жизни путь!

(VIII, XXVIII)

Tatyana is not the New Woman, since she, presumably because of the “pressure of society on the individual” is “forced to obey the dictates of the mass rather listen to his own heart” and chooses a loveless marriage.11 This dual and very complex heroine takes a crucial step towards female liberation – she writes a love-letter as a form of self- expression, overcoming the passivity of suppressed women, locked in “terems.” Douglas

Clayton notes that there is no “real” addressee in the letter: “The Onegin to whom she directs the letter is unknown, a phantom.”12 Indeed, Tatyana's letter to Onegin reflects a woman’s protest against her conventional role in society; in this sense, she indubitably represents a new female identity in Russian literature. The heroine first confesses her love in her letter to Onegin. To nineteenth-century Russia, Tatyana's action was extraordinary; and it is so Sand-like to write a love-letter to a man. Tatyana is aware that by writing it she takes a serious risk, putting her reputation at stake. However, she loves Onegin so passionately that she blindly trusts him and does not think about consequences. She knows it is within his power to “punish” her for this act, and it is as if she anticipates that

11 Clayton, J. D. Ice and Flame: Aleksandr Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, p. 116. 12 Ibid., p. 126. 84 he will punish her. Eventually he gives her a cold lecture and answers her love with words of rationalism, but Onegin’s lecture and patronizing tone is nothing compared to the ruin of a woman’s reputation. Tatyana’s love is genuine; there is no one else on earth to whom she could give her heart. She believes in destiny – that this love was sent by the highest fate; it was nothing else, but heaven’s will, she feels. She first wants to remain silent, but her feelings – agony and bitter suffering – are too strong to control. She knows that she will be ashamed after this confession but cannot confront her love alone. At the same time, perhaps Tatyana would not be able to tell him all these words in person. Her goal is neither matrimony nor is it simply lust. This impulse is an impressionistic moment and the culmination of her blossoming as a woman. She is solitary in the village – no one understands what she says and feels. After finishing her letter, she cannot even read it through, because her passion is too strong and perhaps Tatyana is afraid that if she reads it carefully again – she will then vacillate and never give this letter to her beloved. This message presents itself as a challenge to her age, status, and all those strict conventions predominating the nineteenth century. The heroine hardly expects an answer from Onegin

– the worst that can happen to her is that her action will be discovered or this letter will be answered, but Onegin's reaction is predictable and rooted in his “deep-seated” insecurity.13

Tatyana’s passionate letter to Onegin is one of the first feminist expressions written by a man in Russian literature. Pushkin reevaluates a woman’s conventional role in society and Tatyana, an audacious and passionate woman and not a marionette in the hands of society, became his imagined Ideal. However, Pushkin does not destroy the traditional marriage plot: his Tatyana remains a faithful wife. Perhaps following the

13 Ibid. 85 image of Tatiana Larina, in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov (1880) Lise writes a letter to Alyosha. Tatiana’s image undoubtedly influenced Herzen’s female character

Lyubonka in Who Is To Blame? (1845-46) as a self-sufficient identity.

2.2 Who Is To Blame? as One of the First Serious Literary Discussions of the

“Woman Question”

And here it is that we seem to come in conflict for a moment with most of the modern Woman-Question agitators. I say for a moment only, for I am going to admit, even for that brief space of time, that the doctrine I wish to set forth here is one whit less advanced, one whit less radical, or one whit less emancipatory than the doctrine laid down by the most emancipated women. On the contrary, I feel sure that while women are crying for emancipation they really want to be left in slavery; and that it is only a few exceptional men, here and there in the world, who wish to see them fully and wholly enfranchised. And those men are not the ones who take the lead in so-called Woman’s Rights movement.

Grant Allen (1848-1899) “Plain Words on the Woman Question,”

"Nobody," she went on—"nobody in particular is to blame, that I can see, for the state in which things are; and I cannot tell, however much I puzzle over it, how they are to be altered for the better; but I feel there is something wrong somewhere. I believe single women should have more to do—better chances of interesting and profitable occupation than they possess now. And when I speak thus I have no impression that I displease God by my words; that I am either impious or impatient, irreligious or sacrilegious.

Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855) Shirley

In the 1840s, the period of Russian Realism, intensive discussions of the “woman question” appeared in literary form – the most accessible for educated people; it is understood that novelists gave the “right of citizenship” to the “woman question.”14

Iskander’s (Herzen’s early pseudonym) Who Is To Blame? (1845-46), Druzhinin’s

Polinka Saks (1847), Avdeev’s Underwater Stone (1860), Brandi’s (pseudonym of

Mechnikov) Brave Step (1863) were the embryos of the “woman question.” All these writers developed George Sand’s ideas; and their works were an impetus for the advancement of the woman’s position. In contrast, N. G. Chernyshevsky’s work was a new word on the “woman’s question,” providing practical advice for women and society.

14 Shashkov, S. S. Istoriia Russkoi Zhenshchiny., p. 273. 87

Alexander Herzen, one of the most charismatic Russian figures of the nineteenth century, a “serious thinker, a persuasive writer, and an ardent advocate for change,” published his novel Who Is To Blame? in 1845-46 in the journal The Notes of the

Fatherland under the pseudonym Iskander.15 Marc Raeff associates the first Russian intelligentsia with the names of “geniuses with very individual personalities and minds” –

Herzen, Bakunin, Stankevich.16 Herzen was one of the first literary advocates of egalitarian rights for men and women.17 Before the publication of the novel, the writer had endured exile and imprisonment. As a Westernizer, he advocated progressive tendencies, and for his radical and “dangerous” ideas the writer was exiled to the town of

Vyatka in 1835. In 1840, he was allowed to return to Moscow; however, soon after he was exiled again for his criticism of the police in Moscow. The first edition of the novel Who Is To Blame?, first titled “The Tale About a Teacher,” was issued in 1847; a second one was published in London in 1859 with some revisions made by Herzen himself.18 It was by no accident that his novel became so popular – Herzen “managed to hit the fashionable topics at once, combining a withering satire of provincial mores and

Petersburg bureaucracy with an exploration of the ‘superfluous man’ phenomenon.”19

Interestingly enough, Herzen’s Who Is To Blame? discusses the woman’s position as a lower class citizen. The concept of intersectionality helps reading this text, since the question of class inequality is central to this novel. The main character is a

15 Chernyshevsky, Nikolay G, and Michael R. Katz. What Is To Be Done? (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), p. 13 and 17. 16 Raeff, Marc. Origins of the Russian Intelligentsia: The Eighteenth-Century Nobility (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1966), p. 4. 17 Shashkov, S. S. Istoriia Russkoi Zhenshchiny, p. 276. 18 In 1847 Herezen left Russia to live abroad. He could not stand the stifling atmosphere of his homeland. In London, where he spent most of his time, he published Kolokol (The Bell), famous for its anti-Tsarist mood. 19 Grenier, Svetlana S. Representing the Marginal Woman in Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature: Personalism, Feminism, and Polyphony, p. 67. 88 female protagonist named Lyubonka, the illegitimate daughter of a peasant and a general; and nineteenth-century Russian heroines were “almost invariably derived from the nobility,” although until 1861, “most women, like most men in Russia, were peasant serfs.”20 In this way, Alexander Herzen shows his deep concern about lower class women in his work. Perhaps it was due to that fact that he was the illegitimate son of a wealthy

Russian nobleman I. A. Yakovlev and a German woman Luzia Haag.

Herzen’s oeuvre was highly praised by critic Vissarion Belinsky “as a work of great social importance” in the pages of the journal The Contemporary in 1846.21 Who Is

To Blame? depicts the inequality and oppression of women in patriarchal society.

Lyubonka exemplifies a new femininity, but she is not the New Woman, like

Chernyshevky’s Vera Pavlovna. This young woman experiences inequality not only from men, but also from a woman, her stepmother, who does not accept her to an upper class.

The literary critic Michael Katz also suggests that Lyubonka’s character is Herzen’s contribution to the “woman question”; she is “this bridge that leads to an absolutely new female identity in Russian literature.”22 She is not as magnetic, independent, and confident, as the figures of Chenyshevsky’s Vera Pavlovna or Grant Allen’s Herminia

Barton. However, she takes the first steps towards personal emancipation. Her critical observation of the world makes her different from other heroines. Herzen, does not seem to directly criticize or correct Lyubonka’s position; he rewrites the traditionally accepted female character – his heroine falls in love outside of marriage.

20 Engel, Barbara A. Mothers and Daughters: Women of the Intelligentsia in Nineteenth Century Russia, p. 6 and p. 8. 21 Chernyshevsky, Nikolay G, and Michael R. Katz. What Is To Be Done?, p. 18. 22 Ibid., p. 27. 89

One may assume this “work of great social importance” had a huge impact on the formation and transformation of women’s consciousness. As Bakhtin puts it: “The critic, like the reader he represents, is frequently drawn into the flood of generating ideology the artist has revealed to him. If the work is really deep and timely, then the critic and reader will recognize themselves, their problems, their own personal ideological process of generation (their “quest”), and will recognize the contradictions and conflicts of their own constantly active and involved ideological horizon.”23 Herzen’s work was “deep and timely.” He did not risk destroying the traditional marriage plot by following the Sandean style, since he was a perceptive social observer – and perhaps, too, because he did not consider it to be “timely”. The female reader was not prepared for the figure of Vera

Pavlovna or rebellious Anna Karenina.

The lives of the main characters in Who Is To Blame? are gradually being destroyed “through no fault of their own.”24 Compositionally, Herzen divides the novel into a cycle of tales integrated by a central character following the tradition of

Lermontov’s novel, Hero of Our Time (1840).25 The main character in the novel is female

(just as in Pushkin’s novel in verse Eugene Onegin), and differs from Lermontov’s novel in this way. Herzen also introduces a plethora of biographies and characters. This use of detailed biographies was inspired by Gogol’s The Government Inspector (1836). Herzen writes: “There is nothing on earth more individual and more diversified than the biographies of ordinary people.” (p.145) In the beginning of the novel, the narrator provides the biography of a retired general, Alexei Abramovich, who leads an empty and

23 Medvedev, P. N, and M. M. Bakhtin. The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship: A Critical Introduction to Sociological Poetics, p. 19. 24 Grenier, Svetlana S. Representing the Marginal Woman in Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature: Personalism, Feminism, and Polyphony, p. 14. 25 Chernyshevsky, Nikolay G, and Michael R. Katz. What Is To Be Done?, p. 24. 90 boring life suffering from spleen, melancholy, and disillusionment. Being a typical tyrannical landowner, he abuses his serfs and for his own amusement initiates an affair with Darya who cannot defend herself against it and must come to terms with her status as his serfdom-based “property.” As Engel argues, limited women’s rights made peasant women sexually vulnerable, “roughly half of the serfs belonged to noble landlords who held almost absolute power over them.”26 Elizaveta Vodovozova also recalls in her memoir A Russian Childhood (1911) how her godfather bought a female serf named

Varya because he fell in love with her. He did want to marry her when she gave birth to a baby girl. The most Varya could hope to do for her daughter was to gain freedom for the girl.

The liaison between Alexei Abramovich and his serf results in the birth of a child

Lyubonka whom he refuses to acknowledge as his own. Only after Alexei Abramovich marries does his new wife, Glafira Lvovna, condescend to take care of the illegitimate offspring, “that poor child,” by bringing her to the household. (p. 91) His wife, Glafira

Lvovna, was herself adopted and raised by an egoistic, capricious aunt. This act of benevolence by Glafira Lvovna, however, is ambiguous as Herzen shows: first she loves the girl she “adopted,” but little by little, especially when this “orphan” develops into a woman, she begins to find the girl intolerable. At times, Glafira hurts her adopted daughter’s feelings deeply by pointing out her low place within the household. Neither the general nor his wife understood Lyubonka’s strange position in the household, and they added to her burden unnecessarily, grating on the most delicate strings of her heart.

Glafira Lvovna constantly compares Lyubonka to her own daughter. She does not

26 Engel, Barbara A. Mothers and Daughters: Women of the Intelligentsia in Nineteenth Century Russia, p. 8. 91 understand Lyubonka’s “coldness,” “otherness,” and reservation, traits brought on by the pain of feeling like an outsider in the household: “There was much that was strange in

Lyubonka. Her face, though full of natural energy, managed to express imperturbable apathy and coldness. She was so indifferent to everything that Glafira Lvovna sometimes found it intolerable and called her a cold-blooded Englishwoman, although there were considerable grounds for questioning the Andalusian nature of the general’s wife.” (p. 91)

Lyubonka, just like Frances Burney’s Evelina, hardly knows herself to whom she most belongs – serfs (among whom she sees her mother) or rural aristocracy (where her substitute family and biological father are)?27 She is constantly oppressed by Glafira

Lvovna, an “unknowingly vulgar” lady: “On some occasions” her step mother is “even nice” to Lyubonka in her “own way”; she forces Lyubonka to eat “even though she was sated”; Glafira considers it “necessary,” when introducing Lyubonka to one of her new acquaintances, to add thus constantly humiliating her: “She is an orphan who is being brought up with my own children.” (pp. 92-93)

Herzen’s novel is a Bildungsroman where he shows an inner development of the main female character. The heroine began to learn to think like an adult at the early age of twelve; “from that time on, her little head, covered with dark curls, began to work.”

(p. 96) She is very different from her household, or the Other. At that early age the

27 In Frances Burney’s Evelina (1778) the heroine is in search of a family in an effort to secure her social stability. Evelina possesses a familial focus. In the eighteenth century each society member was evaluated according to his relationships with kinship group. This situation underlines Evelina’s dramatic situating, since the heroine is an orphan that exists until the end of the novel as a rather random element within society. And the obscurity of Evelina’s birth which her guardian kept secret redoubles her uncertainty. The writer focuses on the idea of family as a context and the importance of social context. A substitute context is temporarily provided by Evelina’s loving guardian Villars and “protective, sensitive” Lady Howard. The writer defines this context as Evelina’s true and normative. Madam Duval and the Branghtons appear in a negative context. All Evelina’s problems are resolved by Orville’s proposal. The marriage will provide Evelina desirable and deserved, socially recognized context. See Olshin, Toby A. "'To Whom I Most Belong': The Role Of Family In Evelina." Eighteenth-Century Life 6.1 (1980): 29-42. 92

“range of questions aroused in her was rather small and completely personal, but this just made it easier for her to concentrate on them.” (p. 96) Lyubonka’s father has a “stern,”

“sometimes arrogant nature” and offends the heroine “intentionally, though without understanding the impact of his words on anyone with a soul more sensitive than his steward’s”; “it never occurred to him that the girl might be offended by his words.

Indeed, who was she to be offended?” (p. 92; my emphasis) He, too, never forgets to remind his daughter of her place in the household:

Eager to strengthen Lyubonka’s love for Glafira Lvovna, Aleksei Abramovich often told the young girl that for the rest of her life it was her duty to pray for his wife’s well-being; that she owed all her happiness to his wife alone; that if it were not for her, she would have remained a maid, instead becoming a lady. He rarely missed a chance to remind her that although she was being given the same upbringing as his own children, nonetheless an enormous abyss separated her from them. (p. 92)

Despite the various hardships she suffers and despite her position in the household, Lyubonka grows into a strong and warm-hearted person. It seems that nothing can destroy her personality, sensibility, and integrity unlike her step-mother who was not raised by her mother either, but became emotionally inaccessible. Both

Alexander Herzen and Nikolay Chernyshevsky mention that experiencing neglect and bad environment do not necessary corrupt a personality.

In Chernyshevsky’s What Is To Be Done? From Tales About New People (1863) the main female character Vera Pavlovna opens up to her rescuer, confessing that every woman, in fact, wants to be a man. She was, of course, referring to the freedom men possessed. If only Lyubonka were a man, Herzen argues, she could have escaped her suffering by fleeing or by going to serve in the army:

Lyubonka was rejected all around: what other choice did she have? Had she been a man, she might have run away or joined the army. But being a girl she could only withdraw into herself. For years she endured the grief, insults, idleness, and confusion. Little by little a part of what was seething within her soul began to crystallize. When she found no satisfactory outlet for her insistent, natural need to confide in someone, she took up her pen and began to write, to express what troubled her, so to speak, and thus to relieve her spirit. (p. 99; my emphasis)

The only way to express her grief was through writing down her thoughts and observations in a journal. Most New Women did so; and many of them also became writers. As a rule, the fictional New Woman characters are depicted as writers or poets and observers. Gan’s Olga in The Ideal (1837) writes a novel and is judged for this

“dangerous” inclination by Russian society. Grand’s Ideala in Ideala (1888) is a poet, but she does not reveal this fact to the public. Allen’s Herminia and Dixon’s Erle fail to become writers, since their writings are too frank and the English public, they lament, is not prepared for veracity. Lyubonka is entirely isolated from society and oppressed by her “family” but her experiences developed her firm and independent character. In addition, the idea of trial and testing preserves its organizational significance in the novel throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The New Woman novel is usually organized around this concept. Bakhtin writes:

Further variants of the nineteenth-century novel include: the testing of the strong personality who opposes himself, on one ground or another, to the community, who seeks to attain complete self-sufficiency and a proud isolation, or who aspires to the role of a chosen leader; the testing of the moral reformer or amoralist, the trial of the Nitzscheanean man, of the emancipated woman and so forth – these are the very widespread organizing ideas in the European novel of the nineteenth and early twentieth century.28

28 Bakhtin, Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination. Ed. by Michael Holquist. Translated by Caryl Emerson and Mikhail Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), p. 390. 94

On one hand, Lyubonka achieves a proud isolation in her household, since she is the Other, but she is not ready to oppose the society yet. Everything changes, when a new tutor, Dmitry, is assigned to teach Glafira Lvovna’s children, Lyubonka is attracted to him. However, she has doubts as to whether she really loves him, since after years of humiliation and suffering, she does not even know whether she is capable of love anymore.

Lyubonka is an abject(ified), in Kristeva’s terms, femininity from outside and inside. Her “cold” Englishwoman appearance is meant to hide her vulnerability, since she is afraid of showing her emotions. The mask of coldness and reservation becomes second nature. She slowly loses the need to veil behind this mask when she becomes independent from “parental” household. In the first part Lyubonka, like Vera Pavlovna in the beginning of Who is To Blame?, is a puppet and merely a passive participant in the household:

She is more to blame than we are; her role in the patriarchal family circle was largely silent. She took almost no part whatever in events and thus introduced a dissonant note in to the otherwise harmonious chord struck by other members of the family. (p. 91)

Thus, the narrator’s voice prepares us for the transformation. In Part II we witness the metamorphosis of the heroine – she becomes an observer who criticizes the way of life in the family and departs from the household, marrying Dmitry in order to establish her own family based on mutual trust and possibly love. Nonetheless, her marriage is just a way to escape her so-called family. Indeed, Beltov, her husband’s classmate from

Moscow University, interrupts the idyll. Lyubonka, now an independent married woman with an affectionate husband and having tasted freedom for the first time in her life,

95 realizes that she loves Beltov, not her husband. However, Lyubonka is not ready to betray

Dmitry. Unlike the charcters of Sand, Lyubonka is willing to sacrifice her own happiness.

She loves another man but, in the truest tradition of Pushkin’s Tatyana Larina, wants to remain faithful to her husband and gives up her personal happiness in favor of duty.

Beltov eventually leaves the provincial town and Lyubonka’s husband gradually turns into a drunkard. At the end of the novel, when we already anticipate a tragic finale, the narrator asks again his celebrated question – “who is to blame?”. Giving no concrete solution, the narrator “invites the reader to find an answer.”29 It seems, however, that “the narrative voice speaks with great confidence and passion” and “knows the truth about the world.”30 Herzen chose the first-person narrative mode in his Who Is To Blame?, conversing with the reader, sharing his emotions, and often admitting his “authorial difficulties” throughout the novel.31 He was a fervent admirer and follower of George

Sand, who presumably inspired the title of the novel. This rhetoric question – who is to blame – served as the preface of Sand’s Jacques (1834). Besides, both novels deal with a

“love triangle involving a married couple.”32 Herzen, endowed with great power of observation, gives a precise and realistic picture of nineteenth-century Russian life, not leaving out such problems as illegitimacy. According to Svetlana Grenier, he makes several points in his novel:

One is a Westernizer’s desire to expose Russia’s political and economic backwardness as manifested in the numerous abuses and injustices of serfdom and the tsarist bureaucracy. Herzen’s second goal, common to the writers of the

29 Grenier, Svetlana S. Representing the Marginal Woman in Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature: Personalism, Feminism, and Polyphony, p. 64. 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid., p. 66. 96

Natural School, is to arouse compassion for the victims of those abuses and injustices, that is, for the suffering lower classes. Finally, Herzen is interested in exceptional personalities – people who have the moral and intellectual stature of the Romantic hero and the potential to do something about Russian problems.33

The strength of his female characters is determined by their environment, circumstances, and constant trial. No single “set of social circumstances” can produce the same character; on the contrary, “inherited ‘nature’ is an equally important factor in the formation of an individual.”34 Interestingly, Herzen believes in the “mysteries of the female soul” which endows them with abilities of “powerful development” unknown to men:

The sterility of the young girl’s environment, however, did nothing to hinder her development. On the contrary, the vulgar circumstances in which she found herself only fostered a more powerful development. Why? This is one of the mysteries of the female soul. A girl either becomes accustomed to her surroundings that by age of fourteen she is already flirting, gossiping, making eyes at passing officers, noticing whether or not the maids are stealing tea and sugar, preparing to become a respectable mistress of a household and stern mother, or else she escapes from the muck and mire with unusual alacrity, overcoming external circumstances by her own inner nobility, comprehending the meaning of life through some revelation, and acquiring tact that both protects and counsels her. Men almost never follow this particular path development. Boys are taught over and over again in gymnasiums, universities, billiard rooms, and other more or less pedagogical intuitions; yet it is not until we turn thirty-five and start losing our hair, our power, and our passion that we acquire that same level of development and understanding that comes much earlier to a woman, while she is still young and her feelings are deep and fresh. (p. 95)

In this passage Herzen states that women mature earlier than men. This statement must have resounded strongly, considering that the concept of women’s inferiority and supposed inherited physical as well as mental weakness was widely accepted in society.

33 Ibid., p. 67. 34 Ibid., p. 170. 97

Commonly held beliefs in women’s natural weakness were strengthened by the work of

French thinkers, Jules Michelet and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who supported and defended the traditional woman’s role. It is worth mentioning that in the twentieth century Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) renounces any “mysterious instincts” prescribed to women in her The Second Sex (1949). She writes:

Of all these myths, none is more firmly anchored in masculine hearts than that of the feminine “mystery.” It has numerous advantages. And first of all it permits an easy explanation of all that appears inexplicable; the man who “does not understand” a woman is happy to substitute an objective resistance for a subjective deficiency of mind; instead of admitting his ignorance, he perceives of a “mystery” outside himself” an alibi, indeed, that flatters laziness and vanity at once. A heart smitten with love thus avoids many disappointments: if the loved one’s behavior is capricious, her remarks stupid, then the mystery serves to excuse it all. And finally, thanks again to the mystery, that negative relation is perpetuated which seemed to Kierkegaard infinitely preferable to positive possession; in the company of a living enigma man remains alone – alone with his dreams, his hopes, his fears, his love, his vanity. The subjective game, which can go all the way from vice to mystical ecstasy, is for many a more attractive than an authentic relation with a human being. (my emphasis)35

However, Herzen seems to understand well a woman’s soul and the tragedy of her position in the nineteenth century. He depicts Lyubonka as a rebellious heroine; she does not want to settle into her traditional role. She defies this role by falling in love with another man using marriage as a means to emancipate herself from an oppressive household. However, by the end of the novel the once strong Lyubonka becomes a

“victim” of love. She writes in her diary about discovering the “contradictions inherent in her position in mid-nineteenth-century Russian society.”36 In Svetlana Grenier’s opinion, she is the strongest character in the novel, morally higher than her beloved Beltov and her

35 De Beauvoir, Simone . The Second Sex. (New York: Knopf, 1957), p. 256. 36 Grenier, Svetlana S. Representing the Marginal Woman in Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature: Personalism, Feminism, and Polyphony, p. 28. 98 husband Dmitry, yet she still appears to be the “least finalized of all characters.”37 The degree of finalization for a character, however, is hard to measure. According to Bakhtin, one cannot live by her or his finalization; in order to live, one has to be not finalized and open for oneself.38 Thus, his female character is very much alive. Herzen, through

Lyubonka’s openness of character, made herself an author of herself. Her diary of self- reflections helps the reader reconstruct a better understanding of her personality.

Lyubonka’s diary plays a central role in the novel. We often see and interpret situations through the prism of her journal. Herzen is one of the first writers to “exhibit an impressive amount of feminism,” since his representation of Lyubonka is “autonomous” and “sometimes far more superior to the male characters in the novel.”39 This autonomy indicates a more rounded representation of her character. This heroine was not morally prepared to remain a rebel to the end as did Vera Pavlovna and Anna Karenina. Unlike them, she gives up in favor of her family. Perhaps it is this impasse that leads to her final self-destruction, but, as in Anna Karenina’s tragedy – there is no one to blame.

37 Ibid., p. 73. 38 See Bakhtin M. M. Avtor I Geroj v Esteticheskoj Dejatelnosti. Problema Avtora (M.: Iskusstvo, 1979), pp. 7–180. 39 Ibid., p. 74. 99

2.3 What Is To Be Done?, or the Eulogy of the New Woman

There is a New Woman, and what do you think? She lives upon nothing but Foolscap and Ink! But, though Foolscap and Ink form the whole of her diet, This nagging New Woman can never be quiet!

Punch, 26 May 1984, 252.40

Another novel that can be considered as the early emancipationist discourse is

Herzen’s Who Is To Blame? (1845-46). It had a great influence on nineteenth-century

Russian society was Chernyshevsky’s What Is To Be Done? From Tales About New

People, published in the journal Sovremennik (The Contemporary) in 1863 and followed by public controversy. What Is To Be Done? Has “generated considerable commentary” since its publication and was banned by censors after its publication.41 Francis B. Randall writes that What Is To Be Done? “is a novel about women’s emancipation.”42 Randall explains how Chernyshevsky regarded the emancipation problem:

Since Chernyshevky could not deal openly with the emancipation of the serfs and of the citizenry, and since he was replying in kind to a novel that had likewise been restrained from political discussion, he treated instead emancipation of the individual in private life, especially the emancipation of women from bondage to parents, husbands, religion, law, and social convention.43

His interest in oppressed people can be traced back to his biography. Nikolay

Chernyshevsky was born to a very religious family in Saratov, a small town on the

Volga. His father was an Orthodox priest. Chernyshevsky, like his protagonist

40 Punch is English illustrated periodical. 41 Drozd, Andrew M. Chernyshevskii's What Is To Be Done?: A Reevaluation (Evanston, Ill: Northwestern University Press, 2001), p. 1. 42 Randall, Francis B. N.G. Chernyshevskii (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1967), p. 109. 43 Ibid., p. 107. 100

Rakhmetov, devoted himself to self-education and rose from low status through his own achievements. He taught himself foreign languages which helped him gain admission to the prestigious St. Petersburg University. After graduation, he worked as a teacher of

Russian literature. He was a follower of the philosophy of materialism and called himself a socialist.44 Although his father was a priest, Chernyshevsky was a self-declared atheist.

Despite his excellent education, Cherneshevsky considered himself as excluded from the upper class; this was a great source of discontent for him. His exclusion from high society gave rise to intensive reflection on the plight of women and peasants.

Chernyshevsky had time to devote himself solely to his novel while he was imprisoned in the Peter and Paul fortress in Saint Petersburg. It took him about four months to complete the work in prison. The manuscript was mysteriously lost by Nikolay

Alexeyevich Nekrasov (1821-1878), but reappeared again. Chernyshevsky and his friends Nikolay Dobrolyubov (1836-1861) and Dmitry Pisarev (1840-1868) were considered as martyrs by the “children of the sixties,” who represented the rebellious, nihilistic Russian intelligentsia of the 1850s and 1860s. His work does not dwell on the philosophical and rhetoric question anymore – who is to blame? but encourages the reader to rebel. His generation desires action, not words – that is why it is seeking an answer to a different question. Throughout the novel, protagonists try to find an answer to another rhetorical question “what is to be done?” They struggle to find a solution to what they could do personally to liberate Russia. For his radical and revolutionary disposition,

Chernyshevsky was exiled after the publication of his work by the Tsarist government in

1864 and spent the rest of his life in Siberia.

44 The doctrines of materialism were forbidden in Russia at that time. 101

Chernyshevsky dedicates the novel to his wife Olga Sokratovna Vasileva (1838-

1918). There are many digressions of a publicist character in the novel; this technique was likely borrowed from Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin that is also full of lyrical digressions. According to Bakhtin, What Is To Be Done? belongs to polyphonic novels and absolutely new structural forms.45 The first chapter entitled “The Fool” tells the story of a suicide. It was so named to mislead censors, who did not anticipate the political content of the novel and read it as a simple love story. Chernyshevsky plays with censors, writing that he possesses “not one bit of artistic talent” and lacks “full command of the language.” (p. 48) This trick to present the novel as a love story was indeed misleading, since the censors only read the beginning. Later on, in the Preface, the narrator still intrigues his reader: “When I say that I have not one a bit of artistic talent and that my tale is a very weak piece of work, you should by no means conclude that I am any worse than those authors whom you consider to be great, or that my novel is any poorer than theirs. That’s not at all what I mean. I mean that my novel suffers from imperfections when it’s compared with the works of genuinely gifted writers.” (p. 48) In

“A Conversation with the Perspicacious Reader Followed by His Explanation”

Chernyshevsky also writes playfully that he is a “poor writer,” but still understands the

“requirements of true art better” than “great literary artists.” (p. 308)

What Is To Be Done? was often seen as an “artistic failure,” but at the same time as a “transparent tract.”46 It was valued mainly for its political content: this novel was one of the “icons of the Soviet regime.”47 Indeed, it is more than a literary work; it is a “social

45 Bakhtin, Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination. Ed. by Michael Holquist. Translated by Caryl Emerson and Mikhail Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981). 46 Drozd, Andrew M. Chernyshevskii's What Is To Be Done?: A Reevaluation, p. 2. 47 Ibid., p. 1. 102 document” that had a great influence on Russians.48 It is well known that Lenin admired this work and saw it as an important contribution to the revolutionary movement.

One of the first scholars to notice the literary value of the novel was

Safkavtymov. He found parallels between What Is To Be Done? and Sand’s Jacques.

Chernyshevsky as well as Herzen were ardent admirers of George Sand and developed the “woman question” under her direct influence. The Soviet period yielded vast scholarship on Chernyshevsky, reaching its peak in the 1980s. In the period of Glasnost’, the writer and his work were suddenly forgotten, since his name was associated with the

Bolsheviks and Lenin. Andrew Drozd writes: “It is unlikely that much new scholarship will appear in the near future, nor are any further editions of Chernyshevskii’s works. It is unfortunate that as scholarship on Chernyshevskii was reaching an incredibly high level, it was doomed to such an inglorious death.”49 Western Slavic scholarship was stereotyped in perception of Chernyshevsky’s aesthetics, although his work is an interesting account of how difficult the process was for women’s liberation in Russia.

Richard Stites underscores the importance of this social document for studying the early movement in his work The Women's Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism,

Nihilism, and Bolshevism, 1860-1930 (1978). Russian women and men were inspired and electrified by the novel – it was their Bible. There was hardly any other literary work that caused such social uproar at the end of the century. Aleksandr Mikhailovich

Skabichevsky (1838-1911) writes about the influence of the novel on the youth of the

1860s:

We read this novel almost like worshippers, with the kind of piety with which we read religious books, and without the slightest trace of a smile on our lips. The

48 Pereira N. G. O. The Thought and Teachings of N. G. Chernyshevskij (The Hague: Mouton, 1975), p. 85. 49 Drozd, Andrew M. Chernyshevskii's What Is To Be Done?: A Reevaluation, p. 3. 103

influence of the novel on our society was colossal. It played a great role in Russian life, especially among the leading members of the intelligentsia who were embarking on the road of socialism, bringing it down a bit from the world of drama to the problem of our social evils, sharpening its image as the goal which each of us had to fight for.50

Vera Pavlovna, a magnetic, strong, and independent New Woman was an inspiration for many suppressed women. Andrew Drozd confirms this influence: “What Is

To Be Done? was to remain particularly powerful for Russian women: even major figures of the early-twentieth century, such as Aleksandra Kollontai and Inessa Armand, referenced the novel as a model for behavior.”51

When the narrator first introduces the New Woman Vera Pavlovna in the chapter

“The First Consequences of This Foolish Affair,” he emphasizes the ambiguity of her character: “Obviously, the young lady does not want to give herself up to sadness; however, it appears the sadness will not leave her alone, try as she may to cast it off.” (p.

43) Chapter one “Vera Pavlovna’s Life with Her Family” explains the reason for Vera

Pavlovna’s sadness. What Is To Be Done? is a typical Bildungsroman. The inner development and upbringing of the female character are central to the narrative structure.

Although Verochka (as the narrator calls her in the beginning of the novel) had a “very ordinary upbringing,” her behavior “showed itself to be somewhat exceptional.” (p. 50)

Verochka, as Herzen’s Lyubonka, is the Other in her household. When Vera was fourteen, she mended the clothing for the entire family and at sixteen, she began giving piano lessons. Her mother, however, reproached her constantly: “And your father has spent so much on you that we all feel the pinch. We paid a small fortune to Madame for your private school; in addition, there was that drunken piano teacher! And you, you

50 Ibid., p. 9. 51 Ibid., p. 10. 104 ingrate, you don’t care! No, you have no soul! You’re unfeeling!” (p. 54) On the contrary, Verochka is very sensitive and a freethinker, resembling Thomas Hardy’s fictional New Woman Sue Bridehead. Thomas Hardy, in his last novel Jude the Obscure

(1895), emphasizes that the generation that Sue Bridehead and Jude belong to suffers greatly because of how sensitive they are. Vera’s mother, Maria Aleksevna, only wishes to marry off her child and only stops abusing her daughter when there is a chance that she might find a husband. Her monologue, however, explains how Maria Aleksevna became so cruel: “I’ve suffered so many torments, Verochka, so very, very many. You don’t remember what our life was like before your father became the manager here. We were so poor, so very, very poor – and I was an honest woman then, Verochka.” (p. 58) The reason she so desperately wishes to marry off her daughter is because she wants to avoid the onset of the poverty she experienced in her youth. Chernyshevsky dwells on mother- daughter relationships throughout the novel. Like Dostoevsky, he tries to find the humane in a human being, an excuse for Maria Aleksevna’s attitude towards her daughter. After

Maria Aleksevna’s monologue, Verochka is ready to forgive her, but the vulnerability

Maria Aleksevna shows in that instant is shortlived and she soon reverts back to her old self: “Yesterday it had seemed that a few human traits were peeking through the bestial cover; but now she is a beast once again.” (p. 64) This statement is a typical hybrid

(Bakhtinian term), through the voice of the narrator we hear Verochka’s position. Here is the definition of hybrid construction:

What we are calling a hybrid construction is an utterance that belongs, by its grammatical (syntactic) and compositional markers, to a single speaker, but that actually contains mixed within it two utterances, two speech manners, two styles, two “languages,” two semantic and axiological belief systems. We repeat – there is no formal – compositional and syntactic – boundary between these two utterances, styles, languages, belief systems, the division of voices and languages

105

tales place within the limits of a single syntactic whole, often within the limits of a simple sentence. It frequently happens that even one and the same word will belong simultaneously to two languages, two belief systems that intersect in a hybrid construction – and, consequently, the word has two contradictory meanings, two accents (examples below).”52

Verochka is disgusted by this beast: “Once she had merely despised her mother; yesterday it seemed to her that she would stop hating her and might only pity her. But now she experienced that hatred again, though the pity was there.” (P. 64) Despite everything, Verochka feels sorry for Maria Aleksevna. Chernyshevsky shows that Vera

Pavlovna to be the kind of person who, despite her suffering, does not concentrate on the negative aspects of her life. Her ability to feel pity for her cruel mother, who literally wants to sell her to the first man with a fortune, Vera Pavlovna demonstrates her strength of character.Vera Pavlovna’s commits her first act of defiance against her mother by snubbing the advances of Monsieur Storeshnikov, whom she refuses to marry. Vera

Pavlovna is aware that Maria Aleksevna will torture and nag her for this transgression, but she would rather die than become Storeshnikov’s property. Her directness and audacity are the seedlings of a New Woman’s identity, which would rather rebel against the will of parents and society than remain submissive and silent. She does not want to accept the idea of having to marry the first man to propose to her: “I shall not debase myself! Let them devour me – I’ll throw myself out the window. I’ll be begging in the streets. I would rather die than give my hand to such a vile, base man.” (p. 74) In the following conversation with her friend Julie, Vera Pavlovna explains her position:

You call me a dreamer and ask what I want out of life. I prefer neither to dominate nor to submit. I wish neither to deceive not to dissemble. I don’t want to be concerned about other people’s opinions, or strive for what others advise, when I really have no need for it. I have not become accustomed to wealth, and

52 Bakhtin, Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination. Ed. by Michael Holquist. Translated by Caryl Emerson and Mikhail Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), pp. 305-305. 106

have no need for it myself. Why should I seek it only because others consider that it’s good to have and therefore that it would be good for me? I’ve not been in society and have never experienced what it means to be dazzling; it still does not attract me. Why should I make sacrifices for a brilliant position only because other people think it’s valuable? I am unwilling to sacrifice not only myself but even my lightest whim for something I really don’t need. I want to be independent and live in my own way. I am eager to acquire only what I really need; what I don’t need, I don’t want and won’t want. <…> So now I don’t know what I would feel if I loved a man; I know only that I don’t want to submit to anyone. I want to be free; I don’t want to be obliged to anyone for anything. (p. 75; my emphasis)

In the beginning of the novel, Vera Pavlovna is depicted as an un-emancipated young girl (Verochka) living in a broken family with a timid father (the “most uncultured man”) and brutal mother. (p. 142) Domestic despotism was a common phenomenon in nineteenth-century families. Alexander Ostrovsky’s plays, which usually focus on the lifestyles of the merchant class, are full of “images of family despotism among all classes.”53 One of the most famous examples of family tyrants in fiction is Kabanikha in

Ostrovky’s play The Thunderstorm (1859). The idea that surrounding an individual with a bad environment does not necessarily corrupt his or her personality is a theme that

Chernyshevsky repeatedly returns to throughout the novel. Later Verochka realizes that many women experience the same type of tortue at the hands of their tyrannical families:

Vera Pavlovna had encountered similar cases on three or four other occasions. Girls whose behavior was irreproachable after they met Vera Pavlovna had told her that for some time before they’d been leading wicked lives. She was astonished the first time she heard such a confession. But after thinking about it for a few days, she asked herself, “What about my own life? The soil I grew up in was also bad, but it didn’t stick to me; thousands of women who grew up in families, no better than mine manage to remain pure just the same. What’s so extraordinary about emerging from that humiliation intact, if good fortune has enabled you to be spared?” (p. 220; my emphasis)

53 Stites, Richard. The Women's Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism, Nihilism, and Bolshevism, 1860-1930, p. 8. 107

Chernyshevsky too writes metaphorically about healthy plants flourishing in rotten soil. When Vera Pavlovna enters womanhood, she reaches a point where she can no longer stand to live in her mother’s household. A young medical student appears in the chapter entitled “First Love and Legal Marriage” to rescue Vera and act as her liberator.

Lopukhov belongs to the New People and is “precisely that kind of student whose head was stuffed with books” (p. 91) It is no coincidence that both Lopukhov and Kirsanov happen to be medical students. In nineteenth-century Russia many medical students were radicals and progressive thinkers. The name of the surgeon Pirogov is closely related to the “woman question.” When Chernyshevsky describes Lopukhov and Kirsanov, his friend, he emphasizes that both have traits of the New People: “Each of them is a man of courage, unwavering and unyielding, capable of grappling with any task; upon doing so he keeps a firm grasp on that task so it doesn’t slip away. This is one side of their character.” (p. 211) Chernyshevsky hopes that the New People would change everything in Russia. He acknowledges that the number of these people is insignificant, but their characters will awake consciousness of other people. The narrator humbly distances himself from the New People. He believes that these people did not exist until very recently at that point in history:

This type of people arose among us not that long ago. Before then there were only isolated individuals who foreshadowed it. They were exceptions and as such they felt isolated and impotent. As a result they did nothing; they experienced despair or exaltation, romanticized or fantasized; that is, they couldn’t partake of the main characteristics of this type – cold-blooded practically, measured and calculated activity, and active common sense. Though they were people of the same nature, they had not yet developed into this type. This type arose quite recently. It didn’t exist yet during my time, though I’m not very old, perhaps not old at all. I myself couldn’t develop in that way, since I grew up in a different area. Because I don’t belong to this type, I can express my unabashed admiration for it. Unfortunately, I’m not praising myself when I say that these people are truly splendid. (pp. 211-212)

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Rakhmetov also belongs to the New People. In subchapter xxix, “An

Extraordinary Man,” Chernyshevsky writes about Rakhmetov:

Nowadays there are only a few people like Rakhmetov. Up to the present time I’ve met only eight examples of this breed (among them two women).They weren’t at all alike except for one characteristic. The group includes both stern and gentle types, somber and cheerful, energetic and phlegmatic, sentimental and perpetually imperturbable. (p. 274)

Chernyshevsky writes that not all New People are necessarily alike; each person has his or her own unique character. He admits that these individuals are an exceptional breed of people. Women, according to him, also belong to this group. Dostoevsky, unlike

Chernyshevsky, did not have faith in people as rational beings. He believed mankind to be far too irrational to support the utopian society that Chernyshevsky was hoping for.

Lopukhov wants to deliver Verochka from her terrible predicament. For a girl in the nineteenth century deliverance comes in one of two ways: either employment (which was highly improbable) or (fictitious) marriage.54 Sofia Kovalevskaya, an actual New

Woman, for example, chose the second path – a fictitious marriage because she desperately wanted to study and live in St. Petersburg. At first, Verochka and Lopukhov try to get Vera a job as an actress, but give up this idea when they discover how difficult it is to find work in theatre. Their back-up plan is to find a position for Verochka as a governess. Lopukhov devotes all his time to finding a place for her. Although Madame

B., a potential employer, has much in common with Vera (she too was raised by abusive

54 In the second half of the 19th century, fictitious marriages were arranged by revolutionary women to establish a reputable cover for liberation. For a discussion of the fictitious marriages, see Robert H. McNeal. “Women in the Russian Radical Movement.” Journal of Social History, 5.2 (1971-1972): 143- 163. After the publication of Chernyshevsky’s novel, the number of fictitious marriages increased, especially among the fighters for liberation. See also Paperno, Irina. Chernyshevsky and the Age of Realism: A Study in the Semiotics of Behavior (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1988), p. 136.

109 parents), she is afraid to hire Vera as a governess because she knows the girl’s parents

“would initiate a lawsuit and carry it through the end.” (p. 133) Thus, Chernyshevsky points out that most women were oppressed by their families that had absolute control over their children. When Verochka realizes she will not be able to work as a governess, she considers committing suicide as a way of liberating herself: “When you do throw yourself out of window, how fast you travel! It’s as if you’re flying instead of falling. It must be very nice. But then you hit the sidewalk – how hard it is! Is it painful? No, I doubt there’s time enough to feel the pain. Still it’s very hard. But that’s for one brief moment; on the other hand, before that moment, there’s the air – soft as a featherbed – and it parts so easily and gently… Yes, that’s lovely.” (p. 139) Suicide is not an option for the “imprisoned” Verochka, just as it was not an option for the imprisoned

Chernyshevsky. The author contemplates the women’s struggle in Russia and the struggles of French girls as well: “In Paris, the poor, unfortunate girls poison themselves with charcoal fumes.” (p. 140)

Vera Pavlovna marries Lopukhov, but this marriage is fictitious, arranged to

“remove Vera Pavlovna physically and legally from the power of the house and her parents.”55 At the end of the nineteenth century, marriage without parental consent was considered as a crime. The Orthodox Church could annul a fictitious marriage, but this rarely happened in practice. However, the newlyweds and anyone offering them assistance could still be punished. Lopukhov and Vera Pavlovna’s marriage is quite similar to Chernyshevsky’s and “follows the pattern developed in Chernyshevsky’s life.”56 Chernyshevsky himself saw his marriage with Olga as a “partnership of

55 Ibid., p. 112. 56 Paperno, Irina. Chernyshevsky and the Age of Realism: A Study in the Semiotics of Behavior, p. 133. 110 intellectuals,” and granted his wife freedom to do as she wished.57 Similarly, Herzen had an advanced view of marriage for his time, but later could not let his wife to love another man.

Vera’s liberation is in no way similar to the marriage “threshold” Russian and

European women had to cross: Lopukhov marries Verochka to rescue her from a stifling cellar. Verochka has no choice but to accept this generous offer. She wants to support herself and tells Lopukhov so: “But there is one thing: I don’t want to live on your money.” (p. 143) First, she gives piano lessons to earn her bread and later on she becomes a successful entrepreneur organizing a cooperative of dressmakers.58 Vera

Pavlovna’s dressmaking shop is described by the author in meticulous detail. The writer was obviously aware of the existence of such cooperatives in Russia. Vera Pavlovna hires only a couple of girls to start with – but within a year she has twenty in her employ. For

Vera Pavlovna, profit alone is not her primary interest. She seeks to educate the women working in her shop. The cooperative Chernyshevsky depicts resembles the description of the enterprise in George Gissing’s novel The Odd Women (1893), where women also educate each other while working. According to Chernyshevsky, women have to be emancipated in every sense; this new type of independent, emotionally freed woman will help build a new society. In order to build a new society, independent New (Wo)Men must be educated.

57 Stites, Richard. The Women's Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism, Nihilism, and Bolshevism, 1860-1930, p. 90. 58 There were many sewing collectives. One of the most famous sewing collectives was organized by the Ivanova sisters in 1865. This project was not only an entrepreneur cooperative, but it was aimed at helping other women to survive. Their cooperative was also a place where radicals met to agitate and propagandize their radical ideas. It was not easy, however, to become a member of Ivanova’s cooperative. The workers of the cooperative ate and slept in one room – it was a real commune. 111

When Vera Pavlovna meets her “husband’s” friend Kirsanov, she feels an irresistible attraction to him. A love triangle forms; and the heroine leaves her husband unlike Lyubonka in the love triangle of Who Is To Blame? While developing her relationship with Lopukhov, Vera Pavlovna had dreamed four dreams. The book is actually structured around these “as genuinely dreamlike as Raskolnikov’s” dreams in

Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment (1866).59 They represent the “imprisonment and paralysis” of Vera Pavlovna’s early life, and project “her desperate desire for escape, and foreshadows her actual deliverance”.60 Vera Pavlovna uses her dreams to define her reality and presumably, she is able to liberate herself in her dreams from all burdens and complexes in the same way that Lyubonka attempts to liberate herself through writing in her personal journal. In one dream her husband accuses her of loving her liberation more than she loves him. This dream makes her ponder the price she has paid for her freedom.

Rakhmetov eventually convinces Vera Pavlovna to marry Kirsanov.

Her first dream symbolizes the paralysis from which Russian women in the nineteenth century suffer. In her dream, she is locked in a damp, dark cellar when all of a sudden the door opens, and Verochka is able to escape from the cellar and liberate herself. This escape could be interpreted to symbolize marriage for a nineteenth-century woman. Then she feels paralyzed. Marriage for Russian and European women was an escape, but in some ways it was just another trap into which women walked. The woman was once again helpless, now considered to be nothing more than property in the hands of her husband. If Russian women did have their right over property and children, English

59 Randall, Francis B. N.G. Chernyshevskii, p. 112. Richard Stites also points out that dreams play such a crucial role in her life. The Women's Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism, Nihilism, and Bolshevism, 1860-1930, p. 91. 60 Ibid. 112 women in contrast were legally suffocated in their marriage and became marionettes.

Nonetheless, despite her paralysis, in her dream, Verochka finds strength to stand, walk, and run. She thinks: “How could I have endured that paralysis? It’s because I was born paralyzed and didn’t know how to walk and run. If I’d known, then surely I couldn’t have endured it.” (p. 130) Chernyshevsky’s scope of reflection on the women’s plight is not confined to Russia alone, but considers the issue to be an international matter that is relevant worldwide. He writes about women from so many cultures, when he himself was

“paralyzed” in the four walls of the prison. He sees that women experience perpetual paralysis at every turn: “Now she [Verochka] sees a young woman walking across the field. How strange! Both her face and her gait, everything about her keeps changing, constantly changing. First, she is English, then French; now she’s German, then Polish; she becomes Russian, English again, then German, again Russian. How can it be that she has one and the same face? Surely an English girl doesn’t resemble a French, or a

German a Russian. Even though her face keeps changing, she still has the same face.”

(p. 130)

In the second dream, Vera Pavlovna sees her mother. The dialogue between

Verochka and her mother in the dream is another attempt to find an excuse for Maria

Aleksevna’s behavior: “But you must understand, Verka, that if I hadn’t been who I was, then you wouldn’t be who you are. I was nasty, but you were good. I was wicked, but you are kind. Understand, Verka, and be grateful.” (p. 186; my emphasis) Thus, her mother herself emphasizes her daughter’s otherness and Verochka unconsciously in her dream understands that.

113

In her third dream Vera Pavlovna realizes that she does not really love her fictitious husband. He is her liberator, but their relationship is merely friendship; and she has a tremendous hunger for love. Lopukhov understands that Verochka has matured as a woman and is looking for the love she was never able to experience in her family. Even though Vera Pavlovna’s marriage to a New Man as an emancipated woman is something she always dreamed of because they “marry as full equals,” she does not want to live with someone she does not really love. (p. 126)

Perhaps Chernyshevsky brings a second husband into the plot to break the glamor of her divine and saint-like nature. The narrator many times repeats that Vera Pavlona is like everyone else, only a little better because she is audacious. Unlike Pushkin in Eugene

Onegin, does not idealize his heroine to emphasize that most women can shift their roles and become the New Women: “You’re a good girl; you’re not foolish. Forgive me for saying it, but I find nothing astonishing in you. Perhaps half of the young women I’ve known, perhaps more than half (I haven’t counted – there are far too many), are no worse than you; and some of them, forgive me for saying so, are even better.” (p. 105) In his address to the reader he writes that he crafted his characters with “love and respect,” but did not bow before the superiority of the New People. (p. 308) He beckons his reader to become one of the New People and to work a bit on the reader’s own development, emphasizing once more that he does not idealize this new breed of people.

Chernyshevsky’s novel has many feminist manifestations. In his view, although physically weaker, the “female organism endures destructive material forces with greater resilience.” (p. 340) The resilience of the female organism is closely related to a strength of the nervous system. Her nerves, according to Chernyshevsky, are more elastic and

114 durable. He admits that medicine and science is not progressive enough to prove this fact, but statistics show that women live longer than men. Many retrogrades believed that women were inferior in every sense to men. Chernyshevky goes on further, developing his feminist discourse and explaining that in order to understand a woman’s position we have to look at the historical roots. He believes that women were weak only because they were told to be weak and believed themselves to be weak only because they consider themselves to be weak creatures. He supports this view by citing an interesting phenomenon that Thomas Mann also highlights in Magic Mountain (1925): “You know examples when perfectly healthy people have wasted away and died as the result of the idea that they were supposed to grow weak and die. There are similar examples that affect whole masses of people, nations, humanity.” (p. 341) He writes that women played a very insignificant role in intellectual life because the “age of brute force has deprived them of the means to develop and of the reasons to strive for development.” (p. 339) The narrator with a great precision outlines how restricted women’s positions were in the nineteenth century:

Almost all paths of civil life are formally closed to women. Many, almost all, are closed to us in practice, even those paths of social activity not barred by formal obstacles. Of all spheres of life we are crowded into only one, family life: to be a member of a family, and that’s all. Besides this, what other occupations are open to women? Perhaps only that of governess or tutor, if men are kind enough to leave us anything. This single path is very crowded; we get in one another’s way because there are too many of us. This way can scarcely provide us with independence because there are too many of us offering services. No single one of us is ever needed simply because there are too many available. Who really values governess? You need only advertise that you’re looking for one and dozens of us, hundreds of us arrive, each trying to get the place away from the others. (p. 347)

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He, like Herzen, believes women to be equal to men and should not be considered lesser creatures in any way. For example, when he addresses his reader, he states that a female reader is “too clever.” (p. 205). When he writes about women’s nature, he does not see any significant difference between men and women. In a conversation with

Lopukhov, Verochka tries to define femininity:

Tell me, my dear, what does this ‘femininity’ entail? I realize that a woman’s voice is contralto, and man’s is a baritone. What follows from that? Is it really worth discussing just so that we stay contraltos? Is it really worth entreating us? Why is everyone trying to persuade us to remain feminine? Isn’t it absurd, my dear? (p. 145)

Like Herzen, Chernyshevsky believes that women mature earlier than men. A woman’s growth ends at about the age of twenty and man’s – at about twenty-five.

Vera Pavlovna is studying to be a medical practitioner at the end of the novel. Her second husband, like her first, is a doctor and gives her lessons in science and medicine.

Chernyshevsky was well aware of the fact that many women went to study medicine abroad. He knew the case of Nadezhda Suslova. Herzen also bragged about Suslova to his daughter after hearing the news that she had taken an examination in Switzerland and officially become a doctor.

The emancipation process is a long one for Vera Pavlovna, requiring “self- reflection, study, and engagement cooperation.”61 In the best tradition of Bildungsroman, we witness Vera Pavlovna’s conscious awakening throughout the novel. She does not fit the role of a governess or tutor. As an independent woman, she cannot stand to have men kiss her hand because she considers this to be one of the many ways men always try to remind women that they are inferior. Because Vera Pavlovna experienced such tyranny at

61 Chernyshevsky, Nikolay G, and Michael R. Katz. What Is To Be Done?, p. 29. 116 home, she appreciates freedom more than anyone. Fulfillment from love and marriage does not always provide the satisfaction one would expect. Vera Pavlovna, as a New

Woman, realizes this problem. This is why she launches a new commercial enterprise, not because of materialistic needs. Living not for love alone, “Vera Pavlovna pursues her own course of spiritual and intellectual development.”62 She has a successful business, which she eventually abandons to pursue an even nobler calling, the study of medicine – as many New (Wo)Men did. For Chernyshevsky, then, the “emancipation of women requires both freedom in love and involvement in socially useful labor.”63 He saw “love and labor to be complementary, with the sensual stimulation of the former yielding greater creativity and productivity in the latter.”64 Richard Stites points out, “Vera

Pavlovna reaches that level of awareness and activism that makes her one of the earliest agents of women’s liberation in European fiction.”65 Herzen claimed that

Chernyshevsky’s book “had done the most to help liberate women form the humiliating yoke of the family.”66 For Chernyshevsky, women’s liberation is a symbol of mankind’s liberation. After reading Chernyshevsky’s novel, a “Bible” for many Russians, many women decided to change their lives drastically. Some decided to abandon their households and sought a better, economically independent life in big cities or abroad.

Chernyshevsky saw that work would bring women the emancipation and freedom they desired, but that notion was quite new since upper-class women rarely worked. In fact, only after the abolishment of serfdom did industrialization and urbanization encourage

62 Ibid., 24. 63 Idid. 64 Ibid. 65 Stites, Richard. The Women's Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism, Nihilism, and Bolshevism, 1860-1930, p. 92. 66 Ibid., p. 99. 117 women to think independently and seek employment in cities. Nonetheless, women had to face the cruel reality of unemployment because it was extremely hard to find a job.

Jobs available to women were limited to teaching positions; the “influx of the educated class into the cities, especially Petersburg, after the emancipation swelled the pool of jobless women.”67 Moreover, society was still not mature enough to accept the idea of working women.

Dostoevsky, as an explicit Slavophile and supporter of Russian imperialism, did not accept some of the ideas presented in Chernyshevsky’s novel. However, the influence of Chernyshevsky’s novel on his work is evident. Dostoevsky, for instance, was not the first to feature prostitutes in his novels. The first writer to touch upon this theme in

Russian literature was N. G. Chernyshevsky. Although Dostoevsky’s image of Sonechka

Marmeladova in Crime and Punishment (1866) remains one of the most influential in world literature, it seems that he was largely influenced and informed by Chernyshevky’s character Kryukova in What Is To Be Done?. In Western literature, for example, the prostitute and courtesan played an important role for the novelistic structure.

Chernyshevsky and Dostoevsky presented “fallen” women as victims and suffering creatures; they wanted to show how she suffers and what brings her to this “fallen” role.

In Western literature, in contrast, the position of prostitute in the novel is, according to

Bakhtin, “extremely convenient for spying and eavesdropping on private life with its secrets and intimacies.”68 Chernyshevsky explains that the enormous number of prostitutes could significantly decrease if only women had access to labor and if there were resources in place to help “fallen” women. When Kirsanov helps “fallen”

67 Ibid., p. 59. 68 Bakhtin, Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination. Ed. by Michael Holquist. Translated by Caryl Emerson and Mikhail Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), p. 125. 118

Kryukova, she transforms into a pure and honest woman, like Dostoevsky’s Sonechka

Marmeladova. Chernyshevsky shows that it is the indifference of the crowd that pushes these women to the edge.

***

In addition to Herzen and Chernyshevsky, Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev (1818-1883) was also an advocate of emancipated women. One of Turgenev’s first works, devoted to the theme of the Russian émancipée of 1840s, was Two Friends (1854).69 His caricature of the New Woman in Fathers and Children (1861) became famous in Russian literature.

He ridicules the female nihilist Kukshina, unintentionally contributing to the negative stereotype of a progressive woman. Her emancipation is exaggerated and portrayed with a tinge of irony. When Bazarov asks about Kukshina, she is described as a “positive a remarkable nature, émancipée in the true sense of the word, and advanced woman.”

(p. 39) As for her appearance and character, she is perceived as not pretty and nice. She is compared to a “brick,” and seems unconcerned with her appearance, arriving at a ball

“with dirty gloves, no crinoline, and a bird of Paradise in her hair.” (p. 39) When Bazarov first meets Kukshina, he observes her and tries to study her like a scientist:

69 Turgenev depicted a widow, Sofia Kirillovna Zadneprovskaya, who lost her husband, and became free because she inherited his fortune. Even her movements were free-er, Turgenev writes, after the death of her spouse. As a truly emancipated woman, she smoked and enjoyed the freedom of speech. The image of Sofia is very similar to that of Russian female writer Elena Gan in many respects. First of all, her last name Zadneprovskaya is associated with the place where Gan was born. Secondly, although Turgenev was not acquainted with Elena Gan, he certainly knew her writings and biography. He even praised her work and said she “ranked among the best Russian women authors.” Another emancipated heroine, Matryona Semyonovna Sukhanchikova, was introduced to the reader in Turgenev’s Smoke (1867). Matryona was entirely devoted to the female liberation problem and to becoming an independent woman; she wants to learn how to earn her own bread. Otherwise, she understands that emancipation remains only a dream. In On the Eve (1860) Turgenev never mentions that Elena Stakhova is emancipée. However, throughout the novel, she sought the way to free herself “from domestic duties and the gentry way of life.” See Smyrniw, Walter. "Turgenev's Emancipated Women." The Modern Language Review 80.1 (1985): 99. 119

There was nothing repulsive in the little plain person of the emancipated woman; but the expression of her face produced a disagreeable effect on the spectator. One felt impelled to ask her, 'What's the matter; are you hungry? Or bored? Or shy? What are you in a fidget about?' Both she and Sitnikov had always the same uneasy air. She was extremely unconstrained, and at the same time awkward; she obviously regarded herself as a good-natured, simple creature, and all the while, whatever she did, it always struck one that it was not just what she wanted to do; everything with her seemed, as children say, done on purpose, that's to say, not simply, not naturally. (p.40; my emphasis)

As most emancipated women, Kukshina smokes and drinks to highlight the fact that she belongs to the men’s world. She has a habit of rolling “a cigarette up between her fingers, which were brown with tobacco stains,” drinking too much wine, and calling

“men by their surnames from the first day of acquaintance with them.” (pp. 40-41) From the first moment, she expresses her opinion obsessively underlining her interest in the

“woman question;” she desperately wants to be heard and respected for her self- expression. Turgenev was aware of the trends among emancipated women who went abroad to study and fought for the right to have access to higher education in their homeland. In the last chapter of Fathers and Children, we find out that Kukshina goes to

Heidelberg University. Surprisingly, Kukshina is not obsessed with Western feminist

George Sand, as were many advanced and emancipated women of that time; she even criticizes Sand. She finds Sand to be a “retrograde woman” groundlessly pointing out that

George Sand “hasn’t an idea on education, nor psychology, nor anything.” (p. 40)

Kukshina wants to show that she has her own opinion about everything.

Turgenev’s novel, Fathers and Children, introduced nihilism to the public.

Nihilism already existed before the publication of his work but it was more of an underground movement. Although Turgenev himself never used the term “nihilist” to describe Kukshina’s behavioral affects, the public considered her to be a female nihilist.

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Female nihilists differentiated themselves from feminists. In fact, they did not belong to any of the same circles or organizations. Female nihilists were interested in education, but they did not want to participate in the fight for women’s educational rights in Russia.

They preferred rather to study abroad. Their appearance and external attributes played a crucial role for them. One could recognize them by appearance. These women often wore a simple woolen dark dress, glasses, and had short haircuts. They wanted to be rebellious in their looks as well as attitudes. Kukshina wants to join this fashionable nihilistic trend, too; that is why her behavior is a bit unnatural: perhaps she did not get used to her new role. Turgenev was even accused of exaggerating her character and showing an inaccurate representation of Russian advanced women because he lived abroad too long and did not really know how to describe them. Nevertheless, he was very close to radical women and was acquainted with New Women. In fact, he married Anna Nikolayevna

Egelgart, an active radical participant in the women’s movement. Turgenev’s wife served as a prototype for the complex emancipated female character in Turgenev’s his last novel Virgin Soil (1877). Turgenev depicts the heroine as having unnatural and eccentric behaviors not to ridicule emancipated women who sought freedom of feeling, action, and thought, but rather to reflect the prevailing irony and hostility of the “woman question” in the Russian society, especially in rural areas where traditional women’s roles were propagandized in school and church.

In summation, Chernyshevsky’s and Herzen’s novels follow

Sand’s Jacques model, in which the husband rescues his wife by marrying her. In

Russian literature, female characters are often dependent on their husbands. Vera

Pavlovna changes this perception of dependent women with her willingness for work and

121 with her fearless love for Kirsanov. Her talents are appreciated by men and society. Like

Nadezhda Suslova, Vera Pavlovna wants to become a doctor to serve mankind. Herzen’s female protagonist Lyubonka is en route to emancipation, while Chernyshevsky’s Vera

Pavlovna is already a true émancipée. However, both Lyubonka and Vera Pavlovna are still dependent on their benevolent rescuers. Kovalevskaya’s female protagonist Vera – that will be discussed further in detail – becomes a rescuer and a historical agent.

Vera Pavlovna entered a fictitious marriage; however, she cannot last in it, even though it frees her from her oppressive parents. Chernyshevsky predicted or even caused this trend (a fictitious marriage) in Russian society. He outlined the mentality and ideological commitment of radically inclined women in the nineteenth century.

All these images were an inspiration for Russian women and reflected the public’s attitude to this phenomenon. Herzen, Chernyshevsky, and Turgenev dwelled on female liberation and considered it a debt of honor to propagandize the social independence of

Russian women.

Tolstoy never supported the women’s movement, but the “woman question” and theme of the family have always been central to almost all his works. The concept of traditional family, however, was transformed in his late works. Throughout his life,

Tolstoy praised women’s conventional roles. In his late works, especially in his Kreutzer

Sonata (1889) and Anna Karenina (1873), he reevaluates the “woman question.”70Anna

70 In Kreutzer Sonata (1889) that was banned by censorship Tolstoy looks from a new and different angle at the “woman question.” Tolstoy’s critic is primarily aimed against understanding marriage as a mere sexual relationship, “in the name of Christian love, he was able to implement a drastic unmasking of modern marriage and the miserable sensuality of the upper classes.” See Møller, Peter U. Postlude to the Kreutzer Sonata: Tolstoj and the Debate on Sexual Morality in Russian Literature in the 1890s (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1988), p. 12. Tolstoy underlines that first of all – love in marriage must be founded on moral and spiritual values. He formulates the main moral principles in the sequel to the Kreutzer Sonata – regarding it as a moral guide and message for young people. Tolstoy’s late ideal of love represented as spiritual union; the most important in marriage is moral relationship. In the beginning of the Kreutzer Sonata we are 122

Karenina is to a certain extent a New Woman, who gives up her personal happiness, societal position, reputation, and most importantly – access to her son Seryozha – all for love. Tolstoy’s ideal woman is the kind that prioritizes family rather than productive work. According to him, social engagement is a man’s realm. Tolstoy was sympathetic to the marginalized women, but not emancipated. His compassion to Princess Mary in War and Peace (1865-1869) is expressed by turning her from a spinster into a married woman.71

The rebellious figure of Anna Karenina is ambiguous, but she can be seen as a liberated woman. For Tolstoy, Anna Karenina betrays the two main women’s roles – her marriage and her son. The cost of liberation is Anna’s death. Her life is the “tragedy of an individual woman” or a “symbol of those disappointments” which thousands of people experience in their personal relationships.72

The questioning and evaluation of the nature of the patriarchal family became a catalyst for Russian writers’ reflections about women’s roles and social plight. According witnessing that the love question caused a polemic in the train. When the lady (she was a passenger in the train) claims that “marriage without love is not marriage” and that only “true love consecrates marriage”, Pozdnyshev asks her to define love and expresses doubts on accuracy of her answer that love is the “exclusive preference” of one person to another. Pozdnyshev does not believe in love and in happy marriages (he claims that he has never seen a happy family); moreover, he states that “marriages in these days are all falsehood.” In his opinion, “in theory love is something ideal and exalted, but in practice is something abominable, swinish.” His views on marriage and love are based on his own unhappy marriage experience; his marriage became a burden, and he was full of hate, sometimes of disgust, and jealousy, which led him to the murder of his own wife. Interestingly, Pozdnyshev never even mentions his wife’s name throughout the novel. 70 Engel, Barbara A. Mothers and Daughters: Women of the Intelligentsia in Nineteenth Century Russia, p. 6. 71 The figures of spinsters were for Tolstoy the embodiment of loneliness and alienation. His interest in this type of women perhaps reflected his own fear of unbelonging. Tolstoy’s outsider figures are excluded from the traditional domestic realm. Thus, in the images of Countess Maria, Varenka, and Sonia he represents the type of marginal women in the late nineteenth century, which, however, traces back to the first half of the nineteenth century. For Tolstoy, these marginalized women are the alternative women’s voices. Svetlana Grenier writes: “Tolstoy’s evolving treatment of wards is particularly instructive because his ward figures, Sonia and Varenka, obviously have their roots in Pushkin’s texts.” Grenier, Svetlana S. Representing the Marginal Woman in Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature: Personalism, Feminism, and Polyphony, p. 87. 72 Evans, Mary. Reflecting on Anna Karenina (London: Routledge, 1989), p. 57. 123 to Barbara Engel, the Russian heroine’s strength of character is not “literary imagination alone.”73 The prototypes for the New Women characters were women radicals of the nineteenth century. The propagation of women’s liberation in the mid-nineteenth century was mostly galvanized by male authors with some rare exceptions.74 In the second half of the century, there was a transformation and “psychic change” of women’s characters in

Russian literature.75 Female protagonists represent and reflect the lifestyles of their contemporaries, their aspiration for freedom, progress, and equality.

Many Russian male writers touched upon the theme of women’s emancipation.

Their attitude toward this problem varied, depending on their belonging to either

Slavophiles or Westernizers. There were many opponents arguing against women’s education, the New Women, and emphasizing de-feminization of learned women. There were more antagonists than propagandists of women’s rights. Thus the voice of Russian writers was crucial for female liberation. They contributed tremendously to the development of women’s emancipation movement.76 However, it is also important to read female voices who examined the problem of emancipation and formation of the New

Woman. The next chapter will concentrate on female authors in the second half of the nineteenth century and their responses to liberation.

73 Engel, Barbara A. Mothers and Daughters: Women of the Intelligentsia in Nineteenth Century Russia, p. 6. 74 The famous female writers advocating women’s rights, and emancipation were, for example, N. D. Khvoscchinskaya, Sofia Kovalevskaya, and Elena Gan. 75 Engel, Barbara A. Mothers and Daughters: Women of the Intelligentsia in Nineteenth Century Russia, p. 47. 76 Maegd-Soëp, Carolina. Emansipatsia Zhenchin V Rossii, Literature I Zhizni. =: The Emancipation of Women in Russian Literature and Society (Ekaterinburg: Izd-vo Uralʹskogo universiteta, 1999), p. 10. 124

Chapter Three: Reading Emancipationist Writing of Two “New Women”

3.1 Women’s Contribution to the “Woman Question”

Soon all the Russian land burst into bloom, Racines and Pindars issued from her womb, Singing in praise of CATARINA’S day . . . Now, clustering about the sacred Muses’ throne The female sex begins to lift its song . . . Russia has Sapphos now, and de la Suzes . . .1

Ekaterina Urusova (1747-1817)

Heroides: Dedicated to the Muses (1777)

In the first two chapters, the historical developments of the Russian early women’s movement and the contribution of male writers to the “woman question” were discussed. In Tsarist Russia, men are considered to be ideological leaders of the early women’s movement. Women’ participation in the women’s movement in the early nineteenth century was very limited at its inception; it expanded in the 1860s when women began to realize themselves as indispensable historical agents. Despite the

“Russian matriarchate” of the eighteenth century, when Anna Ivanovna (1693-1740),

Elizaveta Petrovna (1709-1761), and Catherine the Great (1729-1796) were Empresses, women were reluctant to be politically active in the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century. The explanation for that is their fear of the Tsarist régime in the nineteenth century: political activists could be exiled. Women were afraid of being proscribed from society or imprisonment. The only “safe” niche was education. However, during the reign of Alexander II (1818-1881) universities became the centers of free-

1 As quoted in Barker, Adele M, and Jehanne M. Gheith. A History of Women's Writing in Russia (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 38. 125 thinking, but university enrollment was also closed for women. Women who sought education and were hungry for knowledge were associated with subversive nihilist movement that eventually developed into revolutionary circles. 2 S. S. Shashkov writes in

The History of the Russian Woman (1879) that Russian women the difficulty of their position deeply, but they were unprepared for the systematical fight. They also were alienated from the participation in the literary market.3

Only the bravest women challenged stereotypes about female authors and poets.

Many female writers were abjects (the Kristeva term) of the patriarchal society and looked upon with contempt and scathing criticism. It is interesting that abjection not only occupies the novelistic landscape of the emancipationist writers, but the New Woman and the New Woman male and female writers faced revolts and intolerance, since they touched upon the unthinkable. 4 According to Julia Kristeva (b.1941), abjection occurs in the space of threshold and taboo. In her essay The Powers of Horror (1980) Julia

Kristeva writes about abjection: “The looms, within abjection, one of those violent, dark revolts of being, directed against a threat that seems to emanate from an exorbitant

2 The nihilist movement emerged in the 1850s; and already in the 1860s there were many nihilist circles, preparing for revolution. Their program was aimed not at personal liberation, but at social revolution. One of the most famous radical circles was the Ishutin circle that was organized in Moscow. They were disillusioned with the role peasants and intellectuals played in society. The “woman question” was also part of their program, but it was not a priority for them: “They believed that other, more pressing, matters deserved their attention; they had no time to trouble themselves about attaining egalitarian relationships or ensuing proper treatment of women.” Engel, Barbara A. Mothers and Daughters: Women of the Intelligentsia in Nineteenth Century Russia, p. 87. 3 See Shashkov, S. S. Istoriia Russkoi Zhenshchiny, p. 282. 4 Feminist writer Sarah Grand (1854-1943) is considered to be the first to have coined the term “New Woman” in 1894 in England. Sage, Lorna, Germaine Greer, and Elaine Showalter. The Cambridge Guide to Women's Writing in English (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 465. See also Heilmann, Ann, and Margaret Beetham. New Woman Hybridities: Femininity, Feminism and International Consumer Culture, 1880-1930 (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 465. See also Mitchell, Sally. Victorian Britain: An Encyclopedia (New York: Garland Pub, 1988), p. 539. 4 Richardson, Angelique, and Chris Willis. The New Woman in Fiction and in Fact: Fin De Siècle Feminisms (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave, 2001), p. 79.

126 outside or inside, ejected beyond the scope of the possible, the tolerable, the thinkable. It lies there. Quite close, but it cannot be assimilated.”5 In Kristeva’s definition: “The abject has only one quality of the object – that of being opposed I.”6 For Kristeva, the “I” goes through the painful realization of self-awareness and individuation in the process of the formation. En route to self-identity formation, a female writer, her subjective “I,” encounters rejection of the patriarchal world.

Abjectified women writers, the “hostile others,” to use Beauvoir’s term, often started their literary works with apologetic statements, asking their readers for indulgence and understanding. British literary scholar Catriona Kelly in A History of Women’s

Writing in Russia quotes an apologetic passage from Ekaterina Urusova (1747-1817), the daughter of Vologda Governor:

I flatter myself with the hope that my readers, out of respect for my sex, and for my first attempts in this kind of verse composition, might forgive the faults to be found here: in this manner they will encourage my timid Muse to further efforts.7

There are countless examples of women whose families, friends, or acquaintances derided the new woman’s role in the nineteenth century. Thus, one can explain the reluctance of Russian women to enter the literary world in the beginning of the nineteenth century. In England, in contrast, women fluxed into the world of belles lettres earlier – in the eighteenth century. Their entrance into the field was not smooth, either. Little by little, the public accepted progressive women in both societies; and by the turn-of-the-

5 Kristeva, Julia, and Leon S. Roudiez. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), p. 229. 6 Kristeva, Julia, and Leon S. Roudiez. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, p. 230. 7 Barker, Adele M, and Jehanne M. Gheith. A History of Women's Writing in Russia. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 56. Ekaterina Urusova became a poet under the influence of her cousin M.M. Khersakov (1733-1807). Her first poetical attempts were anonymous and read only in a close circle of friends and relatives. 127 century, in Russia, England, and other European countries countless women writers, poets, and journalists had found audiences.

Singular women authors – A. F. Rzhevskaya (1759-1826), E.V. Hersakova (1737-

1809), N. B. Dolgorukova (1714-1771) – already began appearing during the reign of

Catherine the Great (1762-1796), who herself was a notable literary figure. One of the first major impetuses for the proliferation of women writers was the heroism of the

Decembrist wives who in support of their husbands demonstrated an active involvement in the political life of Russia. These women left everything behind to follow their exiled husbands to Siberia, in the late 1820s, when the expansion of women’s writing as a tradition first began.

Inasmuch Russian society was very isolated and closed to Western ideas, it is difficult to precisely determine some of the influences of the emancipationist writing on

Russian female authors. However, the impact of George Sand (1804-1876), George Eliot

(1819-1880), the Brontë sisters, and many others, is indisputable. The translation of John

Stuart Mill’s (1806-1873) work The Subjection of Women (1869) by the poet and eventual exile M. L. Mikhailov (1829-1865) was a crucial juncture in the Russian

“woman question.” He also published articles on George Eliot and John Stuart Mill. M.

M. Bakhtin’s idea about dialogue makes all boarders illusive. For Mikhail Mikhailovich

Bakhtin (1895-1975), for the philosopher living in the Great time (the Bakhtinian term), literature and imagination are, in fact, dialogical. There is no horizon for the dialogic context.8 The idea of the dialogue is not exclusively Bakhtinian. Bahthin writes in

8 Todorov, Tzvetan. Mikhail Bakhtin: The Dialogical Principle (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), p. 110. 128

Problems of Dostovesky’s Poetics (1963) about the role of the Socratic dialogue for

Dostoevsky.

Joe Andrew emphasizes several factors of the new development of women’s writing in the first half of the nineteenth century: professionalization and commercialization of literature, the role of literary criticism, the increase of reading public, the phenomenon of George Sandism, and the general influence of foreign literature.9 Among these factors, English women most often wrote to sustain themselves financially, while Russian women tended to write either as a hobby or to distinguish themselves and affirm their roles in the new femininity. The most significant and influential writers of the first half of the nineteenth century were Elena Gan (1814-1842),

Mariya Zhukova (1805-1855), Nadezhda Durova (1783-1866), Karolina Pavlova (1807-

1893), Nadezhda Khvoshchinskaya (1824-1889), and Natalya Neelova (1785-1847), who each took diverse paths in literary careers.

The Russian literary critic V. G. Belinsky (1811-1848) unfairly criticized female writers, but later in his career changed his opinion, praising George Sand’s style and writing technique. He also was reverent for Elena Gan’s (1814-1842) talent, who was called the “Russian George Sand.” Once negative public opinion about female writers was formed, it was difficult to disabuse the reading audience. One can recall Countess

Yevdokia Petrovna Rostopchina’s (1811-1858) story: she had aspired to become a poet since she was a child, but her mother was resistant to the idea, considering it an inappropriate profession for a woman of the upper-class.10

9 Andrew, Joe. Russian Women's Shorter Fiction: An Anthology, 1835-1860 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), p. viii. 10 Rostopchina (née Sushkova) was born in Moscow (23 December, 1811) in the famous Pashkov’s house that is located right across the Kremlin garden. Her mother spoke several foreign languages – English, 129

Another example is Sofia Kovalevskaya’s reluctance to enter the literary world.

Both her father and her English governess discouraged Kovalevskaya’s first poetic inclinations. When Sofia was a twelve-year-old girl, she made up her mind to become a poet. She writes in her memoir A Russian Childhood (1889) that will be discussed in detail: “Because of my fear of my governess I couldn’t bring myself to write my verses down, but composed them inside my head like the bards of old, confiding them to my ball.” (p. 103) Because of that fear, she ceased her literary experiences, and resumed writing many years later as an adult.

Romanticism developed a delicate attitude towards women and helped incorporate more women in writing, developing their literary activity.11 In the mid- century, female writers were criticized for being too romantic, rosy dreaming, and naive.

In the beginning of the nineteenth century, several literary journals were founded –

Zhurnal dlja Milykh (Sweetheart’s Journal), Moskovskiy Zritel’ (Moscow Audience),

French, and German. Her mother was not aware for a while that Evdokiya wrote poems. When she found out, she was furious because she thought it was inappropriate for a woman of an aristocratic origin to dedicate herself to that dishonorable work. Countess Rostopchina gave a solemn promise not to write again any poems until her marriage. Some other family members also laughed at a young “poetess.” All sufferings of a young poetess that she underwent were reflected in her first publication Journal of Zinaida. Although countess Rostopchina went through an excellent home-schooling (her teachers were Gavrilov, Raich, Pelt, Ensken), her family did not pay a proper attention to her development. Countess Rostopchina writes in her novel A Happy Woman “With talented people and people of nobility there are common circu mstances: the less you educate them, the better they are. Only people with mediocrity and lack of talent should be taught and educated forcibly, in order they did not remain in their neglect and rudeness” (Rostopchina, Evdokia. Schastlivaia Zhenshchina: Literaturnye Sochinenia (Moskva: Izd-vo "Pravda", 1991), p. 40; my translation). The family could not predict, however, that her talent would be acknowledged and accepted many years later. Countess Rostopchina shone in her own literary salon attracting many great contemporaries. She belonged to the group of Westernizers, having preferred Western direction of development for Russia and loved France. The plot of her novel A Happy Woman greatly reminds Elena Gan’s Ideal (1839). Rostopchina, however, is braver in criticizing women’s education and women’s status. In her novel she senses this division of everything on new and old – that will be so evident and so distinct in the 1860s. As she claims – she belongs to those conservatives and “old” school. The finalized female character Marina Nenskaya is well ahead of her time. Marina Nenskaya is a Sandian type. Her mother dies when she is pretty young (as in Gan’s novel). This novel tells a poetic story of love, protest, women’s plight and struggle. Her first attempts were written in French; later she began writing in Russian. As Pushkin mentions in Eugene Onegin, Rostopchina speaks Russian with a few nice mistakes. 11 See Shashkov, S. S. Istoriia Russkoi Zhenshchiny, p. 282. 130

Aglaya, Damskij Zhurnal (Women’s Journal), Cabinet Aspazii (Aspraziya’s Study).

These journals also discussed the “woman question” and women’s plight in Tsarist

Russia. S. S. Shashkov writes in The History of the Russian Woman (1879): “Among all these funny praises, lavished on women, in all these journals was [prohodila] one true idea about the need to elevate women’s importance in society and family” (my translation).12 Nikolay Ostolopov (1773-1833) invited women to collaborate in his journal Ljubitel’ Slovesnosti (Word’s Admirer) (1806), because he believed that women could have a greater impact than men on the development of the “woman question.”

Most attempts for the development of women’s education were suppressed by such “retrogrades” as People’s Education Minister A. S. Shishkov (1754-1841) and statesman A. A. Arkacheev (1769-1834). However, another obvious explanation for the reluctance of the Tsarist régime to open women’s schools and universities was lack of resources. The Smolny Institute that will be discussed in detail in Elizaveta

Vodovozova’s memoir was opened by Catherine II in 1764 and accepted a limited number of upper-class girls. Their training was of a dubious character. They had a good command of French, but never studied critical thinking or science. Despite that sad fact that women did not have access to a systematic education, they devoured Russian and foreign, predominantly French, literature. They read French novels in the original language and other Western works in translations. It is important to mention, however, that the influx of Western literature was strongly regulated during the reign of Nicholas I

(1796-1855). His son, Alexander II (1818-1881), changed the stifling atmosphere, but censorship was still active at all levels.

12 Ibid. 131

The dialogical nature of literature, however, broke down all walls. F. M.

Dostoevsky was an admirer of George Sand, as many other Russian writers. Women were inspired by George Sand and George Eliot and wanted to try writing as well, inasmuch the literary field did not require any special training for women. As above- mentioned, Elena Gan was called the “Russian George Sand.” Most upper-class Russian women could escape into the realm of feelings: through love and friendship feelings and humane compassion women influenced the world of men and thus protected them from the ultimate roughness and the harsher realities.

A woman was perceived as an “Angel in the House.” It was an arduous process to demythologize this unreal and unearthly construct. Woman grew tired of their role of an “Angel.” It happened simultaneously in many European countries. In the 1830s and

1850s, throughout Europe women began to mobilize under the influence of “key novels,” discussing “the role of women and gender relations.”13 Russian women desperately desired to become saviors and historical agents in the name of change of authoritarianism in Tsarist Russia. It is well reflected in the novels of the time. It was onerous for women to fight their passive nature developed throughout several centuries, taking into account women’s long history of isolation in terems that was discussed in the previous chapter.

The stereotypes about women were also formed by writers. However, they adjusted to the new European standards that were once introduced by Peter the Great (1672-1725).

Women also liked their new role of learned women that was popularized by Catherine the

Great (1729-1796).

13 Paletschek, Sylvia, and Bianka Pietrow-Ennker. Women's Emancipation Movements in the Nineteenth Century: A European Perspective (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2004), p. 310. 132

The change of women’s position coincided with the liberation of the serfs in

Russia in 1861. By Alexander II’s autocratic power, “he gave Russia what the United

States of America won only after four years of bloody civil wars.”14 The autocratic monarchy was another problem in Russia. Unlike England, for instance, where constitutional monarchy was adopted very early, Russia remained backward because of the authoritarian rule. In the 1820s, 1830s, and 1840s all social questions were tabooed during the reign of Nicholas I (1796-1855). During that time, what is considered the

Golden Age of Russian literature, a few young men studied systematically. Indeed, repression often leads to the development of culture and philosophy. When young people were bored by the realm of sensibility, Onegins, Pechorins, and Chatskys (the most famous Russian literary characters) became the heroes of their time – disillusioned, at times egoistic, and “superfluous.”15 The disillusionment of these heroes did not last very long. Their spleen vanished with a sudden appearance of new heroes of the time – heroes of thought and deed – Rudins, Insarovs, Lopukhovs, Bazarovs who were fictional heroes of the 1850s and 1860s.16 Along with these new heroes appeared new female identities in fiction and in real life. According to Mikhail Bakhtin, “literature is capable of penetrating into the social laboratory,” where the ideologemes “are formed and shaped.”17 The author, writes Bakhtin further in The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship (1978), anticipates and foresees the ideological problems in a state of being born. The

14 Moser, Charles A. Antinihilism in the Russian Novel of the 1860's (The Hague: Mouton, 1964), p. 10. 15 They are the main protagonists of A.S. Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin (1825), M.Y. Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time (1840), and A. S. Griboedov’s Woe from Wit (because of censorship it was not published in full until 1861 respectively. 16 Dmitry Nikolaevich Rudin, Dmitry Nikanorovich Insarov and Evgeniy Vasil’evich Bazarov are the protagonists of I. S. Turgenev’s two novels Rudin (1856) and On the Eve (1860), Fathers and Sons (1861); Dmitry Sergeevich Lopukhov is the main character of N. V. Chernyshevsky’s What Is To Be Done? From Tales About New People (1863). 17 Medvedev, P. N, and M. M. Bakhtin. The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship: A Critical Introduction to Sociological Poetics (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), p. 17. 133 restructuring of society required the appearance of women of deed. The emancipation of the serfs also challenged people in many ways. This process did not go smoothly, as had been anticipated by many. The poor became poorer; and landowners lost their wealth. In this transitional period, men and women had to rethink their position.

This chapter focuses on emancipationist reminiscent writing of Sofia

Kovalevskaya (1850-1891) and Elizaveta Vodovozova (1844-1923). Their memoirs reflect well the transition of that time and the awakening of the women’s consciousness.

Elena Shtakenshneider’s (1838-1898) and Avdotya Panaeva’s (1820-1893) memoirs represent an autobiographical account of the 1860s. This chapter also scrutinizes Sofia

Kovalevskaya’s novel A Nihilist Girl (1892) and reads Nadezhda Khvoshinskaya’s The

Boarding School Girl (1861) that is in a dialogue with Kovalevskaya’s writing.

Kovalevskaya’s English translation (by Beatrice Stillman) of A Russian

Childhood (1889) is comprised of eleven chapters. The memoir includes Kovalevskaya’s own Autobiographical Sketch which sums up her scientific work and achievements.

Vodovozova’s English translation of A Russian Childhood (1911) (by Anthony Brode and Olga Lane) contains an account of herself as a young woman exposed to the “new ideas” of the 1860s. The Russian analogue of the title is At the Dawn of Life (Na Zare

Zhizni). It is sheer coincidence that two memoirs have the same titles.

There are many interesting women’s memoirs of the nineteenth century. In addition to Shtakenshneider’s and Panaeva’s memoirs, Marie Bashkirtseff’s (1858-1884)

Journal is an honest account of a woman’s inner thoughts and feelings sketched by the female artist almost every day. She wrote I Am the Most Interesting Book of All: The

Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff in French that was published in 1887 and translated into

134

English in 1889. Her work, however, focuses on her life abroad, mainly France. It is striking that in her diary she foretells her life will be too short. Bashkirtseff acknowledges: “Here is the woman entirely, with all her thoughts, hopes, and disappointments, with all her evil and good sides, pains and joys” (my translation).18 She calls her diary a “human document,” written with “absolute truth.” There is an impression that this diary is written by a very mature woman, although she started it when she was twelve. Bashkirteff died when she was only twenty-five.

Kovalevskaya’s and Vodovozova’s works are important to read closely for this particular work, since they give a stark impression of the circumstances of the new female identities formation. It is interesting to identify some links between the childhoods of two women who eventually became the actual New Women and the heroines of their time. Women’s recollections greatly contribute to the “woman question” and to the broader social and historical context of the 1860s. In their memoirs, women make an attempt to retrieve and understand the past. These two memoirs are less associated with nostalgia; they focus more on search for the self-identity and the process of self- formation in relationship with others, within their family, friends, and acquaintances in the most progressive and turbulent time of the nineteenth century. Kovalevskaya recalls about the ferment sixties:

It might be said that during the decade between the beginning of the 1860s and the beginning of the 1870s, all the intellectual strata of Russian society were concerned with the single question: the family discord between the old and the young. No matter which gentry family one might inquire about that period, one heard the same story: the parents had fallen out with their children. And these quarrels arose not from weighty material causes, but from questions of a purely theoretical and abstract nature. (p. 147)

18 Bashkirtseff, Marie, Phyllis H. Kernberger, and Katherine Kernberger. I Am the Most Interesting Book of All: The Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff. (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1997). 135

The sudden Old/New dichotomy and different positions in theoretical and abstract questions of two generations was depicted in Turgenev’s celebrated novel of 1861

Fathers and Children. Sonia Kovalevskaya (née Korvin-Krukovskaya) and her sister

Anyuta belong to new femininities.19 As most young people, they negate their parent’s life-style and Weltanschauung. The vivid memories reconstructed in reminiscent writings are inseparable from documentary accuracy, inasmuch women’s slight idealization of the past, these two memoirs are the realm of the imaginative literature to a certain extent. N.

V. Chernyshevsky created a distinct image of the New Woman in Russian literature that was discussed in Chapter two– the image of Vera Pavlovna unquestionably influenced most women writers. Sofia Kovalevskaya wanted to write a book about Chernyshevsky, but she was not able to finish this project because she died quite early – at the age of forty one. Elizaveta Vodovozova also dedicates an entire chapter to Chernyshenky’s work

What Is To Be Done? From Tales About New People in her At the Dawn of Life (in the

English translation this part is omitted) confirming that his influence on radical youth of the nineteenth century was enormous.

Sofia Kovalevskaya and Elizaveta Vodovozova contributed significantly to the women’s movement development in nineteenth-century Russia. Feminist writers often regarded Kovalevskaya as an example of “what women could achieve under favorable circumstances”;20 and she became “almost as well-known as a writer as a mathematician.”21 Women’s memoirs could be considered as a meticulous documentation of women’s lives – whether these documents are exact or part of mythologization. Anne

19 Diminutive of Sofia. 20 Koblitz, Ann H. A Convergence of Lives: Sofia Kovalevskaia: Scientist, Writer, Revolutionary (Boston etc.: Birkhäuser, 1983), p. 7. 21 Ibid., p. 6. 136

Mittags-Leffler corroborates this seemingly contradictory statement in the biography of

Sonia Kovalevskaya: “Excessively self-reflecting and self-analysing as she was, she had the habit of brooding over all her feelings, thoughts and actions, and during the three or four years we lived together, in almost daily intercourse, she communicated all these thoughts to me, trying to form her observations into a regular psychological system. This exaggerated tendency to self-contemplation frequently, though unconsciously, led her to disfigure facts. Sharp and merciless as her self-analysing might be it was sometimes disturbed by a natural inclination to idealising. So the picture she gave differed in several respects from that what others saw.”22

3.2 Sofia Kovalevskaya’s A Russian Childhood (1889)

It is because they suffer so that women have written supremely good fiction. Ella Hepworth Dixon (1855-1932) The Story of a Modern Woman

As mentioned above, this chapter offers a close reading of the construction and formation of Sofia Kovalevskaya’s self as a New Woman. Sofia Kovalevskaya also narrates her sister’s (Anna Korvin-Krukovskaya (1843-1887)) metamorphosis and her formation as a new femininity – rebellious and “superfluous.” Kovalevkaya’s sister, as the narrator emphasizes throughout her reminiscent writing A Russian Childhood (1889), plays an important role in her own journey towards the New Womanhood:

But incomparably stronger than all the other influences which affected my childhood was the influence of my sister Anyuta. The emotion I felt for her from

22 Kovalevskaia, S.V, and Anne C. Leffler. Sonia Kovalevsky: Biography and Autobiography. (London: W. Scott, 1895), pp. 3-4. 137

my earliest years was a very complicated one. I admired her beyond bounds, yielded to her unquestioningly in all things and felt highly flattered whenever she allowed me to take part in anything with which she herself was concerned. (p. 133; my emphasis)

Literary scholars unfairly underappreciate Kovalevskaya’s oeuvre. She was not only a talented female mathematician, who achieved the greatest professional status and the “most enduring scientific fame,” but she undoubtedly was a gifted woman author.23

Sofia Kovalevskaya was a pioneer who learned in practice what it meant to be a New

Woman in a brutal professional world of men. It must be mentioned, however, that the opposition she faced was mostly not from mathematicians (her colleagues were well aware of her talents), but from the university administration and society.

Kovalevskaya was perceived as a bit of an odd girl in Germany, where she studied mathematics rigorously. Sonia barely paid attention to people’s attitude towards her; she wanted to be a spearhead in everything; not surprisingly, she became the “first woman in the world in modern times to receive her doctorate in mathematics, and the first woman outside the late Renaissance Italy to hold a chair in the subject (at Stockholm

University).”24 Sonia’s Italian forebearers were the seventeenth century woman Elena

Cornaro Piscopia (1646-1684), who obtained her doctorate from the University if Padua in 1678, and in the eighteenth century, Maria Gaetana Agnesi, a mathematician philosopher, was the faculty member at the University of Bologna. She was presumably offered to serve as the chair in the subject. In addition, Sofia Kovalevskaya worked as an

23 Ibid., p. xvi. 24 Ibid., p. 6. 138 editor of the mathematical journal Acta Mathematica and was the “first woman on the board of any scientific journal.”25

For a woman, whose interest and inspiration usually had to lie in the realm of the family and marriage, and life confined to the role of being mother, daughter, and wife –

Kovalevskaya was downright rebellious, a female Byronic hero – she gave a dare to all those traditional roles. The profession of mathematics required many sacrifices on her part, since she joined the field of mathematics not as an amateur. One of her major personal sacrifices was time spent with her daughter Faufi (her real name was also

Sophia) who was brought up mainly by her relatives; and only when she was about ten,

Kovalevskaya could afford to take her in her household to raise. Faufi was born in 1878, after Kovalevskaya defended her dissertation.

She studied hard and systematically and lived in different places in Russia and abroad without any comfort. As a true “girl of sixties” and a New Woman,

Kovalevskaya had always been around the university life; however, she never was matriculated at any university. Nadezhda Suslova (1843-1918) who was introduced already in Chapter one was not enrolled officially in Switzerland in the beginning of her studies, either. It was a common practice for female pioneers in education. With great

25 Ibid. There are many other famous female mathematicians in the world: a Greek philosopher in Egypt Hypatia (c. A.D. 350-370-415), a German secular nun of the Benedictine Abbey in Saxony Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim (c. 935- c.1002), an Italian philosopher Maria Gaetana Agnesi (1718-1799), the first female professor in physics Laura Maria Caterina Bassi (1711-1778), a Swedish scholar Aurora Liljenroth (1772- 1836), an Italian scholar and poet Christina Roccati (1732-1797), an Italian philosopher Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia (1646-1684), a French philosopher Marie Germain (1776-1831), a French mathematician Gabrielle Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, marquise du Châtelet (1706-1749), a German-British astronomer Caroline Lucretia Herschel (1750-1848), an English mathematician Ada Lovelace (1815-1852), an English mathematician Charlotte Angas Scott (1858-1931), a Scottish scholar Mary Fairfax Somerville (1780-1872), an English mathematician Grace Chisholm Young (1868-1944), the first American woman who received a Ph.D. in mathematics Winifred Edgerton Merrill (1862-1951), an English scholar and inventor Hertha Marks Ayrton (1854-1923), a self-taught mathematician Mary Everest Boole (1832-1916), Mary’s Boole’s daughter Alicia Boole Stott (1860-1940), an American mathematician Olive Clio Hazlett (1890-1974). This list is not exhaustive. Please see Henrion, Claudia. Women in Mathematics: The Addition of Difference. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997).

139 assistance from their professors, women received their degrees, despite harsh criticism of patriarchal society. In 1867, Nadezhda Suslova (1843-1918) received the degree of

Doctor of Medicine, Surgery, and Midwifery, while Sofia Kovalevskaya earned her degree in mathematics with honors in 1874. In addition, she was awarded the Prix Bordin by the French Academy of Science for her contribution to unsolved problems in mathematics in 1886. For Nadezhda Suslova and Sofia Kovalevskaya education was, first and foremost, an intellectual stimulation and their self-identity. Kovalevskaya’s love for education was kindled in her early childhood. In her memoir she documents well her aspiration for learning. German scholar Juliane Jacobi-Dittrich writes: “The history of women is not only the history of adult women. It has its roots in the history of women as children.”26

Kovalevskaya’s personal document is a narrative about Sofia’s wealthy landowning gentry – a family that lives in the province of Vitebsk – Polibino and sometimes in Moscow. Sofia was one of three children, the middle child, and brought up mostly by her nanny and English governesses. She came from a family of well-educated people, who happened to love amateur theatre. They had a separate equipped room, designed for home theatricals. Sonia acted at home with much enthusiasm. The family of

Korvin-Krukovskys involved some of their neighbors to play in home spectacles. The circle of their acquaintances was not limited to the Russian periphery; Vasiliy Korvin-

Krukovsky and Elizaveta Fedorovna, Sofia’s parents, personally knew the surgeon, scientist, educator, and supporter of women’s education – Nikolay Ivanovich Pirogov

26 Fout, John C. German Women in the Nineteenth Century: A Social History (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1984), p. 197. 140

(1810-1881).27 N. I. Pirogov was an important figure in the Russian women’s movement.

He worked closely with female nurses during the Crimean War (1853-1856). After the defeat, Pirogov questioned publically women’s education, proving that women showed their professionalism during the war. He was irritated by the common attitude to women as dolls and objects.

Obviously, Pirogov had a great influence on Sofia Kovalevskaya. Sofia’s mother recalls the dinner they had with N. I. Pirogov: “As a reward for that dinner I spent a delightful evening with Pirogov, who came later. What absorbing conversations, what interesting stories! There is no subject which we did not touch upon in our meeting: religion, love, the family, etc. We left nothing out. Pirogov amazed me with the novelty of his views.”28 This novelty was, first and foremost, related to women’s plight and education. Elizaveta Fedorovna was a good musician, “She could play for hours on end by heart, compose, improvise, go from one theme to another. She had a high degree of musical taste and an amazingly pretty touch.” (p. 110) The family had many interesting discussions of the latest scientific discoveries that were important for Sofia’s future career:

I still remember the storm raised in our household by two articles in the Revue des Deux Mondes. One of them was a review of Hermann Helmholtz’s publication on the unity of physical forces, the other an account of Claude Bernard’s experiments in the resection of parts of the brain in a pigeon. Both Helmholtz and Bernard would doubtless have been astonished to learn what an apple of discord they had cast into a peaceful Russian family living somewhere in the wilds of the province of Vitebsk. (p. 115)

27 Koblitz, Ann H. A Convergence of Lives: Sofia Kovalevskaia: Scientist, Writer, Revolutionary, p. 9. 28 Quoted in Koblitz Ann H. See also in Štrajh, Solomon A. Semʹa Kovalevskih (Sovetskij Pisatelʹ, 1948), pp.107-108.

141

Both sisters Anyuta and Sofia had been talented writers since their childhood.

Kovalevskaya’s novel A Nihilist Girl (1892) will be discussed further in detail in this chapter. Sofia Kovalevskaya’s interest in mathematics had been developing from her early childhood and caused her father’s opposition and fear. Sofia even was forced to hide her passion for mathematics from her own father and the strict English governess, secretly reading Bourdon’s Algebra. One may assume this fruit was so tempting for her because it was forbidden. She writes, “Observing the direction I was taking, my father – who in any case harbored a strong prejudice against learned women – decided that it was high time to put stop to my mathematical lessons with Malevich.” (p. 216) His prejudice reflected the perception of educated women in Russian society. The progressiveness of learned women was often misinterpreted as frivolity, especially because “blue stockings” as educated women were often called questioned openly double morality and stagnant rules of society.

Sofia Kovalevskaya’s and Elizaveta Vodovozova’s reminiscent writing is characterized by notable simplicity and compression. The narrative voices are neutral.

First of all, these memoirs tell a story of women’s education, their upbringing in the family, their hopes, fears, and turbulent lives. Both women discuss women’s limited educational opportunities at length. Vodovozova, for example, dedicates an entire chapter of her memoir to the Smolny Institute and explains in detail what women’s education was in reality. The Smolny Institute churned out little dolls who knew little about the real life.

E. Vodovozova’s and S. Kovalevskaya’s childhoods are very similar – both girls were raised far from St. Petersburg and Moscow. Despite the remote locations far from cultural centers, both women absorbed the fast spreading radical ideas of the time.

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Both narratives describe the question of the serfs’ emancipation and its impact on the Russian gentry. E. Vodovozova and S. Kovalevskaya recall with tenderness their nannies who seem to play a more important role for them emotionally in their upbringing than their mothers. Kovalevskaya underlines her nanny’s special love for her. As Koblitz observes, “Kovalevskaia paints a heartbreaking picture of little Sonechka [this way the family referred to Kovalevskaya], deprived from all affection, ignored by her mother, brother, sister, when she came to them in the evenings, prevented from playing with the village children, and forbidden to read anything other than a small number of approved children’s books.”29

The motif of loneliness and alienation are interwoven in the narrative of both memoirs. In two Russian Childhoods, the loving, tender, and caring nannies are opposed to the mothers who were too self-absorbed to take care of their children. It was, however, a common phenomenon in the nineteenth century to spend limited time with children.30

The social historian Barbara Engel confirms that the mother-daughter relationships were quite distant at that time. Only when girls entered the age of marriage did mothers look closely after their daughters.31 Despite the alienation, women tenderly remember their mothers in memoirs and find reconciliation with them. However, these girls felt an oceanic hunger for love and attention. Kovalevskaya writes:

Sometimes Mama looks into the nursery. When I recall my mother during that first phase of my childhood, I always picture her as a quite young and very

29 Koblitz, Ann H. A Convergence of Lives: Sofia Kovalevskaia: Scientist, Writer, Revolutionary, p. 16. 30 Patrick Dunn’s, Barbara Engel’s, and Jessica Tovrov’s studies give a detailed picture of gentry childhood in Tsarist Russia. For a detailed discussion, see: Patrick P. Dunn, “That Enemy Is the Baby: Childhood in Imperial Russia,” in Mause, Lloyd. The History of Childhood: Untold Story of Child Abuse (Northvale: Jason Aronson, 1995), pp. 383-405; Jessica Tovrov, “Mother-Child Relationships Among the Russian Nobility,” in Ransel, David L. The Family in Imperial Russia: New Lines of Historical Research (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978), pp. 15-43. 31 Engel, Barbara A. Mothers and Daughters: Women of the Intelligentsia in Nineteenth Century Russia, pp. 49-50. 143

beautiful woman. I see her always gay and beautifully dressed. Most often I remember her in a low-necked ball gown, with bare arms, and wearing a mass of bracelets and rings. She is getting ready to go out somewhere to a party and has dropped in to say goodnight to us. (p. 52; my emphasis)

These rare mother’s visits always cause the children’s excitement and tenderness.

The narrator underscores the alienation from her mother. The similar scene is described in Nadezhda Khvoshinskaya’s (1824-1889) novel The Boarding School Girl (1861), where the main protagonist Lelenka irritates her mother when she climbs on her lap. S.

Kovalevskaya writes:

Sometimes I too feel the desire to snuggle up to my mother, to climb on her lap. But these attempts, somehow, always end with some kind of clumsiness on my part. Either I hurt my mother or tear her dress, and then I feel ashamed and run away and hide in the corner. For this reason a kind of sullen shyness towards my mother has begun to develop in me, and this shyness is increased by the fact that I have often heard Nanny say that Anyuta and Fedya are Mama’s favorites, while I am – not loved. (p. 52)

The narrating “I” does not know whether or not it is the truth that her brother and sister are favorites, but her nanny repeats it so often, being oblivious of the girl’s presence, that Sonia (the narrated “I) begins to believe it.32 According to literary scholars

Julia Watson and Sidonie Smith, there are three distinctive “I”s in life narrative: the narrating “I” (the “I” now), the narrated “I” (the “I” then), the ideological “I” (self- relation in any historical location or belief system).

Sofia overhears once a discussion between her nanny and a servant about Sofia’s unpleasant position in the family. Her nanny’s bitter comments make her feel lonelier, especially because her words confirm that she had to bring Sonia up practically all by

32 For a detailed discussion, see Smith, Sidonie, and Julia Watson. Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010, pp. 71-78.

144 herself, while the rest of the family did not want to be bothered with the little girl. “Her”

Sofia was born, as Nanny claims, at the wrong time because her parents wanted a son.

When Sonia’s parents had the first child everything was different: “When we had our Anyutochka, now, her Papenka and Mamenka and Grandpapa and all her aunties simply adored her, because she was the first. I could never even get to rock her – every minute it was this one or that one, coming to take her away from me!” (p. 55) The narrating “I” highlights that the conviction (perhaps a wrong one) that her family loved her less than the other children disturbed her deeply. The narrator explains that the craving and starvation for an intense and exclusive attachment developed in the narrated

“I” very early. As a result, the moment any of her friends or relatives showed a little more preference for her than for her brother or her sister, she immediately began to feel for that person an emotion close to adoration.

The narrating “I” in the beginning of the memoir attempts to understand the catalyst for an extreme sensibility of the narrated “I” and an excessive nervousness. The narrator recalls that the narrated “I” was growing up as a nervous child; a very complex feeling – something more than just fear occurs in her soul. Sonia’s loneliness in childhood caused a feeling of depression. The narrating “I” understands it is uncommon for little children to experience such feelings as depression, but this tormenting sensation that the narrated “I” experiences is close to that state:

I vividly recall the sensation. It usually happened if I was alone in the room when twilight was coming down. I would be playing busily with my toys, thinking of nothing in particular. Suddenly I would look around and spy a sharp black strip of shadow in back of me, crawling out from under the bed or out of the corner. The sensation that came over me then was as though some alien thing had crept into the room, unseen. And because of the presence of this new, unknown thing, my heart would constrict so painfully that I would rush headlong to look for Nanny, whose presence was normally able to calm me down. But there were times when this

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tormenting sensation did not pass for a long time, perhaps for several hours. (p. 57; my emphasis)

The narrated “I” experiences many other symptoms of nervousness, such as the sensation of oncoming darkness, “big, unfinished house with naked brick walls,” empty spaces instead of windows, and “an empty sky.” (pp. 57-58) When Anyuta once catches her alone and begins pushing in her face a “wax doll with a broken black eye dangling out of its head,” this act brings the narrated “I” to “the verge of convulsions.” (p. 58) The narrator explains that all these small episodes contributed to her high sensitivity:

“Altogether, I was well on the way to becoming a morbid, neurotic child.” (p. 58; my emphasis) The ideological “I,” however, understands that this feelings of isolation and fear help her later in life to concentrate, when she locks herself for several years to solve mathematical problems. Julia Kristeva’s passage also could explain the reasons of the phobias of the narrating “I” who is ignored by her parents:

Fear cements his [child’s] compound, conjoined to another world, thrown up, drive out, forfeited. What he has swallowed up instead of maternal love in an emptiness, or rather maternal hatred without a word for the words of the father; that is what he tries to cleanse himself of, tirelessly. What solace does he come upon within such loathing? Perhaps a father, existing, but unsettled, loving but unsteady, merely an apparition but an apparition that remains. Without him the holy brat would probably have no sense of sacred; a blank subject, he would remain, discomfited, at the dump for nonobjects that are always forfeited, from which, on the contrary, forfeited by abjection, he tries to extricate himself. For he is not mad, he through whom the abject exists. Out of the daze that he petrified him before the untouchable, impossible, absent body of the mother, a daze that has cut off the impulses from their objects, that is, from their representations, out of such daze he causes, along with loathing, one word to crop up – fear. The phobic has no other object than the abject.33 (my emphasis)

33 Kristeva, Julia, and Leon S. Roudiez. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), pp. 232-33. 146

In addition to a detailed account of her relationship with her mother and sister, the narrating “I” also focuses on the father-daughter relationship. After the family moved to the country, the narrating “I” observes, their household underwent a radical change. All at once her parents’ life, “so gay and lighthearted until then,” took a more somber turn: “My father had paid us little notice up to that time, for he considered bringing up children to be a woman’s and not a man’s affair.” (p. 77; my emphasis)

General Vassiliy Korvin-Krukovsky is more concerned with Anyuta’s upbringing than with the other children. The narrating “I” tries to find explanations for it: “for she was the eldest, and she was a very amusing child.” (p. 77) There is a tone of sadness in the narrator’s voice, as if the narrated “I” and the narrating “I” merge at this point when she recalls that her father took Anyuta sledding in winter and liked to boast about her to guests. As for his younger children, the narrating “I” laments, their father’s contact when he saw Sonia and Fedya was “limited to asking Nanny whether we were well and giving our cheeks an affectionate pinch to make sure they were properly plump.” (ibid.)

As above-mentioned, the narrator dwells on the girl’s education in the memoir.

Sonia was home-schooled as the majority of little girls in Russia. First she had a French governess. The narrating “I” reconstructs the curriculum of a nineteenth-century girl.

Sofia’s day always begins with a music lesson. After an hour and a half of exercises, it is followed by other lessons. When a French governess was dismissed and Nanny was removed from the nursery, two new private tutors entered their household – a Polish tutor, Yosif Malevich, and an English governess, Miss Margaret Smith. Malevich tutored

Sonia in elementary geometry and algebra. The English governess spoke Russian well and taught the children self-control and “the ability to carry things to their conclusion” –

147 those qualities, as the ideological “I” perceives, gave the narrated “I” an enormous advantage in her life. (p. 79) The English governess turned classes into a “proper English nursery” where she could “rear model English misses.” (p. 79; original emphasis) The narrating “I” emphasizes the influence the English woman has on Sonia, but at the same time, the narrator observes that the governess never learned how to manage the eldest girl.

When Anyuta was fifteen, as many children at that age, she stopped obeying governess, showing the first signs of protest and rebellion. The only thing the English governess could do – was to isolate Sonia from her sister’s influence who already “began to regard herself as a grownup young lady.” (p. 80) The narrating “I” determines that it had a negative influence on the sisterly relationship, since they became strangers to each other, at least for a while. The narrator underlines Anyuta’s independent temper. The narrating “I” relates this temper to her favorable position in the household: “Anyuta, as the eldest by far, naturally enjoyed greater privileges than we did. She grew up independent as a Cossack, refusing to acknowledge any authority over herself.” (p. 53)

The narrating “I”’s voice is judgmental towards the fact that Sonia and her brother did not have the privilege to appear in front of guests as Anyuta did.

The family members saw each other at dinner and for evening tea. If Sonia showed any sign of laziness, the measures of the governess were quite strict – she could put the ticket with the word “lazy” on her back, so everyone could see it at dinner.

Corporal punishment (that was the norm in children’s upbringing in most upper and lower class homes) was banned in their household, so the educational punishment was replaced by this manner. Whenever Sonia did anything wrong, her governess pinned a

148 piece of paper on her back with her committed sin in large letters. The narrator recalls that Sonia was always very much afraid of this public humiliating punishment. To strengthen Sofia’s will, the governess poured cold water over her every morning, “in the

English style.” (p. 99)

The narrated “I” quite early showed her passion for rigorous studies. Sonia sneaked into her elder sister’s class and listened attentively to her teachers. The narrating

“I” explains that it happened because she felt a need for a companion to study diligently.

Sofia also loves poetry passionately, “Its very form, its very rhythm delighted” her, because she always lived in a “whole rich fantasy world,” the existence of which “the grownups didn’t begin to suspect.” (p. 102)

Sofia greedily devoured the works of every Russian poet that caught her eye. The more romantic the poetry, the more she liked it. She loved the ballads of V. A.

Zhukovsky (1783-1852), poems of M. Y. Lermontov (1814-1841), and A. S. Pushkin

(1799-1837). The narrating “I” recalls when first the poetic mood awoke in little Sonia,

“The very beat of poetry enchanted me so much that I began composing verses myself at the age of five.” (p. 102) The governess did not approve of her hobby. The narrated “I” was surrounded by many other tempting things such as foreign novels and issues of

Russian periodicals that were located at their home library. Her governess strictly prohibited her to read them. Since the temptation was so strong, and her hunger for books was enormous, the narrated “I” could not resist it: “It didn’t even matter what it was – a novel of which this particular volume might not even be the first part – I still read it with just as much interest, starting from the middle and reconstructing the beginning in my

149 own imagination.” (pp. 103-104) One may assume this approach also helped her to develop extraordinary mathematical abilities and writer’s talent.

The narrating “I” laments that her father was too preoccupied to notice she was growing up. The narrated “I” is constantly looking for his attention and wants him to perceive her as a personality, not as a child. He gives her condescending moral lectures, even though she feels too mature for these childish stories. Sofia remembers feeling emotional and frustrated by miscommunication.

Her sister’s upbringing was different from Sonia’s. When they were forced to move from Moscow to Polibino, the Russian periphery, Sonia was a very little girl. Her sister did not like their new home but Sonia loved it. The idyll of Polibino, however, is interrupted by the rebellious children of the 1860s. In the chapter entitled Anyuta’s

Nihilism the narrator explains how Anyuta was caught up with new radical ideas that were circulating in their remote location. Although Polibino was so far from all the centers, new ideas fluxed into that place as well:

The children, particularly the young girls, were seized at that time by something like epidemic of running away from the parental home. In our immediate neighborhood the Lord had spared us, but rumors were already flying from other parts: now one, now another landowner’s daughter had run away – this one to Europe to study, that one to Petersburg, to the “Nihilists.” (p. 147; my emphasis)

Anna Korvin-Krukovskaya, the family called her Anyuta, eventually ran away to

France, but her escape is out of scope of this memoir. Adjusting to the life in the periphery was not as difficult for the narrated “I” as for her sister who had already enjoyed the fruits of the urban living. The narrator explains, “It is understandable that under conditions such as this rural life was not particularly gay for a young girl.” (p. 134)

Anyuta’s early upbringing did not cultivate any interest in country living; she did not

150 enjoy long walks as her sister Sonia, picking mushrooms, or rowing that was so common for country leisure time. The narrating “I” recalls with irony that Anyuta had a transient interest in horseback-riding under the influence of the heroine in some foreign novel.

However, she quickly lost her interest in the excursions on horseback. Her parents did not allow the elder sister to take any part in the household. The ideological “I” understands that, to a certain extent, Anyuta, although she was more loved by her father, still felt lonely as well.

The English governess could not surround girls with love. The narrating “I” recalls that the governess was “homely, lonely, no longer young, separated from English society but never quite assimilated into Russian life.” (p. 109) Even Sofia’s mother was afraid of the English governess; both women were complete counterparts. The English woman’s sarcastic manners often hurt both girls’ feelings. Since Elizaveta Fedorovna, their mother, was afraid of the English governess, the narrator laments throughout her memoir, “Mama did not look in on us very often and didn’t interfere in my upbringing.”

(ibid.) Again the narrator returns to the mother-daughter relationship, but at this point, the voice is not judgmental anymore. The narrating “I” enters a new phase of tolerance toward her mother. She reconciles and even finds excuses for her mother; and the sadness is not present in her tone anymore. Even though Sonia did not see her mother often, in her heart, she was fascinated by her, who seemed to her, as the reconciled narrating “I” explains, “lovelier and more beautiful than any of the ladies.” (ibid.)

The narrating “I”’s attitude to Anyuta also oscillates from time to time. The narrating “I” underscores that her attitude to her sister was discrepant: “I would have gone through fire and water for my sister. But at the same time, in spite of my fierce

151 attachment to her, a grain of envy nestled in the depth of my heart – that special envy we so often, almost unconsciously, harbor for people to whom we feel very close, whom we admire very deeply and would like to emulate things.” (p. 133)

The narrator also remembers two particularly strong attachments in her childhood: her two uncles. One of them, Pyotr Vasilievich Korvin-Krukovsky, was a man “not of this world,” and had a great influence on Sofia’s mathematical ability. He read books and his favorite periodical the Revue des Deux Mondes all the time. He did set an example for little Sonia. Her uncle, the narrator remembers, was deeply concerned with the political situation; although he generally was good-hearted and a dreamer, on the subject of politics he showed “a startling bloodthirstiness.” (p. 112)

The narrating “I” finds a substitute of her father figure, who never took her seriously enough. Although her uncle never studied mathematics he had the most profound respect for this field. Sonia was so much attracted to mathematics that she could read anything – once she read the fragments of wallpaper that consisted of Professor M.

V. Ostrogradsky’s (1801-1862) lectures on differential and integral calculus. These sheets attracted her attention; and she remembers as a child “standing hours on end in front of this mysterious wall, trying to figure out at least some isolated sentences.” (p. 123) Hours of staring at formulas had imprinted many of them on her memory.

Kovalevskaya’s memoir is the story of her childhood and adolescence. The narrator mentions nothing about her career struggles in the mathematical world as an adult. Her husband Vladimir Kovalevsky (1842-1883) belonged to the progressive

Russian upper society: his name was well known in science – in the field of paleontology.

He actively supported the idea of women’s emancipation and wanted to enter into a

152 fictitious marriage with Sofia’s sister Anna (Anyuta), in order to rescue her from a patriarchal household. Many noble men of that time thus helped women. However, when he met Sofia, he changed his mind and decided to marry Sofia instead. He could not resist the magnetic personality of Sonya. It was luck to marry Vladimir Kovalevsky because he knew professors of the University of Petersburg. Sofia was liberated through fake marriage and could study mathematics without any limitations. Unlike her father, her husband Vladimir Kovalevsky encouraged and supported her passion for mathematics because he was a scientist himself. After her marriage with Kovalevsky, Sonia wrote letters to her sister about her guilt and undeserved happiness.

Perhaps in despair, Anna secretly left Russia and went to Paris in search for happiness and independence. When her father found out that she left Russia, he stopped her allowance. Anna was forced to find a job as a typist. Work brought her closer to the revolutionary circles in France; and Anna met the Socialist writer André Leo in France and began working for the newspaper Women’s Rights. Sofia and her husband lived in

Heidelberg, Germany, at that time. This episode is out of scope of the memoir, however.

It is worth to return to Sofia Kovalevskaya’s memoir to elicit once more the sisters’ relationships and their acquaintance with F. M. Dostoevsky (1821-1881). The

Dostoevsky episode (the entire chapter is dedicated to F. M. Dostoevsky) also narrates that the girls competed with each other constantly. Sofia falls in love with Dostoevsky, too, perhaps because of his irresistible personality, but also because Dostoevsky loves

Anyuta – and she was being courted by him. The Dostoevsky episode underlines

Anyuta’s independent character. It is interesting that Anyuta pushed away a conventional role of a woman when she declined Dostoevsky’s proposal to marry him. This episode is

153 also reflected in Dostoevsky’s The Idiot (1869). Anyuta did not want to devote herself to

Dostoevsky. She protests in A Russian Childhood (1889):

He needs an entirely different kind of wife from me. His wife will have to entirely dedicate herself to him utterly, utterly, to give him her life to him, to think about nothing but him. And I can’t do that, I want to live myself!... He always thinks to be taking possessions of me and sucking me up into himself. When I’m with him, I can never be myself. (p. 160)

Anyuta understands the figure of Dostoevsky will always overshadow her. These words perhaps describe the feelings of many women in the second half of the nineteenth century. Anna wants to finally have her own identity, not to assimilate to her husband’s identity, even though he is a famous and genius writer. Anna wants to be an “autonomous subject” (the Beauvoir term). According to Simone de Beauvoir, the woman appears as a

“privileged Other” in patriarchal society.34 Anna embodies the New Woman. She opposed the myth of an Ideal Woman and Feminine Mystique, and Eternal Feminine.

Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1949), Chapter X, The Myth of Woman in Five

Authors, analyzes the feminine myth as it appears in works of such authors as Stendhal

(1783-1842), D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930), Claudel (1868-1925), Breton (1896-1966), and Montherlant (1895-1972). Beauvoir emphasizes that each separate writer reflects

“the great collective myth of woman.”35 Kovalevskaya’s entire memoir is the story of two young girls, who want to destroy the feminine myth. They oppose the myth of an Ideal

Woman, Feminine Mystique, and Eternal Feminine.

Only within a marriage a woman believed she realized herself in the nineteenth century. However, Anyuta was looking for a true love that she finds in Paris eventually; and she already was well aware of the possibility of fictitious marriages – one of the easy

34 Ibid., p. 248. 35 De Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex (New York: Knopf, 1957), p. 248. 154 ways to liberate herself. The narrated “I” in A Russian Childhood (1889) could not understand the reason to decline a proposal of a living genius, but she was very content with this outcome. The narrated “I”’s deep attachment to Dostoevsky was that eternal search and hunger for love and attention that she barely experienced in her early childhood. The narrating “I” admits that her feelings were very serious, although she was only a thirteen-year-old girl when she fell in love with Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky.

Sofia Kovalevskaya dedicates two chapters to her sister My Sister and Anyuta’s

Nihilism. Although the family lived far from the epicenter of transitional life, Anyuta was captured with progressive and radical ideas which immediately caused an upheaval in the household. The son of of a local priest corrupted Anuyta first. The young man supported her desire to study in Petersburg; and Anna always felt that she was “imprisoned” in the

Russian periphery. She was a beautiful and talented woman, and wanted to be in the center of social and ideological changes. However, although her father understood

Anuyta’s grief that she described in her own autobiographical novels as a limited, unsatisfying life, he could not move to either St. Petersburg or Moscow because her father had to take care of his peasants as a landowner.

Only her short visits to relatives in Petersburg brought Anyuta closer to radical youth groups. After these trips, Sofia’s sister was more and more corrupted, so the slight turbulence entered little by little the general’s household. She was captivated with new ideas of education for women, fictitious marriages, communal living. The most famous figures of that group were Nadezhda Suslova (1843-1918), the first woman who earned the doctorate in medicine in Europe, and Maria Bokova (1839-1929), one of the first female doctors practicing in Russia. Anyuta knew personally Maria Bokova. Maria

155 introduced Anyuta to Zhanna Evreinova (1844-1919), who lectured and wrote about women’s rights in Russia and became the first woman lawyer in Russia.36

In chapter ten Anyuta’s First Literary Experiments Sofia focuses on Anyuta’s debut in the field of literature and how Anyuta’s and Dostoevsky’s friendship began.

Anyuta secretly writes letters to Dostoevsky, sending her novel for his evaluation. She knew that her father would never approve of her literary interests, as he did not approve any deviation from the conventional woman’s role. Indeed, in his eyes writing a letter to

Dostoevsky was a “dreadful crime.” (p. 162) Her father loathed female writers, although he personally knew the Countess Rostopchina (1811-1858). He knew Yevdokia Petrovna

Rostopchina, when she was “a brilliant society beauty,” however, he disapproved her lifestyle (ibid.). It did not stop the young rebellious woman Anyuta to write to

Dostoevsky. Anyuta’s novels The Dream and Michael both received glowing reviews from Dostoevsky and were published in his journal The Epoch and highly praised by him.

In her novels, Anyuta touches upon the theme of the conflict between the Old principles and the New. Dostoevsky approves her first attempts, although he calls her story “still unfinished” and “over-naïve.” (p. 160) He finds “errors in Russian grammar” in her story, but he thinks that she can “overcome by hard work” all these “minor flows.”

(ibid.) Anyuta had to publish her stories under the pseudonym Yu. Orbelov. It is interesting that perhaps trying to follow George Sand’s (1804-1876) example, she chose a man’s name to publish. Right after her first success, Anyuta immediately started a second

36 See Ogilvie, Marilyn B, and Joy D. Harvey. The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science: Pioneering Lives from Ancient Times to the Mid-20th Century (New York: Routledge, 2000), p. 775; Koblitz, Ann H. A Convergence of Lives: Sofia Kovalevskaia: Scientist, Writer, Revolutionary (Boston etc.: Birkhäuser, 1983), p. 4; Filippova L. D. “Iz Istorii Zhenskogo Obrazovaniia V Rossii.” Voprosy Istorii. 2.(1963): 216. Broido, Vera. Apostles into Terrorists: Women and the Revolutionary Movement in the Russia of Alexander II. (London: Temple Smith, 1978), p. 54.

156 story. Many years later Dostoevsky confirmed that his Alyosha in The Brothers

Karamazov (1880), his last novel, had a certain similarity with Anyuta’s main protagonist

Mikhail, as Sofia Kovalevskaya claims.

The narrating “I” recalls their father being furious when he finds out that his daughter has not only been writing to Dostoevsky, but also receiving money for her novels from a stranger; the whole idea was scandalous. Only when Anuyta read her story in the presence of the whole family, everyone, including the general, understood her passion, especially because her heroine reminded one so much of herself – an isolated woman in search of liberation from her family and her sufferings.

Her father wanted to meet Dostoevsky personally during one of the winter trips to

Petersburg, since, first of all, he was suspicious of everything in the literary world; and secondly, because Dostoevsky was a former convict. Our Friendship With Fyodor

Mikhailovich Dostoevsky is a climax and denouement of the memoir at the same time.

The narrating “I” recalls a farewell party in Petersburg where Dostoevsky was invited.

Like most sensitive people, Dostoevsky experienced shyness when he found himself in the company of strangers. Little by little, the relationship between Anuyta and

Dostoevsky was deteriorating – she developed a “desire to contradict him, to tease him.”

(p. 185) She did not want to lose her position of an “autonomous subject” (the Simone de

Beauvoir term). However, the narrated “I” with each day admired Dostoevsky more and more. Six months later Dostoevsky met his last and most dedicated wife – Anna

Grigorievna Snitkina (1846-1918) and married her.

Sofia Kovalevskaya always dreamed about writing, especially because her aspiration was suppressed in childhood. Her book A Russian Childhood (1889) was not

157 only an immediate success in her homeland (it was often compared to L. N. Tolstoy’s

Childhood (1852)), but it was also translated into several languages in 1892 – into

French, German, Dutch, Danish, Polish, Czech, and Japanese. A Russian Childhood

(1889) first appeared as a novel in Sweden and was published in the major liberal thick journal Vestnik Evropy (The European Herald). This memoir was published when she already was the first European female Professor of Mathematics at the University of

Stockholm and an internationally acknowledged scientist.

Sofia Kovalevskaya did not limit herself to mathematics and a literary career. She was deeply concerned with the “woman question” and became a feminist and social activist. As for Kovalevskaya’s mathematical career, it was a successful, but very challenging path not only because she was a female pioneer, but because it was the time when new directions in mathematical research were being explored. Her contributions to mathematical research were of great importance. Sofia Kovalevskaya was acknowledged as a serious scientist in the Russian mathematical circles, after she presented her unpublished dissertation on the Sixth Congress of Natural Scientists that was held in St.

Petersburg in 1880.

It is important to remember that she studied under the supervision of the “father of modern mathematical analysis” – Karl Weierstrass (1815-1897). In the field of mathematics Sofia Kovalevskaya personally knew Charles Hermite (1822-1901), Jules

Henri Poincaré (1854-1912), Charles Émile Picard (1856-1941), Pafnuty Lvovich

Chebyshev (1821-1894), Georg Cantor (1845-1918), Leopold Kronecker (1823-1891),

Magnus Gustaf (Gösta) Mittag-Leffler (1846-1927), and many others.37 Karl Weierstrass

37 In addition to famous mathematicians, Kovalevskaya was acquainted with such cultural and political figures as F. M. Dostoevsky (1821-1881), A. P. Chekhov (1860-1904), I.S. Turgenev (1818-1883), A. I. 158 played a crucial role in Sofia’s education. When Kovalevskaya decided to work under the supervision of Professor Weierstrass, the matriculation was not allowed for women in mathematics; and because of the administrative difficulties, Weierstrass tutored her privately. Sofia worked intensively on mathematical problems, so by 1874 she produced three important mathematical works and without official matriculation was awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Mathematics summa cum laude.

Iosif Ignatievich Malevich, Kovalevskaya’s tutor in her childhood, made a speech to honor Sofia’s achievements. This speech sums up well all of Kovalevskaya’s achievements. It is relevant to cite a part of it here:

We are celebrating today the name of Sofia Vasilevna Kovalevskaia. Each of us has given her our best wishes … but I consider it appropriate to invite you all, dear people, to congratulate her as well on a triumph of feminine achievement; a triumph which has been awarded with the degree of philosophy. The woman question, which was brought to the attention of the public in the last decade, divided society into two opposing camps. But it also gave a strong stimulus to many energetic women, and directed them toward independent work in science. The last decade has given Russia many female professionals, who are useful to their fellow citizens in a variety of scientific areas. However, when we were probe to into the cause of all this activity, it is impossible not to notice that these women’s efforts were not entirely disinterested; they did not originate only in the simple love of science for the sake of science itself. But then a young woman appeared, firm-willed and decisive, determined to pursue her most praiseworthy but extremely difficult goal. She devoted herself to one of the most challenging branches of science, and worked indefatigably in the area of pure mathematics. She married an enlightened man who fully shred her opinions, and did not in the least prevent her from moving forward. She abandoned the pleasures of the world, she sacrificed the best years of a woman’s life, she ignored all fatigue, and with rare energy studied her subject in one of the best German universities. But her brilliant success, achieved in Heidelberg in the course of several semesters, convinced her that her full potential could not be realized there. She moved to the center of German scholarship – to Berlin – and was drawn to Weierstrass, a luminary of science, one of the most famous professor of Europe. She astounded him with her knowledge, and he met with her often to give her valuable advice and instruction. Thus, in the course of five years, she attained the

Herzen (1812-1870), Edvard Hagerup Grieg (1843-1907), the Swedish feminist writer Ellen Key (1849- 1926), N. G. Chernyshevsky (1828-1889), D. I. Mendeleev (1834-1907), I.I. Mechnikov (1845-1916), Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz (1821-1894), and Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882). 159

highest academic degree, that degree which in the mathematical sciences is given to very few men. (my emphasis).38

Kovalevskaya’s husband’s work was also acknowledged by a famous scientist –

Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882). Vladimir Kovalevsky earned his doctorate two years earlier from the University of Jena. After Sofia earned her degree at the University of Göttingen, the couple decided to come back to Russia. Whether it happened because

Sofia was exhausted after her monastic and rigorous studies, or just because she wanted to go home, her biographers still argue about that fact. Nonetheless, Sofia, upon her arrival in St. Petersburg, got involved in literary circles. This autobiographical moment is depicted in A Nihilist Girl (1892). When she came back to Russia, Sofia Kovalevskaya was not able to teach at the college level as she wanted. The only destiny prepared for her was to work in an elementary school for girls; and she saw it as a very limited and boring function. That is probably why she began writing her novel A Nihilist Girl. She enthusiastically embraced this project, having collected all materials for her work during the summer of 1874.

In 1878, Kovalevskaya had a chance to personally contribute to furthering the development of women’s education in Russia by organizing the “Higher Courses for

Women” that were seen as a stepping stone for the first women’s university. She suggested her teaching services as a volunteer – without pay – as a professor at a would- be university. However, a student of Karl Weierstrass, Mittag-Leffler, suggested to Sofia that she should return to Europe to continue her professional career. Sofia’s husband

38 Iosif Ignatevich Malevich, “Sofia Vasilevna Kovalevskaia,” Russkaia starina. 12 (1980), pp. 648-51. The translation of Malevich speech made by Koblitz. Cited in Koblitz, Ann. A Convergence of Lives Sofia Kovalevskaia: Scientist, Writer, Revolutionary.

160 committed suicide in Russia because of his deteriorating financial situation, professional failure, and perhaps other reasons; his position at the Moscow University was unstable.

Kovalevskaya was depressed after her husband’s death; and first she refused to accept a teaching position at Stockholm University. Soon after, she changed her mind; and in November of 1883 she arrived in Stockholm to start her teaching career.

However, she was met by unwelcoming comments made by the Swedish playwright

August Strindberg (1849-1912) in a newspaper. The writer expressed his doubts about her achievements and competence in mathematics and called it an unpleasant phenomenon. At the same time, however, the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen

(1828-1906) praised her personal and professional achievements. Although her appointment as a lecturer was on a condition of probation, she managed to prove her ability as a teacher and researcher and soon received an official professorship at the

University for five years. First she taught in German, and then she began learning

Swedish, intensively reading national literature. Her closest friend in Sweden was Anne-

Charlotte (1849-1892), Mittag-Leffler’s sister. Under Anne-Charlotte’s influence, who also was a feminist writer, Kovalevskaya resumed her writing career. Her play The

Struggle for Happiness that was written in collaboration with Anne-Charlotte appeared in

1887 was negatively received and never staged. In addition to A Russian Childhood

(1889) and A Nihilist Girl (1892), Kovalevskaya wrote a memoir about the Polish uprising of 1863 that she had to write in French to avoid Russian censorship.39

39 The Polish uprising erupted shortly after her family moved to their estate where Kovalevskaya her childhood that was located close to the Russian-Lithuanian border. The reverberation of this uprising reached her family as well.

161

3.3 Elizaveta Vodovozova’ A Russian Childhood (1911)

Cast down, cast down the lyre, and play no more! Conceal the notes of beauteous inspiration Deep in soul, take care, take care! The gift of poetry is dangerous for maidens! The maiden feelings you have had, The meditations you have made, Set down on paper secretly, And let no eye with envious gleam Murder your elevate dream.

Nadezhda Teplova (1814-1848)

Elizaveta Nikolaevna Vodovozova (née Tsevlovskaya) (1844-1923) is an emancipationist writer and memoirist. In her memoir, Vodovozova focuses on the period of the 1850s and 1860s. She published her memoir in Russian At the Dawn of Life (Na

Zare Zhizni) in 1911. Vodovozova’s English translation of Russian Childhood (1911) is comprised of nine chapters and is a shorter version of At the Dawn of Life (Na Zare

Zhizni), the original Russian text. Like Kovalevskaya, Vodovozova actively worked on the “woman question.” In 1863 she wrote an article “What Prevents a Woman to Become

Independent?” as a reflection on Chernyshevsky’s novel What Is To Be Done? From

Tales About New People (1863) that appeared the same year as the novel was published.

Elizaveta Vodovozova also published memoirs about the pedagogue and educational reformer K. D. Ushinsky (1824-1871) and her husband V. I. Vodovozov (1825-1886), who worked as a pedagogue at The Smolny Institute. Her memoirs were first published under her husband’s name, titled as “The Secret Memoirs of a Boarding School Girl”

(1863). Her autobiographical account is interesting from a point of view of the criticism of women’s education in the second half of the nineteenth century. The first five chapters suggest a narrative about her life in the family, while residing in Pogoreloye estate.

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Chapters – six to nine – are dedicated to her life at The Smolny Institute. The narrator provides an honest account of problems that the girls faced at the Institute, founded by the Catherine the Great in 1764.

In the chapter Living Above Our Means, Vodovozova describes the tragedies of many deaths and misfortunes that her family bore. Many parallels can be found in

Kovalevskaya’s and Vodovozova’s childhood and upbringing. Amateur theatre was of great importance in Liza’s household just as it was in the Korvin-Krukovsky family. It was expensive to build theatre stages at home but to the Tsevlovsky family, theatre was educational as well as entertaining. The entire family and the serfs acted in comedies of

D. I. Fonvizin (1745-1792) and A. S. Griboedov (1795-1829) staged theatrical plays in the home. It must be emphasized that A. S. Griboedov’s play Woe from Wit (1823) was not published in full until 1861, due to censorship it was banned. The Russian intelligentsia circulated this text, learning it by heart.

Vodovozova, like Kovalevskaya, grew up in a very big family. Vodovozova’s father was a district judge in the small town of Porechye. Vodovozova, as well as

Kovalevskaya, recalls tenderly how her Nanny was selflessly devoted to the family. The nanny figure in Russian literature is very poetic. A. S. Pushkin’s love for his dear nanny and the celebrated poem he dedicated to her in 1826 comes to mind:

Dear doting sweetheart of my childhood, Companion of my austere fate! In the lone house deep in the wild wood How patiently for me you wait. Alone beside your window sitting You wait for me and blame the clock, While, in your wrinkled hands, your knitting Fitfully falters to a stop. Beyond the crumbling gates the pinetrees Shadow the road you watch so well.

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Nameless forebodings, dark anxieties, Oppress your heart. You cannot tell What visions haunt you: Now you seem to see...40

Nannies sacrificed their lives for the children placed under their care. The narrating “I” in A Russian Childhood (1911) of Elizaveta Vodovozova tenderly recalls how her Nanny Masha had “had a very unhappy childhood: her father kept a country inn and made his wife and daughter work like slaves,” but despite these hardships she was still a warm-hearted person, who loved the children like they were her own. (p. 11)

Masha’s mother died when she was fourteen and was often beaten by her father.

Kovalevskaya also writes about the same degree of devotion and love for her nanny.

Nanny Masha was rescued once by Tsevlovsky, when she was dying on the streets. After that Masha was determined to come and work for her benefactor.

Liza’s (Elizaveta Vodovozova’s short name) father died when she was a child during an outbreak of cholera in the spring of 1848. Her father’s last wish was to ensure that his children would be educated and his peasants would be taken care of. The epidemic claimed the lives of four children in the family. Her younger sister Nina died early, too, because she received severe burns. Just as Kovalevskaya, Vodovozova is alienated from her mother. The narrating “I” bitterly confesses: “I had been attached to

Nanny more than to my mother.” (p. 18) When Liza was seriously ill, her mother wished for her death in despair because “there was nothing left to feed” her children. (p. 17)

These words widened the gap between the narrated “I” and her mother even more, darkening her “childhood with many black hours.” (p. 18)

40 Translated by Avril Pyman.

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Because they were poverty-stricken with no means to provide for themselves, the family was forced to move to Pogoreloye, a place in the country where their father worked as a judge before his death. It was hard for them to leave their estate where they had grown up. For the children, the move to the country was not so tragic, “It was all so attractive, with so many possibilities in the way of games and walks, that it could scarcely be compared to what we had in Porechnoye” (p. 23) As mentioned earlier, in

Kovalevskaya’s memoir, her sister never adjusted to the country after life in the city, but

Sofia herself liked her living in Polibino.

Liza’s mother did not have time for her children in new place; this fact only deepened the gap between them because she had to manage the estate alone after the death of her husband. It is interesting what Vodovozova writes about the gentry families:

In the families of the big landowners little attention was ever paid to children, and there was no real contact between them and their parents. In the morning the children kissed their parents’ hands and wished them ‘Good morning’; after dinner and supper they kissed their hands again and thanked them for their meal; before going to bed they wished them ‘Good night,’ and that was the limit of the day’s exchanges between parent and child. (p. 23; my emphasis)

It was solemn duty of governesses and nurses to ensure a strict watch to see that children did not bother their parents. As a result, children spent much time with servants, maids, and coachmen, instead of being with their parents. Her sister Sasha set an example for Vodovozova. As well as in Kovalevskaya’s formation Anyuta played a crucial role,

Vodovozova’s sister influenced her with her endless aspiration for education; “she was determined to continue her education at all cost.” (p. 28) Andrei, their brother, ridiculed these aspirations, teasing and calling her “bluestocking.” Overall, the narrating “I” explains, a learned woman was perceived as a “bluestocking” in society, by most men and women. Sasha’s dream was to study in school, but they could not afford any

165 boarding school and, as the narrator notes, it was difficult to get into a government-run institution.

In the chapter Making the Estate Pay the narrator gives an account of a peasant’s life. Their serf Vaska was an extraordinary person who was musically talented. He could play works by Chopin, although he had never studied music. When Vodovozova’s father was alive, knowing about extraordinary abilities of Vaska, he sent him to study music seriously to further his talent. In two years, however, his serf returned. The narrator recalls that the children loved Vaska; he was a bit different from other serfs, “sensible, honest, and literate.” (p. 37) When Vodovozova’s father died, Vaska could not work at the same pace as the other serfs, because he had the delicate soul of a musician.

Eventually, Vaska was sold to other landowners, who were aware of his talents. Princess

G. bought this serf in order to free him and to honor her husband’s memory. Vaska ended up playing in one of the orchestras in Moscow and then he went abroad with his benefactor, Princess G. The narrator asserts that peasants were generally good-hearted; and among them one could find a talented person, like Vaska. In the chapter Serfs and

Neighbors the narrating “I” observes that most families were not kind to serfs. For instance, the Tonchev family of three sisters treated their serfs cruelly.

Like most girls of nobility, Liza was home-schooled in the beginning. She learned arithmetic from her sister and French from her at times despotic mother. Like Sofia

Kovalevskaya in her childhood, Liza was “drenched in cold water from head to foot” every morning. (p. 83) The narrating “I” highlights throughout the memoir that it was most women’s wish to study on the same footing with men in the second half of the nineteenth century. As Kovalevskaya’s memoir, the narrator’s focus often shifts to her

166 sister. The narrating “I” recalls that Liza’s sister Sasha has compassion and empathy for peasants, because she saw a similarity in their dependent lot. Indeed, a woman’s position was not very different from a peasant’s. In nineteenth-century America and England, women also compared their lot to slaves.

As the narrator states, Sasha’s desire is to become an emancipated woman. In her school she demonstrates assiduousness and dedication in her studies and always offers to help other new-comers at her school. But her ultimate dream is, as she confesses to her nanny, to study “the way men do.” (p. 93) She sees education to be the path to her future and self-realization. She wants to study to be economically independent and have the means to help her mother in the future. The narrator shows that it was a rare occurrence that a poor girl like Liza could study at The Smolny Institute: Liza’s fate was solved by her rich uncles, who assisted her financially to get into this school. According to the narrating “I”, in order to study at Smolny, Liza had to prepare for entrance examinations.

The entrance examinations were simple – French and Russian. The chapter Starting at

Smolny is a culmination of Vodovozova’s memoir. The narrating “I” criticizes the strict atmosphere of Smolny that frightened new comers:

When I got there I was surprised to see some girls were standing against the wall or already seated at a punishment table; some had no aprons, others continued to stand after we said grace and sat down, and odder still one girl had a piece of paper pinned to her shoulder and another stocking. (p. 125)

The head of the Institute preferred to speak French, be addressed as “Your

Excellency,” and did not tolerate any signs of sentiments. The narrator’s tone is belittling when it comes to the description of the head, who was an “old woman with pendulous cheeks and faded expressionless eyes, and a smile fixed on her lips was more of grimace.” (p. 122)

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It took Liza about a year to get used to the early rising, hunger, and the regimentation system at school. Girls, “the prisoners of Smolny nunnery,” were not allowed to go home on holidays or for the summer. (p. 144) Thus, the gap between children and their parents widened. Although being able to attend Smolny was a dream- come-true for many noble girls, when they finally began their studies, they realized that they were not being taught very much at this school. When Liza’s brother comes to visit his sister, he remarks: “You don’t seem to have learned anything here except how to adore.” (p. 154) Girls did not even have time to read, since they had too much routine work to take care of. The mistreatment the girls received from the school staff was beyond imagination. The narrator recalls an absurd situation when the girl was informed that she would be expelled from the Institute for kissing a stranger in the hall, who happened to be her brother; but Mlle Tufayev, the instructor, did not tolerate Liza so much that she slandered the girl. The narrator laments that there was no one to speak up for her, except her uncle.

In the chapter The New Inspector Vodovozova shares a particular instance when the famous pedagogue Konstantin Dmitrievich Ushinsky (1824-1871) began working at the Institute. His presence in this school changed everything. Ushinsky, a disciple of

Nikolay Ivanovich Pirogov (1810-1881), was an Inspector of the Smolny Institute for a very short period of time – 1859-1862 but he managed to make many changes. His goal was to prepare women for the next step – higher education. He provided encouragement to these young women: “You are obliged to be imbued with the yearning for the conquest of the right to higher education, to make it the goal of your life, to instill that aspiration in the hearts of your sisters, and to attempt to secure the achievement of that goal as long as

168 the doors of the universities, academic, and other higher schools are not thrown open before you as hospitably as before man.”41 When the German instructor confessed that he did not teach German because girls “hated doing German,” and Goethe along with

Schiller, in his opinion, were “incomprehensible and uninteresting to them,” such explanations infuriated Ushinsky (p. 179)

It turned out that girls had never read N. V. Gogol’s Dead Souls (1842) and could not recite the story of Eugene Onegin, although they knew a small piece by heart.

Ushinsky improved and altered the curriculum, adding natural history and physics. He was not just reforming the curriculum, he was also making a positive impact on these girls’ lives. His passion for literature and rigorous studying was astonishing. Many parents were surprised by the drastic change they saw in their children and their new attitude to life and studying. Ushinsky’s reforms did not go smoothly. His promotion of women’s higher education was met with hostile opposition from school administration. In

1862 Ushinsky was dismissed, but he continued to serve as an advocate of women’s education – this time, serving as an inspector abroad. The chapter New Ideas and Old is the concluding chapter of Vodovozova’s memoir. It covers that culminating moment of

Russian history, when the serfs were liberated. Vodovozova comes back home to start a new life as an educated young woman. Vodovozova continued to write much on women’s education in Russia.

3.4 Sofia Kovalevskaya’s A Nihilist Girl (1892)

And You, the co-worker of respected writers,

41 As quoted in The Woman Question in Europe. A Series of Original Essays, ed. Theodore Stanton (New York, 1884), p. 422. 169

The honour of Your sex, complete Your glorious path, O Favourite of the Muses given unto Your Care, Be one of their number, and be an ornament to them; A wonderful phenomenon of this century, and a new one, In you, O Dashkova, the scholar sees the light; The Minerva of our days, driving away prejudice, Herself pays tribute to your qualities.42

Maria Sushkova (1752-1803)

“Stanzas on the Founding of the Russian Academy of Science”

A Nihilist Girl (1892), a semi-autobiographical novel, was given other titles such as Vera Vorontsova or Vera Barantsova, in order to deceive the censors, since the original contained the dangerous word: “nihilist.” This work was banned in Russia for a long time. It made its first appearance in Sweden in the Swedish language in 1892. The

Russian language version first appeared in Geneva, and before the October Revolution it was only printed twice in Russia. The history of censorship was long in Russia, but the ban of literary works was never an obstacle for the intelligentsia circles. Despite the fact that the most progressive books were prohibited by censors, the educated people were well-read and acquainted with proscribed texts. The intelligentsia circulated the text of A

Nihilist Girl among each other and copied it: “German, French, Polish, and English translations were smuggled into St. Petersburg from abroad.”43

After Kovalevskaya published her novel, her reputation among the radical and the liberal intelligentsia grew stronger. The choice of the name of the main protagonist

Vera might not be coincidental – first of all the author was familiar with Chernyshevsky’s work What Is To Be Done?. The name of the female character in his novel is Vera

Pavlovna. Kovalevskaya wanted to write a book about N. G. Chernyshevsky. The image

42 As quoted in Barker, Adele M, and Jehanne M. Gheith. A History of Women's Writing in Russia (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 38. 43 Koblitz, Ann H. A Convergence of Lives: Sofia Kovalevskaia: Scientist, Writer, Revolutionary, p. 261. 170 of Chernyshevsky’s Vera Pavlona, then, could have been as inspirational for

Kovalevskaya, as it was for some Russian women. Her female protagonist has a

“speaking” name: Vera means “faith” in Russian and her last name Barantsova means

“mule,” which could imply her stubborn character. Thus, the image of Vera can also (like

Chernyshevsky’s Vera Pavlovna) symbolize hope for potential changes in Tsarist Russia.

Kovalevskaya chose the first-person narrative for her Nihilist Girl to tell a story about the new femininity and her formation. She incorporates autobiographical material throughout her novel. The narrator is a twenty-two-year old woman, who recently moved to the epicenter of radical thought – St. Petersburg. The name of the narrator remains anonymous. She also belongs to the new female identity, having “graduated from a university abroad and returned to Russia, doctoral degree in hand.” (p. 3) At that time, only few Russian women had degrees from abroad. In 1874 Kovalevskaya herself returns to St. Petersburg, holding a degree in mathematics. The narrator includes details that are evidently drawn from Kovalevskaya’s own experience. The narrator confesses: “After five years of isolated cloistered existence in a small university town, life in Petersburg immediately enveloped and, as it were, intoxicated me.” (p. 3; my emphasis)

Again, it was Sofia Kovalevskaya’s biographical fact that, writing her dissertation, she isolated herself for several years, solving math problems under the supervision of Weierstrass. “Putting aside for a while,” the narrator explains further, “the consideration of analytic functions, space, and the four dimensions, which had so recently obsessed me, I threw myself into new interests. I made acquaintances left and right. I tried to penetrate the most varied circles.” (p. 3; my emphasis) Her biographers agree that

Kovalevskaya threw herself greedily into her literary career after her success in

171 mathematics. She enthusiastically embraced the literary project A Nihilist Girl, after having collected all materials for her work during a single summer. Although “the usual habitués of these circles had long since grown bored with these debates,” the narrator still

“retained all the charm of novelty” in these abstract discussions that often lead to nowhere. (p. 3) The narrator explains:

I surrendered to them with all the passion of a naturally talkative Russian who had spent five years among German ways in the sole company of two or three specialists, each involved in his narrow, all-absorbing work, with no thought of wasting valuable time on idle chatter.” (p. 3; my emphasis)

It is also an autobiographical fact in Kovalevskaya’s life: in Germany, the circle of mathematicians was too small and limited by a few specialists. She did not have much time for social interaction, since her intellectual work was intense. The life of a female student in Germany was ascetic and arduous. The narrator confirms: “After five years of hardship in various furnished rooms let by German landladies, I was quite sensitive to the novel pleasure of having my own cozy corner.” (p. 5) As mentioned above,

Kovalevskaya herself could not afford to take her daughter Faufi on her travels abroad, since she led the life of a wandering gypsy until her late thirties.

Other people were attracted to her enthusiasm, since the fact that the narrator loved meeting new people is obvious: “My reputation as a learned woman surrounded me with a certain aura: my acquaintances expected something extraordinary from me.” (p. 4)

The narrator does not like all this special attention to her New Woman personality.

Already several Russian journals discussed her role of a “celebrated woman” that was even something uncomfortable for her.

The New Women in Russia and Europe received a lot of attention from the press.

English New Women were often ridiculed and lampooned in the press, especially on the

172 pages of Punch. It will be discussed in the second part of the dissertation. This role required too much responsibility from them as well as intensified the feeling of

“otherness.” The narrator of A Nihilist Girl is rather ironic about her “otherness.” No matter what, the narrator repeats that “all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds,” alluding to Leibnitz’s celebrated phrase. Only this positive attitude could help

Kovalevskaya overcome the obstacles she faced in the field of mathematics.

The narrator mentions the Petersburg Higher Courses of Education (also known as the Bestuzhev courses). In fact, Kovalevskaya herself served on the executive committee of the courses, but she confuses the dates in the book – the courses were founded in 1878, and the narration starts in 1874. The female protagonist Vera is the new femininity and a nihilist girl who has a magnetic aura and personality, as well as the narrator. The narrator describes Vera’s simplicity in style, when she first sees her:

A tall young woman wearing a simple cloth coat walked into the room. Because of my nearsightedness, I couldn’t immediately decide whether I knew her or not, especially since a black scarf concealed most of her face. Only a small, straight nose, slightly reddened from the cold, remained exposed. (p. 5; my emphasis)

The whole narrative structure beckons the reader to sympathize with Vera. The narrator is “struck” with Vera’s beauty. (p. 6) The simplicity of style was an important feature for nihilist women in the nineteenth century. They could be recognized by their dress code. Russian aristocratic women always paid much attention to their wardrobe.

The nihilists, in contrast, chose simple clothing. Black color was popular among nihilist women. The Trubnikova feminist Circle was once attacked by nihilist women for wearing exquisite dresses, instead of helping other women. Maria Trubnikova (1835-

1897), the daughter of the exiled Decembrist V. P. Ivashev (1797-1841), and her friends did so, however, because they wanted to collect money for the poor from the nobility.

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Vera “this tall, graceful young woman, with her pale smooth face and her dark- blue eyes” is a very influential figure, since the Ich-Erzähler confesses that “all my absorbing interests suddenly lost their sense and significance.” (p. 7) Vera had recently read about the narrator in the newspaper, and wanted to meet personally the celebrated

New Woman. She exemplifies the direct type of women and does not like to waste her time on fruitless talks. Vera has traits of a romantic heroine, too; she does believe in people and the “cause.” She even wants to fight an unjust system to change the world.

Vera opens up to the narrator: “I am all alone in the world and depend on no one. My personal life is over. I don’t expect or see anything for myself. My passionate, my fervent wish is to be of use to ‘the cause.’” (p. 6; my emphasis) These are the main traits of the new femininity – she is not living for herself, but she wants to help other suppressed people. Similarly, Grant Allen’s Herminia Barton in The Woman Who Did (1895) refuses to marry her beloved in the support of global sisterhood. Vera cannot live as ordinary people, caring about a small limited circle – family, friends, etc. She anticipates the future of revolutionary women who would sacrifice their lives to serve the cause and other people, even if they did not really know them. They did not know, however, that the

Revolution would be a bloody massacre.

The elevation of Vera’s character is formed under the influence of her mentor – an exiled man. It must be mentioned that Russian women writers elaborated in their novels on profound influence of their male tutors and mentors. One may assume because of because of the existence of “authoritative discourse” that is seen by M. M. Bakhtin as hierarchically higher and associated with “the word of the fathers.”44 Another female

44 Bakhtin, M. M, Pam Morris, V. N. Voloshinov, and P. N. Medvedev. The Bakhtin Reader: Selected Writings of Bakhtin, Medvedev, and Voloshinov (London: E. Arnold, 1994), p. 75. 174 writer Nadezhda Khvoshchinskaya (1824-1889) in her novel The Boarding School Girl

(1860) touches upon the theme of mentoring. Lelenka, the main female protagonist, although she is a fifteen year-old girl, is depicted as a deep personality, who learns with enthusiasm at her boarding school to satisfy her parents. However, she is rather an observer in the boarding school. She does not like to be the center of attention. Reading and learning is a form of self-oblivion for her. Verenetsyn is an exiled and disillusioned school teacher – the one who first makes Lelenka think critically about her studies and purpose of her lessons. She learns at times automatically, without critical thinking.

Verenetsyn mentions to his neighbor that he does not want to “develop” Lelenka.

Nonetheless, he brings Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet for her to read, obviously believing that this kind of literature is more educational for a girl like her than mere historical dates. He believes that these kinds of books educate people better. After meeting Verenetsyn, Lelenka looks critically at her environment. She realizes that her family is unhappy, since her father has an unstable position. Her mother’s dream is to marry off her child to a wealthy suitor. Her parents want her to enter upper-society through marriage. Khvsochinskaya shows the limited plight of a girl through space descriptions. Lelenka spends her time at home and at school. The only place that provides her an inner escape is a garden. It is symbolic that Lelenka reads her books in the garden.

She cannot liberate herself in the “prison” of her house or in the walls of boarding school, where the atmosphere is hostile and cold. It is also symbolic that her mentor meets her in the garden first, since he is the “tree of knowledge” for the girl. After meeting him,

Lelenka asks herself if she really learns anything at the boarding school. Khvochinskaya,

175 as well as Vodovozova, and many other female writers underscore the disadvantages of the existing schooling system designed for girls.

In the beginning of the narrative, Kovalevskaya’s Vera is as naïve as

Khvoshinskaya’s Lelenka. She always speaks simply, and with such sincerity – her attitude boosts the narrator’s faith in the aspirations of young nihilist women. Vera’s directness, her stubbornness and romanticism to a certain extent seemed “uncommonly familiar and attractive” to the narrator because they have a similar nature. (p. 6) For the narrator, it took a lot of courage to become a mathematician in a hostile environment.

First Vera does not belong to any nihilist circles, but she is full of zeal to find and join them. She has formed as a nihilist woman under the influence of professor Vasiltsev.

Vera wants to be “of use,” and not just belong to the nihilist circles, following the trends of fashion. The character of the new femininity is capable of changing and influencing people around her, since she is natural in all her quests. The narrator, being attracted to

Vera’s strong character, confesses that “My personal life over the last three or four months suddenly seemed empty and trivial.” (p. 7) Bakhtin’s definition of the other can be helpful in reading the image of the new femininity Vera, who awakens human consciousness by her consciousness.45 Vera, as well as the female protagonist of British feminist writer Sarah Grand (1854-1943), the New Woman Ideala in her novel Ideala

(1888), makes people more aware and feel. In fact, Sigmund Freud in Introduction to

Psychoanalysis (1916-17) also speaks about mutual interaction of (sub)consciousness of different people – even if they do not socialize with each other.

45 Todorov, Tzvetan. Mikhail Bakhtin: The Dialogical Principle (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), p. 96 176

The narrator slightly idealizes the figure of Vera. She seems to be somewhat ethereal: she has higher goals in her life than just mere vanity. She understands that if she cannot change the whole world and an unjust system, she will at least take the first steps towards this change. She is eagerly looking for a purpose: “Life’s trivia evidently made no claims on her attention. Although this was her first stay in Petersburg, life in the capital neither surprised nor interested her. She was completely engrossed in a single thought – to find a purpose, a goal of life.” (p. 8; my emphasis) After their first conversation – one of those “heart-to-heart” talks over a “samovar,” the narrator even wants to “earn her trust, to learn her most secret thoughts.” (p. 7)

Chapters 2-10 of the book cover the formation of the New Woman, including her childhood and adolescent years. This novel, as most New Woman fiction, is a

Bildungsroman. The New Woman novel’s plotting is rarely complex. Its preferred form is the Bildungsroman, and “it shares a certain number of characteristics with nineteenth- century women’s autobiography.”46

The family of Barantsov is a distinguished and noble one, but the emancipation of serfs changes everything in their lives, as it did in Kovalevskaya’s life. The serfdom abolishment impacts the Barantsov family in a negative way. Ann Koblitz explains this transition: “Rumors of the impending emancipation gladdened the heart of those who had been agitating for change (insofar they could within the restraints imposed by press censorship and the tsarist secret police). But the rumors upset the many conservative, apolitical, or even mildly liberal landlords, who were dependent on their revenues from

46 Flint, Kate. The Woman Reader, 1837-1914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), pp. 194-195. 177 their holdings, began to worry about what would become of their wealth, which was in large part measured by the number of serfs they possessed.”47

According to Kovalevskaya, Vera’s father belongs to those apolitical landlords.

Since the Barantsov family lives in the periphery, only “vague rumors were already afoot in Petersburg about the imminent emancipation of the serfs, but these had not yet reached

Borki, as the Barantsov estate was called, and the time-honored practices still prevailed.”

(p. 11) In many respects, the description of the settings in Borki resembles Polibino, where Kovalevskaya grew up. As most gentry families, the family of Barantsov is not ready for the emancipation of the serfs. The narrator’s voice has a criticizing tone about the use of serfs’ labor. Women writers often supported the abolishment of serfs in their writings, especially because they empathized with their situation.

Vera is one of three sisters. The young sisters grew up in the nursery of the house under the care of two governesses. In addition to two governesses, “a sizeable number of other servants also attended to the children” – an old nanny and a young errand girl.

(p. 15) Since their early childhood, parents think about girls’ marriage: “Mama and Papa had already decided that Mitino [estate] would be Lena’s dowry, Stepino [estate] would go to Liza, and Borki [estate] itself would go to the youngest, Vera. The count and countess also knew that in good time, say in three or four years, a hussar or dragoon would appear without fail to take Lena away. Then, a short while later, another hussar or dragoon would appear to whisk Liza away. And then Vera’s turn would come.” (p. 17)

The narrator’s tone is ironic about this marrying-off process. It was so self-evident for the family and “just as they knew that there would be dinner tomorrow and the day after.”

47 Ibid., p. 14. 178

(p. 17) In this environment when everything is pre-determined, however, it was hard to develop a strong character of the new femininity.

The emancipation of the serfs changes Vera’s position. All parents’ careful calculations are suddenly shaken by an “unexpected event.” As the narrator ironically notes, this unexpected event “was not exactly unexpected” – the emancipation of the serfs

– the event that “people had been talking about” “for twenty years,” and “all of Russia was preparing for it.” (p. 18) Even though Russians were preparing for this liberation just as they were preparing for the women’s emancipation it was hard for people to suddenly give up the habitual roles of owners and slaves.

Kovalevskaya describes well what the peasants first experienced when they were liberated – “frightened perplexity”; “like all momentous events, when it finally happened, it seemed to everyone that it came unexpectedly, catching everyone unawares.” (p. 18; p. 26). Kovalevskaya writes that for most people it was a change for the better, but also for many it was a change for the worst. It eliminated the dynamic of masters and peasants overnight:

After the emancipation, affairs immediately changed for the worse in the Barantsov house. The income from the estate dropped so precipitously that the entire household had to be shifted to a different footing. Though a decent fellow in the past, the village elder now turned into a scoundrel: again and again he was rude to the master, made difficulties about everything, and never delivered money on time. (p. 31; my emphasis)

For Vera’s destiny, besides the emancipation of the serfs, the sudden appearance of an exiled professor, Vaslitsev, plays a crucial role in her formation as a New Woman.

Besides, the worsening economic position of her family is an added stress that makes her a person of reflection. Soon the family of Barantsov is obliged to sell their estates – in

Mitino and Stepino. Their economic situation is deteriorating rapidly: “The count and

179 countess now quarreled not out of jealousy but over money – nothing but money. Every time the countess came to request money for the household, the count rained reproaches on her for extravagance, negligence, and the absence of order in the home.” (p. 32)

That is why one may assume Vera grows up a different person – indifferent to money and appearance. That was the apple of discord for her parents – material problems. The narrator emphasizes that she is not like her sisters, not like her parents.

Vera witnesses that her parents become gradually distant to each other people. There is nothing inconsequential that Vera develops “otherness” in these circumstances. Vera is critical and observant: it is no accident that Vera becomes such an outsider in her own family. Her sisters, “now adult young ladies,” are boring and banal; they’re dreaming only about marriage – “both languished from the tedium of country life and complained bitterly about their fate.” (p. 34)

All their childhood and upbringing was a preparation for “that happy day” when

“they would put on a long dress and enter high society.” (p. 34) The narrator contrasts the ordinary Russian woman to Vera, who wants to find a “purpose” and serve the “cause.”

Unlike Vera, her sisters, Lena and Liza, are not looking for a special “purpose” in their lives. The economic problems, the consequence of the abolition of serfdom, also led to the dismissal of the children’s staff; Vera’s parents can no longer keep a special governess for their daughter, putting her education at stake. Her parents want to send her to the famous Smolny Institute, but Vera is already past entrance age. Kovalevskaya again elaborates on the theme of women’s education. The lack of educational institutions for girls brings Vera to realize the loss of those skills that were characteristic for upper- society. Vera, for example, cannot remember French though she spoke it fluently before.

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Liza and Lena do not want to tutor their sister, because they do not like the idea of being their sister’s governess. While summers are tolerable for the girl, “things went worse in the winter,” because “she moped all day in one corner to another of the large, empty rooms without finding a thing to do anywhere.” (p. 35)

She could have found some relief from her boredom and loneliness by reading

French books, as many noble women did at that time, but she forgot the French language.

Only these are available at her house. However, this monastic and isolated life turns her into a very observant person. It also develops a high sensibility in her. The narrator emphasizes that her feeling of alienation from trivial problems and the primitive cycle of materialism, living only for their egoistic needs, is growing. The egoism of her family is not the rational egoism that was praised by Chernyshevsky. Their egoism is the feeling of an irrational self-centered interest and self-absorbance. First, however, Vera tries to find an escape in spiritual life or religion. The position of the narrator on religion is obvious – the narrator is a follower and admirer of Darwinism. The narrator, for example, believes in the pedigree.

Her nanny introduces Vera to religion. However, Vera perceives her a superstitious woman. The narrator emphasizes the duality of Vera’s character. It perhaps reflects the position of many women of that time that were influences by new ideas of evolution and secularism that began dominating on the Russian soil what ultimately brought the entire country to a tragic régime change. Kovalevskaya describes well how

Vera is discontent with her realization in a religious path. Church played a dominant role in the community, but the new trends and demands of young rebellious people lowered the role of religion in people’s life. As the narrator emphasizes, it is the external and

181 ritual aspects in religion what attracts Vera. She has not developed and deepened her faith. On the contrary, Vera is eager to become a saint herself – not those ones she is reading about, but a real martyr who will be able to serve other people. This account demonstrates the disposition of that time. Young people negated their parents’ legacy and saw themselves as victims of the régime.

This spiritual convulsion and metastatic disease was fueled by socialist inclinations of the youth. Vera exposes herself to spiritual books first, including The

Lives of Forty Martyred Men and Thirty Martyred Women. She plunges into imaginative world of suffering people and believes in it. Professor Vasiltsev persuades her that those books about saints she is reading are rather myths, and real suffering and suppressed people also need support, compassion, and empathy; they are all around her. There is no need to go to China, as the girl wants, to find them.

The appearance of an exiled professor on the scene brings the narrative to a new phase. The formation of Vera takes place under his guidance. She meets Vasiltsev by accident, but that meeting will impact her for the rest of her life. His rebellious behavior caused the exile of Vasiltsev to his ancestral estate.

Stephan Mikhailovich Vasiltsev makes up his mind to give Vera lessons. She reads and discusses with him, for example, Nikolay Dobrolyubov (1836-1861). Vera, inspired by lives of her contemporaries wants to “follow in their footsteps,” putting on

“the wreath lay.” (p. 62) Vasiltsev is attracted to the bigger “cause”: he defends the peasant’s rights and is regarded as dangerous personality and a threat in the region.

Eventually Vasiltsev is arrested by police. No one defends him in the region, including

Vera’s father: “The count was more frightened than anyone else. He had that attitude, not

182 uncommon in Russia, of expressing his discontent, playing liberal, and wagging his tongue about the government behind closed doors, but whenever a dark-blue gendarme’s collar appeared on the horizon, he immediately cowered and turned into the most humble and loyal servant of tsar.” (p. 70)

This is one of the reasons, why Vera eventually becomes a nihilist: she finds herself living, as she believes, in the deceitful world full of hypocrisy and lies. As the narrator explains, under the influence of her mentor, she realizes it eventually. Vera wants to follow her mentor to exile, but he refuses because her parents will make her return by force (and Vera does not have a passport yet); secondly, he does not want her to sacrifice her youth.48 When her mentor is in exile, Vera is getting letters from Valiltsev until the day he dies of tuberculosis in Vyatka. When Vera’s father also dies soon after, she decides to go to St. Petersburg “in quest of some kind of useful activity” (p. 94) In

Vera’s view, “being useful meant either working personally for the destruction of despotism and tyranny or supporting those who worked toward that goal.” (p. 95; my emphasis)

She wants to find nihilist circles to join, but it turns out to be a more difficult task than she had expected. Her aspiration to be part of the nihilist movement was mainly dictated by her mentor, nonetheless, “her conversations with Vasiltsev, all of an abstract and idealized nature, had ill prepared her for any sort of real action.” (p. 95; my emphasis) Vasiltsev opened her eyes, sharing his socialist position in a “striking picture of all the woes that humanity suffered, explaining that the root of those woes lay in the fact that contemporary life was built on oppression and competition rather than, as it

48 A single girl under twenty-one was recorded on her father’s passport, whereas boys received their passports when they were seventeen. See Johanson, Christine. Women's Struggle for Higher Education in Russia, 1855-1900, p. 4. 183 should be, on freedom and unity.” (ibid.) Vera does not want to theorize anymore about the contemporary heroes; she wants to actually become the heroine and sufferer. Again,

Kovalevskaya, as a perceptive social observer, captures the attitude and inclination of many women. They realized themselves as historical agents and were eager for action.

The question was whether or not they were prepared for this kind of role.

Vera decides to come to the cradle of nihilist thought – St. Petersburg. She begins to attend classes, but her mind is set in a different direction. Most of her fellow students are women, who work and study hard to pass their examinations to become teachers.

(p. 97) Although they are already emancipated women, they do not belong to new femininities, who have a sense of “universal malaise” and inequality, rather than mere anxiety provoked by passing examinations. She wanders through the city, realizing that nihilists are “kept under lock.” (p. 104) Vera is under the influence of the political trials.

The narrator gives an accurate account of trials in Tsarist Russia. Vera makes up her mind to actively help families of nihilists and serve the “cause” as she always wanted.

She attends the trial and sees that among the criminals and “terrible nihilists” are “young and pretty women,” too. (pp. 107-108) The trial is described as an absurd Kafkaesque scene where the prosecutor is a “young man eager to advance his career” – this is the only reason of his “deafening eloquence.” (p. 108) One woman, the daughter of a high- ranking official, with “dreamy gray-blue eyes” is also among defendants. (p. 109) Also, among them, is a Jew Pavlenkov. His prototype is a student I. Y. Pavlovsky (1853-1924).

Pavlenkov is the son of a rich Jew, which complicates his situation. Most of the defendants are sentenced to exile in Siberia, and Pavlenkov is given the maximum sentence – twenty years with hard labor. Vera decides to rescue Pavlenkov by marrying

184 him. She does not even know him well, but she marries this young man and follows him into exile in Siberia.

Vera becomes a rescuer and historical agent at the end. She is a new female identity, depicted as not dependent on male liberators. She was not able to rescue her beloved mentor Vasiltsev, so rescuing this student is symbolic for her. Vera is the embodiment of those women of the nineteenth century, who aspired to “serve society,” to

“be useful to people,” and with the “expectation of assisting others” helped give these women “courage to forsake the protection of the family, to defy conventional society, and even to risk official harassment.”49 At the end of the novel, Vera grows into a self- sufficient new femininity who knows herself. First Vera’s altruism is rather naïve; she does not know how to act and needs political guidance. Later in the novel, she transforms into the new femininity who wants to help the suffering student.

In conclusion, two memoirs and Sofia Kovalevskaya’s semi-biographical novel represent female voices advocating the “woman question” and engaging the reader in the dynamics of the issue. Women writers focus on the importance of education for Russian girls in the nineteenth century. Kovalevskaya’s and Vodovozova’s memoirs are, on the one hand, the stories of their private lives, but on the other hand, they try to objectively reflect upper-class girls’ upbringing and formation in the 1860s. Kovalevskaya’s novel A

Nihilist Girl is also full of autobiographical facts and documents well the circumstances in which the formation of her new femininity took place.

Literary critics saw Kovalevskaya’s novel A Nihilist Girl, like they had

Chernyshevky’s novel, to be an artistic failure. There are many contradictions in the

49 Engel, Barbara A. Mothers and Daughters: Women of the Intelligentsia in Nineteenth Century Russia, p. 86. 185 novel, and at times, one can feel that the plot is not thoroughly thought through and the chronological order is mixed up. Still this work is an important contribution to the

“woman question” and exemplifies the feminist discourse of the nineteenth century.

The image of Vera is an addition to the gallery of the new female identity in world literature. Unlike in Chernyshevsky’s novel, Kovalevskaya’s female protagonist

Vera is elevated and slightly idealized. Chernyshevsky points out throughout the novel that was analyzed in Chapter One that Vera Pavlovna is like everyone else, whereas in

Kovalevskaya’s novel even the narrator, the female mathematician, cannot reach the same level of devotion and self-immolation as Vera. Chernyshevsky emphasizes that

Vera Pavlovna is not a martyr. Kovalevskaya, on the contrary, ascribes Vera traits of martyrdom. Vera Pavlovna drinks tea throughout the novel, marries a second time (which rarely happened to women at that time), dances, socializes, falls in love – all to underscore her human nature. All these details may have made this image so popular among women in the nineteenth century. Every woman could associate herself with Vera

Pavlovna. While Vera is a saint-like figure, who at the end rescues a Jewish student and like the Decembrists wives follows him to Siberia without any hope to return. The

Decembrists wives were perceived as martyrs and saint-like women in the Russian society for their choice to help their exiled husbands.

Kovalevskaya introduces two new female identities in the novel – Vera and the narrator. These new femininities have many similarities in their characters. They are both eager to study at the university level and participate in social life. Vera is portrayed as being morally higher than the narrator: her aspirations are not limited to getting educated.

Moreover, she becomes disillusioned in education, just like Grant Allen’s New Woman

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Herminia Barton in The Woman Who Did (1895). This novel will be analyzed in the second part of this dissertation as the contribution to the Late-Victorian emancipationist discourse. It reflects perhaps Kovalevskaya’s own disillusionment as well. Vera is looking for something more than diplomas; she wants to serve a “bigger cause” in life.

Similarly, Herminia Barton wants to serve mankind and refuses to marry the man she loves, since she feels she belongs to a global sisterhood. Herminia criticizes women’s

Girton College, emphasizing that education is not enough to liberate women.

Kovalevskaya breaks an accepted paradigm by portraying a woman rescuing a man, just as Grant Allen breaks the traditional paradigm by portraying a woman living in a “free union.” Sofia Kovalevskaya , N. G. Chernyshevsky, Nadezhda Khvoshinskaya, and Late-

Victorian writer Ella Dixon in The Story of a Modern Woman (1894) depict the New

Woman as a fulfilled and self-sufficient woman at the end, whereas Grant Allen, as actually most New Woman writers, reveals the heroine’s failures. The writers emphasize the unpreparedness of the nineteenth-century society for the new femininity. The

“failure” of the New Woman reflected inability of the patriarchal society to “accept new modalities of otherness.”50 The next chapter will discuss the emancipation movement in

England and the representation of the New Woman in the late-Victorian novel. The emancipationist contribution of Thomas Hardy, Sarah Grand, George Gissing, and Ella

Hepworth Dixon, and Grant Allen will be examined.

50 Kristeva, Julia, and Leon S. Roudiez. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, p. 265. 187

Part II: From a Victorian Angel in the House to the Female Savior

188

Chapter Four: The Women’s Movement in England 4.1 The Emergence of the Women’s Rights Movement It is coming! It is coming! Far and wide the signs are seen, Freedom speedily on woman shall place her crown serene; In the workshop, at the hearthstone, toiling oft with hope o’erthrown; In the college, on whose threshold she now stands weak and lone; She shall feel the touch of freedom as the valleys feel the morn, And the world should reap new harvests from her nature’s wastes forlorn. “Equal rights” has been earth’s watchword through Long centuries and vast; “Equal rights” the cannon’s thundered, and the martyr sigh’d at last; Saints at Heaven’s high altars standing, patriots at their country’s shrines, Nations fury led, wrath blinded, following freedom’s fairer signs, All have sped this message onward, as to-day we speed it free From our hearthstones to our altars, for meek women’s liberty.1

Mary Smith

The emergence of feminist movement in England traces back to the early 1830s.2 It reached its peak in the 1850s, coinciding with the bourgeoning of the Russian women’s movement. It is always difficult to generalize, but the plight of Russian and English noble women in the nineteenth century was similar in many aspects and the core participants of the social movement (as everywhere in Europe) were mainly educated women. It still

“remains extremely difficult to reconstruct the participation of lower-middle-class

1 From Smith, Mary. The Autobiography of Mary Smith, Schoolmistress and Nonconformist: A Fragment of a Life. (London u.a: Bemrose u.a, Vol. 2, 1892), pp. 156-159. 2 Gleadle, Kathryn. The Early Feminists: Radical Unitarians and the Emergence of the Women’s Movement, 1831-51. (St. Martin’s Press, 1995), p. 1. 189 women”;3 and as Kathryn Gleadle points out, “women’s history was always sensitive to differences in class.”4 The lack of lower class women’s voices is patent: the peasant women in Russia and women of lower estates in England could hardly fight for their rights, since most of them were illiterate. Peasant girls learned reading and writing but did not leave any account of their lives like the upper- or middle-class women. Working women in industrializing regions spent much of their time in factories. They took their toddlers with them to work because there was no place to leave their children. In 1847, the Ten Hours Act for Women and Young persons was passed. The Act, however, did not indicate that “women and children should work only for ten continuous hours.”5 As a consequence, they would be called anytime during the day to prolong the men working day. In this case, the idea of intersectionality is crucial for understanding the women’s organizing in both societies. Class belonging was central to a woman’s life experience transnationally and transculturally. Race, class, gender, ethnicity, age, and sexuality are those issues that are necessary to take into account to discuss an individual’s position in the world. The oppression and discrimination did not come only from the patriarchal society, hierarchies and inequalities existed between women as well. A crucial “precursor to feminist activity”, according to Kathryn Gleadle, was female participation in the anti-

Corn Law agitation and the anti-slavery movement.6

Women were organizing in England for the same reasons as women in the rest of

Europe. They felt like they were at an impasse caused by deeply-rooted injustices that

3 Paletschek, Sylvia, and Bianka Pietrow-Ennker. Women's Emancipation Movements in the Nineteenth Century: A European Perspective, p. 41 4 Gleadle, Kathryn. British Women in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Palgrave, 2001), p. 3. 5 Seaman, L. C. B. Victorian England: Aspects of English and Imperial History, 1837-1901 (London: Methuen, 1973), p. 58. 6 Gleadle, Kathryn. The Early Feminists: Radical Unitarians and the Emergence of the Women’s Movement, 1831-51. (St. Martin’s Press, 1995), p. 3. 190 had been the norm for centuries. Women protested being treated like slaves with limited educational access, arranged marriages, and no rights over their own children.7 The attitude towards women was often influenced by the idea of her evil nature. Between

1450 and 1700, for example, around two thousand women were burned for practicing witchcraft.8 The age of Enlightenment brought change to how women were perceived in

Europe and in Russia. The moment of the sudden awakening of women’s consciousness coincided in both countries. The period of growth for the British women’s movement took place almost at the same time as the emergence of the women’s movement in

Russia. The two movements had distinct political histories but comparable goals. The first distinct feminist wave in England began in the second half of the nineteenth century and lasted until around World War I. Despite being so geographically remote, the movements were never entirely isolated, each influencing and nourishing the other. The literary feminist discourse of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries enriched this nourishment. Both the British and Russian women’s movements were largely inspired by the French Revolution. The historian Jane Rendall9 identifies three major phases in first- wave British feminism:

1. The developments of women’s political activity from the 1790s to the 1850s.

(This development also includes fundamental works from women writers such as

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797), Anna Wheeler (1780-1848), and Harriet

Martineau (1802-1876)).

7 After the Custody of Infants Act of 1873, women had more rights over their children. 8 See Macfarlane, Alan. The History of the English Speaking People (Purnell Press, 1970).

9 Paletschek, Sylvia, and Bianka Pietrow-Ennker. Women's Emancipation Movements in the Nineteenth Century: A European Perspective, p. 312. 191

2. The growth of organizations dealing with legal, educational, employment, and

suffrage issues from the 1850s to 1900.

3. The suffrage campaign that was partially won in 1918 and full adult suffrage in

1928.

The main goals of the British and Russian women’s movements throughout the nineteenth century were similar: a continuous struggle for education, an attempt to change marriage law, expansion of employment opportunities, moral reform, and women’s right to vote. In contrast, Russian women were less politically active throughout the nineteenth century than British women. As for women’s suffrage in Russia, this discussion remained an abstract matter and speculation “on such points as whether women were psychologically prepared to achieving the vote.”10 The suffrage debates emerged again in the early 1900s. Russian upper-class women as well as European women were generally highly educated and always traveled much, having established contacts with Western feminists. In some aspects, the Russian women’s movement was even more advanced than the women’s movement in England in terms of property rights, as well as rights for children. On the other hand, however, English women participated much earlier in the world of belles lettres, disseminating feminist discourse in the form of novels or poetry. English women could boast of John Stuart Mill, who was elected to

Parliament (1865-1868) and advocated women’s rights at the government level. John

Stuart Mill, right after his election, presented petitions for the Woman’s Suffrage Bill.

British women entered the world of belles lettres starting in the eighteenth century, despite the initial hostility and intolerance society felt towards the female writer,

10 Kelly, Catriona. A History of Russian Women's Writing, 1820-1992 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), p. 123. 192 leaving behind Russian women for almost one century. England could take pride in such influential figures as Aphra Behn (1640-1689), Frances Burney (1776-1828), Sarah

Fielding (1710-1768), Hannah More (1745-1833), Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) and many other women who earned their living writing books.

Mary Wollstonecraft is one of the first British feminists. She was born on April

1759 and died September 1797. Her daughter, Mary Shelley (1797-1851), is famous in the literary world as well, the author of Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus (1818).

In her letter to the Bishop of Autun, Mary Wollstonecraft praises French women and

France that had a more general diffusion of knowledge and education that in any part of the European world. Mary Wollstonecraft states that it is the Civilization that has made a great difference between men and women, not the Nature. Women are considered weak and wretched in society, she laments. Therefore, women’s behavior in society is inadequate. When a woman is perceived by the public as depraved, she starts behaving accordingly. When a woman is seen just as mere adoring element, she becomes no more than one. Wollstonecraft writes,

The conduct and manners of women, in fact, evidently prove, that their minds are not in a healthy state; for, like the flowers that are planted in too rich a soil, strength and usefulness are sacrificed to beauty; and the flaunting leaves, after having pleased a fastidious eye, fade, disregarded on the stalk, long before the season when they ought to have arrived at maturity.11

This statement reflects the collective opinion of the collective female soul. Similar statements can be found in most feminist women’s writings. Their collective unconscious was formed over the centuries and they lived in a false system of beliefs that to be a

11 Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/wollstonecraft-mary/1792/vindication-rights- woman/introduction.htm 193

“flower” is normal. However, their suffering and dissatisfaction increased more, as time progressed. Mary Wollstonecraft became a spokeswoman of this collective pain and dissatisfaction. She is one of the first women in England, who understands well that a wretched system of education must be blamed. Mary Wollstonecraft writes that “the civilized women of the present century, with a few exceptions, are only anxious to inspire love, when they ought to cherish a nobler ambition, and by their abilities and virtues exact respect.”12 She admits, however, that men’s physical superiority cannot be denied, but men sink women lower rendering women as objects for a moment. She criticizes women that they live to amuse themselves and not to fulfill themselves. In the end, everyone comes to a “barren amusement.” In this treatise, she addresses women as

“rational creatures” and encourages them to acquire strength in mind and body. The purpose of a human being, regardless of sex, is to obtain character. The only way women can rise in society, she points out, is through marriage.

The family domain had been central for women of the eighteenth and nineteenth century in England and Russia. A woman’s role was primarily that of a daughter, wife, sister, or a female relative – married or unmarried. Joan N. Burstyn writes about the women’s mission in the beginning of the nineteenth century:

Each sex was to have its distinct sphere of influence: woman’s superior morality was to match man’s superior reasoning and business ability. The woman’s mission was not to be confused with man’s. A woman could not count on the rewards afforded a man: woman’s work was the work of the spirit; her reward was spiritual, not financial.13

12 Ibid. 13 Burstyn, Joan N. Victorian Education and the Ideal of Womanhood (London: Croom Helm, 1980), p. 3. 194

The idea that family and marriage were the “most important events in woman’s life,” is a widely accepted belief in the mid-eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century

English novel, also in novels penned by female authors.14 Representations of marriage and family often occupy the same spaces in a fictional landscape.15 English novelists in the first half of the nineteenth century were more interested in courtship than they were in post-marriage relationships. William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) criticizes novelists for a limited representation of marriages in Vanity Fair (1847-1848).

Englishwomen, as well as Russian, were supposed to be the “Angel of the House,”

“an embodiment of an ideal: domestic woman” in the private sphere.16 This ideal of the

Victorian woman was praised by Coventry Patmore (1823-1896) in his popular poem with the same name “Angel of the House,” written in 1854:

Man must be pleased; but him to please Is woman's pleasure; down the gulf Of his condoled necessities She casts her best, she flings herself. How often flings for nought, and yokes Her heart to an icicle or whim, Whose each impatient word provokes Another, not from her, but him; While she, too gentle even to force His penitence by kind replies, Waits by, expecting his remorse,

14 Browne, Alice. The Eighteenth Century Feminist Mind (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1987), p. 30. 15 In the eighteenth century the nuclear family became an issue of close examination and interest, we can also consider this time as of its invention. The concept of family is foremost in the narratives. There is either a presence of family or attempts to create a family and family ties (and here appears another one main theme – marriage) in the eighteenth century novel. Sentimental ideology stresses the importance of affective familial ties. The sentimental novel is almost always about love, which requires the heroine to enter the world (as in Evelina (1778) and A Simple Story (1791), for instance) and after adventurous events finds her beloved and creates a family. We witness almost in every novel the attempt to create a family or familial relationships. In case of lack of a family the hero desperately moves forward towards a creation of familial unit. Mid-eighteenth-century England cultivates domestic, companionate marriage, and retreat of women into private sphere. See Tadmor, Naomi Family and Friends in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge, U.K.; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2001). 16 Hartnell, Elaine. "'Nothing But Sweet And Womanly': A Hagiography Of Patmore's Angel." Victorian Poetry 34.4 (1996): 461. 195

With pardon in her pitying eyes; And if he once, by shame oppress'd, A comfortable word confers, She leans and weeps against his breast, And seems to think the sin was hers; Or any eye to see her charms, At any time, she's still his wife, Dearly devoted to his arms; She loves with love that cannot tire; And when, ah woe, she loves alone, Through passionate duty love springs higher, As grass grows taller round a stone.

Patmore by no means invented the image of “the Angel of the House,” but he, as well as his contemporaries, “added certain features to a pre-existent paradigm.”17 The ideology of domesticity disapproved of independent working women, locating “feminine virtue” exclusively in a “domestic and familial settings.”18 Similarly, in German literature, Goethe’s Faust (1832) praises the eternal femininity of women two decades earlier. Pushkin’s ideal Tatiana Larina in Eugene Onegin (1825) is also an embodiment of the “Angel of the House” and a testament to eternal femininity. John Ruskin (1819-

1900) contributed to the propagation of the image of an ideal woman in his essay “Of

Queen’s Gardens” (1865). Joan Burstyn writes about the “Angel in the House,” an ideal woman of the beginning of the nineteenth century:

Morally pure and a guardian of the home, the ideal woman was expected to be clever as well. However, cleverness in women could not be measured as it was in men, since women were not expected to train their intellects. A clever woman relied on intuition to guide her in the social arts.19

The image of the “woman angel” dominated the novelistic structure at the beginning of the century and was opposed to the demonic figures of “fallen” women;

17 Ibid., 458. 18 Purvis, June. Women's History: Britain, 1850-1945: an Introduction (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995), p. 107. 19 Burstyn, Joan N. Victorian Education and the Ideal of Womanhood (London: Croom Helm, 1980), p. 33. 196 female characters were often polarized in novels as either being chaste or depraved. The

New Woman, or earlier emancipated femininity, was introduced approximately in the mid-century. An emancipated female character is a foremother of the New Woman. The novelistic landscape of the Sisters Brontës, George Eliot, and others prepared the reader for an appearance of a radically inclined woman in fiction and in life.

In fact, the English female radicals were not very active in the pre-Chartist period, although they did have meetings and criticized the structure of society with women as speakers. The Chartists did not have a distinct position on women’s suffrage. They focused on the extension of political rights for men of the working class. They established their own organizations (often with help provided by men) and took part in meetings, demonstrations, and social events. Women also participated in the Owenites movement.

The women’s suffrage movement in Britain is considered to have begun in 1866, when 1,499 women signed the Ladies’ petition asking right for the right of women to vote. This petition was followed by many other petitions; the number of petitions between 1866 and 1879 was more than 9,563 with over three million signatures.20 To change people’s attitudes towards women’s suffrage, women also prepared pamphlets, wrote letters to newspapers, and held public meetings. Not many women were audacious enough to attend openly public meetings. Sophia van Wingerden writes that a woman speaking at public meetings or merely attending meetings was considered to be a “most terribly bold and dangerous thing in the 1860s and 1870s.”21

20 Van Wingerden, Sophia A. The women's suffrage movement in Britain, 1866-1928 (Houndmills: Macmillan Press; New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999), p. 23. 21 Ibid., p. 25. 197

In the 1860s, many suffrage organizations were founded. The London National

Society for Women’s Suffrage was formed in 1867. Also, in Manchester and Edinburgh emerged the suffrage organizations. In 1868, two additional suffrage societies were established in Birmingham and Bristol. Although it took about sixty years for women to achieve equal suffrage in Britain, these organizations played a crucial role in the wakening of public consciousness and concern. In 1870, the first Women’s Suffrage

Journal was founded by Lydia Becker.

The partial enfranchisement of women took place in 1918. Despite the lack of success of the women’s suffrage movement in nineteenth-century England, it still was an impetus for progress in many other fields such as, for example, education, employment, and property rights. Also, women obtained some political rights, such as the right to vote in municipal elections and on school boards.22 In 1928, women were granted right to vote in Britain. In Russia, women were granted the right for the vote in 1917, at the time of

Revolution.

In 1858, the first journal The English Woman’s Journal, entirely dedicated to women’s issues, was founded by Barbara Bodichon and Bessie Rayner Parkes. Thus women won public voice and platform where they could discuss all problems. At the same time, the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women and the Female

Middle-Class Emigration Society were established to help women find jobs in the country and overseas. In 1865, the Kensington Ladies Society and the National

Association for the Promotion of Social Science were founded.

Middle- and upper-class women were expected to be supported by their families or husbands, whereas the working-class and single women had to look for employment.

22 Ibid., p. 2. 198

About 50 percent of single working-class women were engaged in labor at the end of the nineteenth century. Approximately one-third of the British workforce at the end of the century was female and notably more underpaid than men.23

It could be mistakenly considered as a new beginning in life when a “woman angel” entered marriage. This was the turning point in a woman’s life and for an English woman it also “meant the end of an independent existence,” since at that point she belonged to her husband and was men’s property (my emphasis).24 After marriage a woman’s personal property automatically belonged to her husband.25 A woman in

England had no rights over her children. As in Russia, it was difficult to get divorced in the nineteenth century.26 Only a man could obtain a divorce under special circumstances; only in exceptional circumstances, as in case of adultery. All cases for divorce in the eighteenth-century were initiated by men.27 In eighteenth-century England, wife beating was as common as in Russia, where the Domestic Ordinance shaped people’s attitudes to each other. The Domestic Ordinance encouraged the beating of women and children.

When a Russian man battered his wife and his son, he assumed it was good for their upbringing and that his son would thank him later. Russian and British women rarely complained about being abused, for it was the legal right of a husband. Dissatisfaction with the marriage law and the laws regarding child custody and women’s property led to

23 Ibid., p. 5. 24 Barker, Hannah, and Elaine Chalus. Women's History: Britain, 1700-1850: an Introduction (London: Routledge, 2005), p. 8. 25 The Married Women’s Property Act of 1870 slightly changed women’s position in terms of controlling their property. After the Act of 1882 which brought the notion of separate property control for husbands and wives, women had the rights to their property. 26 Judicial separation was possible after the Matrimonial Causes Act in 1878. Easing in divorce took place only in 1923, which was followed by a large number of divorces. In Russia, easing of divorce also took place in the first decades in the twentieth century. 27 Browne, Alice. The Eighteenth Century Feminist Mind (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1987), p. 16. 199 some insignificant changes in the middle of the nineteenth century. In 1870, married women had the right to have their own earnings, after the Married Women’s Property Act was passed.

During the Crimean war (1853-1856) Russian and British women showed a proper spirit. In Russia, the discussion of the “woman question” turned into a more serious dialogue after the defeat in the war. English and Russian women, working as nurses during the war, informed each other. In England, the figure of Florence

Nightingale became an example for future professional women. Florence Nightingale was a supervisor of nurses in a military hospital: “For the Victorian public, the Florence

Nightingale story was one in which women helped men become heroes.”28 She participated in the Crimean War on the same footing as men, saving British soldiers. Her administrative work began after the Crimean War, and she worked hard on reforms, remaining anonymous because she believed that a woman could contribute to the administrative reforms only secretly. Nightingale has a literary legacy. She wrote an essay “Cassandra,” following the tradition of Mary Wollstonecraft A Vindication of the

Rights of Woman. Nightingale’s essay was praised by John Stuart Mill.

She came from a wealthy family and was educated by her father, who was a philanthropist and a Member of Parliament. Nightingale was interested in foreign languages, philosophy, history, and mathematics. Her mother did not approve her daughter’s interest in the latter subject. She had a religious calling from God; it was the reason she volunteered as a nurse during the war in 1854. She prayed constantly for her

Queen Victoria. An American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) wrote poem “Santa Filomena” (1857) about Florence Nightingale:

28 Ibid., p. 1. 200

Whene'er a noble deed is wrought, Whene'er is spoken a noble thought, Our hearts, in glad surprise, To higher levels rise.

The tidal wave of deeper souls Into our inmost being rolls, And lifts us unawares Out of all meaner cares.

Honor to those whose words or deeds Thus help us in our daily needs, And by their overflow Raise us from what is low!

Thus thought I, as by night I read Of the great army of the dead, The trenches cold and damp, The starved and frozen camp,--

The wounded from the battle-plain, In dreary hospitals of pain, The cheerless corridors, The cold and stony floors.

Lo! in that house of misery A lady with a lamp I see Pass through the glimmering gloom, And flit from room to room.

And slow, as in a dream of bliss, The speechless sufferer turns to kiss Her shadow, as it falls Upon the darkening walls.

As if a door in heaven should be Opened, and then closed suddenly, The vision came and went, The light shone was spent.

On England's annals, through the long Hereafter of her speech and song, That light its rays shall cast From portals of the past.

201

A lady with a lamp shall stand In the great history of the land, A noble type of good, Heroic womanhood.

Nor even shall be wanting here The palm, the lily, and the spear, The symbols that of yore Saint Filomena bore.

In this poem, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow idealizes Florence, calling her “a lady with a lamp.” She represents heroic womanhood and light that shines even in the war. She is compared with Saint Filomena, who has such symbols as the palm, the lily, and the spear that indicates her readiness to fight if necessary. Florence Nightingale is the woman who helps in daily needs and elicits nobler calling is an exponent of higher moral standards, bringing light to the darkness. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow believes that she will stand in the greatest history of England.

4.2 Women’s Educational Struggles in England

Let us not smile cleverly and ironically at the crazy Chinese custom of binding and crippling their girl’s feet, so that they can hardly stand up and only totter about. The Chinese find small feet indispensable to female to female beauty – and ideas of beauty are always very relative. We bind the character of our girls, so that they remain so underdeveloped that one can never talk about them in terms of independence and advancement. In our society what counts as the beauty of femininity is usually just a crippling of free intellectual ability.29 Louise Otto (1819-1895) But I know all radical reforms take time, and when I saw what the Chinese women were doing for themselves, and compared their state with our own, it seemed to me that there was work in plenty to be done at home, and so I returned. Certainly, the Chinese women of the day bind their feet. When a girl is seven or eight years old, her mother binds them for her, and everybody approves. If the mother did otherwise, the girl herself would be the first to reproach her when she grew up. It is wonderful how they endure the torture; but public opinion has sanctioned the custom for centuries, and made it as much a duty for a Chinese woman to have small feet as it is for us to wear clothes! And yet they do a wonderful thing. When they are taught how wrong the practice is, how it cripples them, and

29 As quoted in Quoted in Weedon, Chris. Gender, Feminism, & Fiction in Germany, 1840-1914 (New York: Peter Lang, 2006), p. 1. 202

weakens them, and renders them unfit for their work in the world, they take off their bandages! Think of that! and remember that they are timid and sensitive in a womanly way to a degree that is painful. When I learnt that, and when I remembered that my countrywomen bind every organ in their bodies, though they know the harm of it, and public opinion is against it, I did not feel that I had time to stay and teach the heathen. It seemed to me that there was work enough left yet to do at home.

Sarah Grand (1854-1943) Ideala

The women’s movement for higher education was an “attempt to break through the prescriptions of the ideal, to provide women of the upper and middle classes with the opportunity for individual betterment.”30 This movement cannot be viewed separately from the development of industrialism, “which affected women’s economic well-being and their aspirations for participation in the political and social life of the country.”31

Questions concerning the woman’s economic position, double standards of sexual morality, and woman’s education had already been discussed throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth century in England. As Alice Brown points out, “Eighteenth century feminism is often read as the beginning of the story of nineteenth- and twentieth century feminisms, or as just another episode in the far older story of defenses of women and women’s complaints about their lot.”32 It would be more appropriate to consider the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the beginning of dialogue and rise of English feminisms, but not “just another episode” in the women’s history.

The struggle for women’s education in England has been well studied.33 In the seventeenth century Mary Astell (1666-1731) and Anna Maria van Schurman (1607-

30 Burstyn, Joan N. Victorian Education and the Ideal of Womanhood (London: Croom Helm, 1980), p. 11. 31 Ibid., p. 11. 32 Browne, Alice. The Eighteenth Century Feminist Mind (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1987), p. 10. 33 See Purvis, June. A History of Women's Education in England (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1991); Eschbach, Elizabeth S. The Higher Education of Women in England and America, 1865-1920 (New York: Garland, 1993); Dyhouse, Carol. No Distinction of Sex?: Women in British Universities, 1870-1939 (London: UCL Press, 1995). Sotiropoulos, Carol S. Early Feminists and the Education Debates: England, France, Germany, 1760-1810 (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2007); Green, Laura 203

1678) advocated women’s education, as did John Locke (1632-1704) who expressed his support for woman’s equal education.34 In the eighteenth century, Mary Wollstonecraft’s

(1759-1797) book A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792) was one of the most significant discussions of women’s education written in response to J. J. Rousseau’s

(1712-1778) Emile, or on Education (1762). Wollstonecraft advocated equal education for men and women, as mentioned above.

The majority of European women were home-schooled. The controversy surrounding women’s education focused on whether it should be similar to or different from men’s. Emily Davies (1830-1921) advocated a similar curriculum for women and men. Prominent figures like Josephine Butler (1828-1906) and Anne Jemima Clough

(1820-1892 promoted higher education for women. The first female student was admitted to study at the University of Cambridge in 1869. In 1878, female students were awarded degrees on the same footing with men at London University. However, London

University did not award medical degrees. The same year, 1878, was marked in Russia

M. Educating Women: Cultural Conflict and Victorian Literature (Athens: Ohio university press, 2001); Burstyn, Joan N. Victorian Education and the Ideal of Womanhood (London: Croom Helm, 1980); Martin, Jane, and Joyce Goodman. Women and Education, 1800-1980 (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004); Bentley, Linna. Educating Women: A Pictorial History of Bedford College, University of London 1849-1985 (St. Albans: Alma in conjunction with Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, University of London, 1991); De, Bellaigue C. Educating Women: Schooling and Identity in England and France, 1800-1867 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); Davies, Emily, and Janet Howarth. The Higher Education of Women (London: Hambledon Press, 1988); Spender, Dale. The Education Papers: Women's Quest for Equality in Britain, 1850-1912 (New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987); Vickery, Margaret B. Buildings for Bluestockings: The Architecture and Social History of Women's Colleges in Late Victorian England (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 1999); Stephen, Barbara N. Emily Davies and Girton College (Westport, Conn: Hyperion Press, 1976); Tuke, Margaret J. A History of Bedford College for Women, 1849-1937 (London, New York etc.: Oxford university press, 1939); Robinson, Jane. Bluestockings: The Remarkable Story of the First Women to Fight for an Education (London: Viking, 2009); Martin, Jane. Women and the Politics of Schooling in Victorian and Edwardian England (London: Leicester University Press, 1999); Leonardi, Susan J. Dangerous by Degrees: Women at Oxford and the Somerville College Novelists (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1989). 34 Anna Maria van Schurman was known as a female polyglot. She surprised her contemporaries with her linguistic ability. 204 by the opening of the first accredited institution of higher education, the University

Courses for Women. The first English woman who pursued her degree in medicine in

Paris was Elizabeth Garrett (1836-1917). The first debates on women’s education took place in eighteenth century Russia, when Catherine the Great (1729-1796) founded the first girls’ boarding schools. English women and female writers also showed their concern for women’s education at the same time, but they went further than Russian novelists in their discussion, demanding that women’s education be equal with men’s.35

The discussion on whether a woman was a rational creature also heated the controversy on equal education. Two beliefs coexisted in people’s minds: that women were equally rational, but more sensitive. The radicals defended women’s emancipation, while the conservatives believed that men were superior. However, their views did coincide in the belief of women’s rationality.

The opponents of the women’s movement saw the equal education as the “crucial threat” and “the desire of some advocates to destroy the separation between the lives of men and women.”36 There was also a debate on whether girls should be home-schooled or sent to boarding school, since boarding schools were thought to be dangerous for a girl’s moral development. An upper- or middle class girl in the eighteenth century was exposed to a limited curriculum. She was supposed to have a good command of the

English language, literature, French, and Italian. Some girls also learned Latin, music, drawing, and basic arithmetic. In the beginning of the nineteenth century, history and botany were added to that curriculum; “the aim of a girl’s education was to improve her

35 Catherine the Great did not have as an agenda equality of girls’ and boys’ education. Her goal was to bring up the new generation. Women, she thought, would benefit tremendously, if they would dedicate their lives to studying. She was herself an example of the progressive and learned woman. The women’s equal ability to learn was advocated in Russia only in the middle of the nineteenth century. 36 Burstyn, Joan N. Victorian Education and the Ideal of Womanhood (London: Croom Helm, 1980), p. 22 205 moral character, make her able to take part in a general conversation with men, without making a fool of herself, and equip her to educate her own children.”37 The paucity of women who could afford this kind of education is self-evident. In the middle of the nineteenth century educational opportunities changed drastically: many schools for middle-class girls were founded in Britain. The major change happened in 1870, when the Education Act was passed. In 1891, elementary education was accessible to everyone.

However, boys and girls were educated separately – with a different curriculum.

In the middle of the nineteenth century two colleges for women were founded:

Queen’s College in 1848 and Bedford College in 1849. In 1878, Bedford became one of the Colleges of London’s University that opened degrees for women the same year. Later followed the opening of women’s colleges at Oxford and Cambridge. Women were not, however, matriculated at Oxford until 1919 and at Cambridge – until 1948. Barbara

Bodichon (1827-1891), Emily Davies (1830-1921), Mary Frances Buss (1827-1894),

Dorothea Beale (1831-1906), and Elizabeth Garrett (1836-1917) initiated the founding of the North National Council for Promoting the Higher Education of Women. Barbara

Bodichon and Emily Davies raised money for the first women’s college at Cambridge. In the 1860s, they bought a house that became Girton College in 1873. The main female protagonist of Allen’s The Woman Who Did, Herminia Barton, is depicted as a graduate from this college.

As in Russia, there was also a long urban tradition of public lectures. Women often attended those lectures. Only a few students studied medicine in nineteenth-century

England. By 1894, there were around 180 female doctors. The public perception of

37 Browne, Alice. The Eighteenth Century Feminist Mind (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1987), p. 42. 206 female students gradually changed throughout the century. If in the beginning of the century, many doubts were expressed on whether or not women would be appropriate mothers after rigorous studies, at the end of the century the public acknowledged that future mothers would benefit from higher education. Kathryn Greadle describes well the difficulties that first female students encountered in English universities:

Female students themselves faced considerable problems of assimilation into university life. The pioneers of women’s university education believed it essential that female students should conform to upper-class ideals of female behavior. They were chaperoned constantly and the strictest of regulations surrounded their contact with male students. It was often difficult for women even to gain access to the requisite lectures. Male students exhibited considerable hostility towards the women, with medical students proving particularly abusive. In addition, female colleges remained extremely poorly resourced in comparison to established male institutions (and, in the early days, often badly managed).38

The same passage could easily be a description of difficulties the first female students faced in Tsarist Russia, so similar was the public’s adjustment to new female roles. Women, however, were also socially involved in philanthropic activities, – a domain where they could be creative without men’s strong interference.

4.3 Women and Philanthropy

Our Parish is very prolific in ladies’ charitable institutions. In winter, when wet feet are common, and colds not scarce, we have the ladies’ soup distribution society, the ladies’ coal distribution society, and the ladies’ blanket distribution society; in summer, when stone fruits flourish and stomach aches prevail, we have the ladies’ dispensary, and the ladies’ sick visitation committee; and all the year round we have the ladies’ child’s examination society, the ladies’ bible and prayer-book circulation society, and the ladies’ childbed-linen monthly loan society. The two latter are decidedly the most important; whether they are productive of more benefit than the rest, it is not for us to say, but we can take upon ourselves to affirm, with the utmost solemnity, that they create a greater stir and more bustle, than all the others put together.

38 Gleadle, Kathryn. British Women in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Palgrave, 2001), p. 142. 207

Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

“The Ladies’ Societies”

Sketches by Boz

Charles Dickens ironically describes the Ladies’ Societies in Sketches by Boz

(1836), and female philanthropy played a crucial role in both nineteenth-century societies

– Russian and English. Philanthropic activity was usually performed by women of upper- and middle-class and arose “not merely out of the conservative vocabulary of

Evangelicalism, but was vitally connected to the growing civic consciousness of British women at the turn of the century.”39 Thus, it was a “key element of their contribution to middle class identity and their association with their ideals of civic virtue.”40 These women served as mediums for the upper-class and lower class, helping educate the poor, working girls, and “fallen” women, and dedicating their whole lives to “important social reforms under the aegis of philanthropy.”41 In England, however, there was a religious debate around educating working girls: Evangelicals, for instance were against it, whereas Unitarians supported it. L. C. B. Seaman writes: “Economic thinking was dominated by the broader implications of free trade theories and of laissez-faire principles. Religious thinking placed a heavy emphasis on the doctrine of self-help and individual responsibility and this created an obsessed fear that to do anything systematic

39 Ibid., p. 66. 40 Morgan, Simon. A Victorian Woman's Place: Public Culture in the Nineteenth Century (London: Tauris Academic Studies, 2007), p. 75. 41 Perkin, Joan. Victorian Women (New York: New York University Press, 1995), p. 225. 208 for the poor would encourage them to look to the rich for salvation and still further undermine their evident incapacity to save themselves.”42

In 1848, women organized Anglican sisterhoods, which provided training to women in social work and nursing. In the 1820s, various charity bazaars became a platform where women performed charity. Active female philanthropic participation traces back to the eighteenth century. Two sisters, Hannah (1745-1833) and Martha

More, opened schools for village boys and girls in remote locations. Another interesting example is Sarah Martin (1791-1843), from the lower class herself, who educated imprisoned women. When she inherited some money from her relatives, she dedicated herself fully to charitable work. Mary Carpenter (1807-1877), Lady Byron (1792-1860), and Louisa Twining (1820-1912) also were pioneers in founding charitable school for poor children. Russian and English women began to realize themselves as “cultural revolutionaries”: they were well aware of the social importance of their deeds.43

Albeit at the end of the eighteenth century women were active participants in philanthropic contributions, usually men controlled the finances of charitable organizations. Simon Morgan in her book A Victorian Woman's Place: Public Culture in the Nineteenth Century (2007) analyzes the development of women’s organizations in the nineteenth century and the reaction of the public on women’s activity. Among missionary societies she names the following organizations: the Religious Tract Society (1805); the

British and Foreign Bible Society (1809); the Church Missionary Society (c. 1812).44 The

Lady’s Association was formed by 1820 and expanded fast, becoming part of religious

42 Seaman, L C. B. Victorian England: Aspects of English and Imperial History, 1837-1901 (London: Methuen, 1973), p. 48. 43 Ibid., p. 67. 44 See Morgan, Simon. A Victorian Woman's Place: Public Culture in the Nineteenth Century (London: Tauris Academic Studies, 2007). 209 societies. Morgan points out that the survival of the charitable organization was thanks to active women’s involvement:

Women developed a number of fundraising methods which came to be perceived as peculiarly feminine, particularly the use of a card system for the collection of subscriptions and the charity bazar, or ladies sale. Both of these methods proved infinitely adaptable and could be applied to fundraising for political purposes, as well as purely philanthropic ones. The financial contribution of women to charitable societies, many of which would not have survived or prospered without female support, eventually led to widespread acceptance of women’s participation.45

The bazaars, or fancy sales, as well as exhibitions, were for women the centers where they could show off, since these events were usually visible and public, and played a central role in charitable work. These events had a “great significance, first as part of the broader tapestry of provincial middle-class life, and secondly in the lives of the women who took part in them.”46 During the Crimean War, for example, women established clothing societies.

To sum up, the main goals of the two early women’s movements were similar in many aspects. The industrialization in England shifted women’s roles at the end of the century, since women wanted to get professional education, in order to find employment.

However, it also widened the gap between classes: “In the second half of the nineteenth century it can be agreed that expansion was so great that almost everyone benefited from it; but even so it could easily be argued that the gap between rich and poor had widened by 1900, as it perhaps evidenced by the fact that the Condition of England question was hardly less of a preoccupation at the end of the Queen’s reign than at its beginning.”47

45 Ibid., p. 78. 46 Ibid., p. 123. 47 Seaman, L. C. B. Victorian England: Aspects of English and Imperial History, 1837-1901 (London: Methuen, 1973), p. 43. 210

Besides, the demographic problem of the end of the century also contributed to the shift of women’s roles in England. Women had to rely on themselves, not on their fathers or husbands. William Rathbone Greg (1809-1881) discusses in “Why are women redundant?” (1869) the problem of disproportion of men and women in the middle of the nineteenth century.48 Starting from beginning of the nineteenth century, more than

5,000,000 left to live in colonies or the United States. The phenomenon of spinsterhood was widely discussed in the late-Victorian novel, since it was a social problem at the end of the century. The old paradigms simply did not work in the fin de siècle society. Just as Russian society was shaken by new ideas in the second half of the nineteenth century, the Victorian society faced a similar Old/New dichotomy “when the old order of society seemed to be crumbling under the weight of the new order.”49 Works of Charles Darwin

(1809-1882) contributed to the social and moral confusion.50

The novel for middle- and upper-class women was one of the major areas where the notion of the woman was incorporated, developing “new ways of imagining women, and heroine-centered fantasies” that are “just as important a part of the culture’s view of women as more consciously held beliefs.”51 The term “New Woman” is considered to be of British origin. Ann Heilmann avers that the “New Woman constitutes a complex historical phenomenon which operates at both cultural (textual and visual) and socio- political levels.”52 Sally Ledger writes that the “textual configurations of the New

48 Greg, William Rathbone. Why are Women Redundant? (London: Trübner, 1869), p.13. Electronic source: accessed 02/09/2015 https://archive.org/details/whyarewomenredu00greggoog. 49 Manajit, Kaur. The Feminist Sensibility in the Novels of Thomas Hardy (New Delhi: Sarup, 2005), p. 13. 50 Interestingly enough, it was Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), who first introduced the concept of evolution. His work Developmental Hypothesis (1852) was published before Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859), but it was not taken seriously by scientists of that time. 51 Browne, Alice. The Eighteenth Century Feminist Mind (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1987), p. 13. 52 Ibid., p. 2. 211

Woman are as significant historically as the day-to-day lived experiences of women. To a certain extent, the history of the New Woman is only available to us textually, since the

New Woman was largely a discursive phenomenon.” 53 Through the novel, writers shared their beliefs and ideas. Religious autobiographies also shaped women’s consciousness and “helped to make feminist discourse possible.”54 The public attitude to women’s writing had been developed throughout the eighteenth century – from the improperness and ridicule to high praise and respect. Thus, by the end of the eighteenth century, writing was an occupation about which a woman writer could boast.

Novels focusing on the theme of emancipation greatly contributed to the feminist discourse, since literature gives a “vivid picture of the day-to-day miniature of women’s lives” and of what nineteenth-century social life looked like from a woman’s point of view, especially if it was written by a woman.55 The next chapter discusses the image of the New Woman featured in the writings of the Victorian men. Chernyshevsky’s novel

What Is To Be Done? From Tales About New People (1863) features the New Woman

Vera Pavlovna in 1863, whereas New Woman fiction tradition started in the 1880s in

England. However, Chernyshevsky never refers to Vera Pavlovna as the New Woman.

He writes about new kind of people in general, regardless male or female. Sally Ledger suggests that Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) invented the New Woman.56 Shirley Keeldar, the main protagonist of Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley (1849), is also one of the first fictional

New Women. In England, the New Woman fiction developed into a separate genre. Not

53 Ledger, Sally. The New Woman: Fiction and Feminism at the Fin De Siècle (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1997), p. 3. 54 Ibid., p. 14. 55 Ibid., p. 57. 56 Ledger, Sally. The New Woman: Fiction and Feminism at the Fin De Siècle (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1997). 212 only women, but also men participated in this genre. Kathryn Gleadle writes about the uses of literature: “The early feminists maintained that it was vital to alert their audience to the character of woman under the present social system. Only then might women begin to reform the social status due to them. It was argued that literature and literary conventions had been particularly culpable in disseminating distortions of truth concerning the real nature of women. The reality, they suggested, was that women were so oppressed by existing customs, institutions and culture that their characters were vitiated and debased. Therefore, there was a need to promote a new literature which might expose the truths of society, enabling them to lay bare the hypocrisies and injustices which formed existing assumptions. In addition, they hoped that literature might also perform a more visionary role. For, within literature, there lay the possibility of using creative imagination to release the public mind from the limitations of conventional attitudes towards women.”57

57 Gleadle, Kathryn. The Early Feminists: Radical Unitarians and the Emergence of the Women’s Movement, 1831-51. (St. Martin’s Press, 1995), pp. 55-56. 213

Chapter Five: The New Woman Through the Male Gaze

5.1 The Woman Who Did? or the Woman Who Did Not?

Oh where is that horrible monstrosity, Where is the woman whom people call “New,” Who thinks, speaks, and acts with such other atrocity Tell me, oh where are the “women who do?”

Punch, 1895

This satirical answer in form of a poem was written in Punch, a renowned magazine in late-Victorian England, in response to Grant Allen’s novel The Woman Who

Did (1895). In the conclusion of this poem the author writes that this kind of woman does not exist in reality. Punch was known for its caustic remarks about the New Women. This magazine published many cartoons, lampooning the emancipated women. The New

Women did exist in reality: they were not mere literary inventions. They lived throughout

Europe and were foremothers of feminists. Indeed, Punch was right to a certain extent, since the paucity of the New Women was evident. All New Woman novelists describe the confrontation of the New Woman and society that, as a rule, does not accept the new modes. The New Woman often fails in her futile rebellion against society. The relative

“failure” of the New Woman is represented in Allen’s novel The Woman Who Did.

Many male writers featured the phenomenon of the New Womanhood; among them was Grant Allen. Charles Grant Blairfindie Allen was born in Canada, outside

Kingston, Ontario. His family moved to New Haven, Connecticut, when he was thirteen.

In 1867, Allen won a scholarship at Merton College, Oxford University. He soon married a woman from a different, lower, class. His family did not welcome his choice. After his wife died from tuberculosis, he married a second time.

214

His book The Woman Who Did can be seen as an anti-marriage novel; but it is interesting that, despite his praises of “free union,” he remained devoted to his second wife. He dedicates the novel to her: “To my dear wife to whom I have dedicated my twenty happiest years I dedicate also this brief memorial of a less fortunate love.” (p. 52)

Allen’s novel was published in the Keynotes Series, “a group of ideologically progressive texts” published by John Lane for Bodley Head in the 1890s.1 The Keynotes

Series published not only New Woman fiction, but also naturalistic stories about emancipated women as well as decadent poetry.2 The Woman Who Did became “the most notorious book of the series.”3 The novel is forgotten today but was a bestseller at the fin de siècle and provoked a thunderstorm of criticism. Many cartoons were published as an illustration to Allen’s The Woman Who Did that mostly ridiculed the New Woman image and the figure of Grant Allen who “dared” to step foot in the field of the New Woman novel genre. Even the title of his novel was quite provocative. Did what? Especially, considering the end of the novel – Herminia is rather the woman who did not.

Allen was attacked by critics from all sides for “misrepresentations of contemporary society.”4 It so happened that the last novel of Thomas Hardy Jude the

Obscure, was published the same year as The Woman Who Did. Thomas Hardy (1840-

1928) after those waves of critical attacks, that were also related to the representation of the New Woman, decided not to write prose any more. He wrote only poetry from then

1 Warne, Vanessa, and Colette Colligan. "The Man Who Wrote A New Woman Novel: Grant Allen's The Woman Who Did And The Gendering Of New Woman Authorship." Victorian Literature And Culture 33.1 (2005): 21. 2 See Stetz, Margaret Diane. "Sex, Lies, And Printed Cloth: Bookselling At The Bodley Head In The Eighteen-Nineties." Victorian Studies: A Journal Of The Humanities, Arts And Sciences 35.1 (1991): 71- 86. 3 Warne, Vanessa, and Colette Colligan. "The Man Who Wrote A New Woman Novel: Grant Allen's The Woman Who Did And The Gendering Of New Woman Authorship," p. 21. 4 Ibid., p. 39. 215 on. Hardy’s religious wife was skeptical about the novel, too. She was afraid that the progressive views on marriage could be projected on her own relationship with Hardy.

Hardy’s figure of Sue Bridehead is one of the most complex New Woman characters in world literature. She is the woman with, in Hardy’s words, “double nature.” His keen eyes (as well as Dostoevsky’s) saw the duality in people’s lives and in women’s characters specifically which he also so beautifully portrays in his earlier novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1881).

This negative perception of The Woman Who Did was also related to the fact that the New Woman novel genre was predominantly occupied by women. In addition, as

Vanessa Warne points, out there was an anxiety in men’s participation in the production of New Woman literature.5 It was arduous for Grant Allen to enter the genre where Sarah

Grand and Olive Schreiner reigned. He had to prepare his audience before introducing the

New Woman figure in his first New Woman novel. In 1886, he wrote For Mamie’s Sake that touched upon the theme of unconventional female sexuality. Whereas many critics had prejudices towards the genre (perhaps because women worked in it), W. T. Stead

(1849-1912), for instance, supported women’s emancipated fiction. Moreover, to promote women’s fiction, he gave a generous scholarship to women writers to attract them to the world of literature.

New Woman fiction questioned the institute of marriage. Mona Caird (1854-

1932), for example, was also an ardent critic of marriage of that time. She published a collection of essays The Morality of Marriage (1897), where she expresses similar sentiment to Grant Allen’s main female protagonist position about marriage. Caird attacks the institution of marriage because she sees that marriage is stifling for gifted

5 Ibid., p. 22. 216 individuals and leads to the sacrifice of an individual’s gifts. She goes further, criticizing motherhood as a stifling and oppressive institution.

Allen’s Herminia Barton is another character from the New Woman gallery. She is not as complex as a character of Thomas Hardy’s Sue Bridehead or Dostovesky’s

Polina in The Gambler (1867). However, this New Woman’s disposition reminds other

New Women in many aspects. She is very stubborn in her views. Hardy’s New Woman

Sue changes her position, returning to her husband at the end. Herminia’s finale is as tragic as Anna Karenina’s. Indeed, this novel is reminiscent of the plot of Anna Karenina

(1877) at times. The romantic trip to Italy for the two lovers reminds Anna’s and Alexey

Vronsky’s escape. As in Anna Karenina, the Italy episode becomes a turning point in The

Woman Who Did, for pregnant Herminia loses her lover Alan Merrick, who unexpectedly dies.

The narrator’s voice is sympathetic to the heroine throughout the novel. At the end, however, this New Woman is “punished” exactly like Anna Karenina, although the narrator does not admit that it is punishment, referring to Herminia as “martyr” first of all. (p. 164) It is interesting that many fictional New Women are associated with martyrdom: Kovalevskaya’s Vera Barantsova and Sarah’s Grand’s Ideala are referred to as martyrs in the narrative. The (male) narrator in The Woman Who Did also emphasizes that Herminia is not only the new kind of woman, but a martyr “for humanity’s sake.”

(p. 57) Chernyshevsky did not represent Vera Pavlovna as a martyr, but he believed that this kind of people, like Vera Pavlovna, could change Russia. In Allen’s view, the figure of the New Woman would not only change a specific country, but humanity. He believes that through natural selection, sexual freedom, Herminia could be a link in the chain of

217 new humanity. Grant Allen was a follower of Spencer’s philosophy and his evolutionary theory.6 Perhaps Herminia as the New Woman was supposed to fit into a new model of social evolution: “Linking free choice with social progress, her revolutionary quest thereby reproduces the Spencerian ideal of progressive evolution culminating in the self- regulating and independent individual.”7

When the narrator introduces Herminia, he emphasizes her simple style, so characteristic of the fictional New Women. Kovalevskaya also emphasized the simplicity of Vera’s style in A Nihilist Girl. Herminia’s figure is associated with freedom and liberation that seems magnetic in her character to Alan and other people surrounding her:

The whole costume, though quite simple in style, a compromise either for afternoon or evening, was charming in its novelty, charming too in the way it permitted the utmost liberty and variety of movement to the lithe limbs of its wearer. But it was her face particularly that struck Alan Merrick at first sight. That face was above all things the face of a free woman. Something so frank and fearless shone in Herminia's glance, as her eye met his, that Alan, who respected human freedom above all other qualities in man or woman, was taken on the spot by its perfect air of untrammelled liberty. Yet it was subtle and beautiful too, undeniably beautiful. Herminia Barton's features, I think, were even more striking in their way in later life, when sorrow had stamped her, and the mark of her willing martyrdom for humanity's sake was deeply printed upon them. But their beauty then was the beauty of holiness, which not all can appreciate. In her younger days, as Alan Merrick first saw her, she was beautiful still with the first flush of health and strength and womanhood in a free and vigorous English girl's body. A certain lofty serenity, not untouched with pathos, seemed to strike the keynote. But that was not all. Some hint of every element in the highest loveliness met in that face and form, - physical, intellectual, emotional, moral. (P.56; my emphasis).

6 English philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) was also the sub-editor of The Economist. Herbert Spencer was influenced by a biologist Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895) and a physicist John Tyndall (1820-1893). Spencer also published in The Leader, The Fortnightly, and The Westminster Review. Herbert Spencer was an advocate of national education and a central church. He knew personally George Eliot (1819-1880), who was his dearest companion and assistant. 7 Cameron, Brooke. "Grant Allen's The Woman Who Did: Spencerian Individualism And Teaching New Women To Be Mothers." English Literature In Transition 1880-1920 51.3 (2008): 282. 218

She is not just a beautiful woman, but the “beauty of holiness.” (p. 57) She is at once “high in type, so serene, so tranquil, and yet so purely womanly.” (p. 63) In the beginning of the novel, Allen writes an apotheosis to the New Woman, but little by little, as the narration progresses, he seems to believe in this utopian figure himself. Critics from Punch caught venomously his doubts and uncertainty.

Herminia is depicted as a learned woman. She attends Girton College – the first women’s college at Cambridge. She does not take her degree and is critical and skeptical about education for women: “You see, if we women are ever to be free in the world, we must have in the end a freeman's education. But the education at Girton made only a pretense at freedom. At heart, our girls were as enslaved to conventions as any girls elsewhere. The whole object of the training was to see just how far you could manage to push a woman's education without the faintest danger of her emancipation.” (p. 57; my emphasis) She finds that the life at Girton is “one-sided.” (p. 59). She went to study at

Girton to find the Truth and emancipate herself. However, she realizes that Girton is also limited. Similarly, Kovalevskaya’s female protagonist Vera is disillusioned in education and aims at a bigger “cause” to rescue a student Jewish Pavlenkov.

Herminia thinks of women as slaves, perhaps under the influence of Mill’s work.

That is why she is against traditional marriage, because she perceives it as a form of slavery too. She believes that it is on purpose men do not want women to succeed morally and socially, although they help women to develop intellectually: “Sooner or later, I'm sure, if you begin by educating women, you must end by emancipating them."

(p. 58) In Herminia’s view, social and moral emancipation is more important than the mere political one. She is socially active and is a member of all women's franchise

219 leagues. However, she thinks social and ethical restrictions suppress women. It seems she wants to challenge these restrictions, although she was brought up in a religious family, her father was a clergyman of the Church of England. To challenge these restrictions, a woman must become independent first and foremost. She finds that the dependence of women “has allowed men to make laws for them, socially and ethically.” (p. 59) She is not afraid of her father’s contempt and disapproval; and does not want to be dependent of any man in her life, even on her father. Herminia supports herself working as a school teacher, which, just as in Russia, was one of the most common employment opportunities at the end of the century. She is conscious about her role as the New Woman and feels all of the responsibility for this role. She cannot let down other sisters by, for example, marrying the man she loves. She does not belong to those women, who, in Mrs.

Dewsbury’s words, when the right man turned up, could easily forget their protestations.

Herminia’s obstinate position is based on her hunger for the Truth. She made up her mind to find the Truth at all costs – even if it required personal self-immolating: “It would open our eyes, and emancipate us from social and moral slaveries. So I made up my mind, at the same time, that whenever I found the Truth I would not scruple to follow it to its logical conclusions, but would practise it in my life, and let it make me Free with perfect freedom.” (p. 65)

Alan Merrick proposes persistently to the New Woman Herminia. She in return is ready to love him, but only in free liaison – without any marriage. She explains many times her position about marriage. Her position seems to be so far ahead from the contemporaneous views, reigning in society. She feels to be part of a sisterhood that she cannot let down. Alan Merrick is that man who likes Herminia and understands her well;

220 he knows “the meanings of her hopes and aspirations.” (p. 67) He falls in love almost at first sight with Herminia. However, he insists that she go through conventional path, marrying him. Although he cannot help admiring her “more than ever before,” her ideas of freedom seem to him to be “an extreme.” (p. 72) Thus, Grant Allen shows that society and men are not prepared for the advanced New Women and their demands to be free.

The New Woman is forced to be an outsider and sufferer. Alan Merrick associates

Herminia’s role of the New Woman with martyrdom: “Why should you be the victim?

Why should you be the martyr? Bask in the sun yourself; leave this doom to some other.”

(p. 73; my emphasis) Her views, however, of marriage have formed when she was already sixteen. She sees a legal marriage as a system of slavery and believes in “free union” as the only form of relationships:

Even though you go to a registry-office and get rid as far as you can of every relic of the sacerdotal and sacramental idea, yet the marriage itself is still an assertion of man's supremacy over woman. It ties her to him for life, it ignores her individuality, it compels her to promise what no human heart can be sure of performing; for you can contract to do or not to do, easily enough, but contract to feel or not to feel,—what transparent absurdity! It is full of all evils, and I decline to consider it. If I love a man at all, I must love him on terms of perfect freedom. I can't bind myself down to live with him to my shame one day longer than I love him; or to love him at all if I find him unworthy of my purest love, or unable to retain it; or if I discover some other more fit to be loved by me. (p.74; my emphasis)

It is the destiny of the New Woman to be ahead of society, as most Russian and

Victorian writers demonstrate. Herminia cannot forgive George Eliot (1819-1880) for living in a “free union,” but professing in her work “the conventional lies” and

“conventional prejudices.” (p. 104) She understands, however, that society will not accept her progressive views of the New Woman. She is not afraid to fail in the role of the New Woman, formulating her philosophical position about success in life:

221

People won't allow others to be wiser and better than themselves, unpunished. They can forgive anything except moral superiority. We have each to choose between acquiescence in the wrong, with a life of ease, and struggle for the right, crowned at last by inevitable failure. To succeed is to fail, and failure is the only success worth aiming at. Every great and good life can but end in a Calvary. (p. 75; my emphasis)

Interestingly, Thomas Hardy wrote that critics can never be made to understand that the failure may be greater than the success. Herminia is ready to be hated, but free.

Whereas Herminia is fearless in everything, Alan is afraid of peoples’ misinterpretation and misunderstanding, especially of his conservative father. Many critics saw Grant

Allen as an anti-feminist and misogynistic novelist because of the tragic end of the novel.

The narrator’s tone, however, proves the opposite. The narrator admires Herminia’s freedom: “The Truth had made her Free, and she was very confident of it.” (p. 84) When

Alan meets confrontation and contempt from his father because of “free union,” he becomes sensitive to the double moral standards predominating in late-Victorian

England.

When Alan dies in Italy, Herminia becomes déclassée. Her position is even worse than when she was in a “free union,” since now she has an illegitimate child: “Women who had smothered her with their Judas kisses passed her by in their victorias with a stony stare. Even men pretended to be looking the other way, or crossed the street to avoid the necessity for recognizing her.” (p. 121) Now in her position she is no more allowed to be a teacher, since “no English parent could intrust the education of his daughters to the hands of a woman who has dared and suffered much, for conscience' sake, in the cause of freedom for herself and her sisters.” (ibid.)

Through the image of Herminia, Grant Allen discusses the “woman question” in detail and women’s sexual emancipation. But is society ready to face women’s sexual

222 emancipation? It turns out, it is not. Upon reaching adulthood, Herminia’s own daughter does not accept her mother’s progressive views on marriage. It was planned differently by Herminia; she was sure that her daughter would not only understand her position, but continue and enrich it. The conflict of two generations is ironic – the mother is progressive and daughter turns out to be a retrograde, who wants to marry and subside.

That is her only wish in life. This conflict and the misunderstandings between daughter and mother eventually push Herminia to commit suicide. What else can she do? The degree of hate and contempt she feels from her daughter is too much to bear. Her daughter does not inherit Herminia’s idealistic inclinations. There is no one to blame – they are absolutely different. The role of the New Woman presupposes exclusion from society, and not every woman, even if she wants to change her status, is ready to go through the torture of loneliness.

The narrator is not judgmental; on the contrary, he is compassionate to New

Women. Herminia, as most New Women fiction characters displays the true magnitude.

Her strength of character reminds Kovalevskaya’s Vera, Khvoshinskaya’s Lelenka,

Chernyshevky’s Vera Pavlovna, and Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. Hermina cannot stand the rebellion, and protest of her daughter. She, in fact, was perhaps not ready to become a mother. Allen shows that the role of the New Woman is incompatible with motherhood.

At least one of the roles – either motherhood or New Womanhood – suffers.

Grant Allen is obviously concerned with the demographic problem in the novel; one woman, in his view, should bear four children to sustain the population. This opinion was expressed in his work Plain Words on the Woman Question (1900). In this work, he argues with other New Women, such as Mona Caird and Olive Schreiner, who protested

223 against the motherhood as a necessary women’s role. Grant Allen thus criticizes some

New Women writers for seeing motherhood as unnecessary for a free woman role. He is defending motherhood in his novel as “the best privilege” of a woman. (p. 122)

The narrator plays with his reader: sometimes he identifies himself with the New

Woman or he distances himself from her. Herminia writes her own New Woman novel A

Woman’s World that does not attain success. Perhaps it reflects Allen’s fear of failure in the New Woman novel genre. Allen’s fear is expressed in the epigraph to the novel: “for the first time in my life wholly and solely to satisfy my own taste and my own conscience” (p. 53). It is his self-defense in advance. He did anticipate the difficulties he would face. His manuscript was rejected many times.

In his novel, Grant Allen acknowledges that fact that women attained success in novel writing at the end of the century. Through Herminia’s failure in the literary market,

Allen demonstrates how difficult it was for a woman writer to survive at the fin de siècle.

Ella Dixon’s the New Woman character Mary in The Story of Modern Woman (1894) also fails as a woman writer. Herminia writes an autobiographical novel about the New

Woman. The public is not ready for this type of heroines. The narrator defends women writers:

That is every woman's native idea of literature. It reflects the relatively larger part which the social life plays in the existence of women. If a man tells you he wants to write a book, nine times out of ten he means a treatise or argument on some subject that interests him. Even the men who take in the end to writing novels have generally begun with other aims and other aspirations, and have only fallen back upon the art of fiction in the last resort as a means of livelihood. But when a woman tells you she wants to write a book, nine times out of ten she means she wants to write a novel. (p. 122)

224

Allen was not a pioneer in the subject of “free union.” He is considered to be largely influenced by George Gissing’s The Odd Woman (1893) that also features the

New Woman. Allen wrote his novel with underlined simplicity, as if it were a tract, since he did not want it to be obscure, having made the plot transparent. Some critics compare his novel with a treatise.8 Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure in this sense is a more complex and ambiguous novel that represents a complex New Woman character’s Sue

Bridehead.

5.2 Thomas Hardy’s New Woman

There's one advantage in being a woman. A woman with brains and will may hope to distinguish herself in the greatest movement of our time – that of emancipating her sex.

George Gissing (1857-1903) The Odd Women

The “Victorianism” is a misleading term. It is a question whether it started in

1837 and ended in 1901. It is always hard to determine the exact chronology in history.

Thomas Hardy, the “last Victorian,” could not escape from the reigning ideology of the women’s movement of the end of the century, but he was by no means a feminist. At the same time, however, his novels have feminist consciousness and impulse, although he never positioned himself as a feminist openly. His work was “associated with the portrayal of female characters.”9

8 See Cameron, Brooke. "Grant Allen's The Woman Who Did: Spencerian Individualism And Teaching New Women To Be Mothers." English Literature In Transition 1880-1920 51.3 (2008): 281-301. 9 Boumelha, Penny. Thomas Hardy and Women: Sexual Ideology and Narrative Form (Sussex: Harvester Press, 1982), p. 1. 225

Thomas Hardy’s attitude towards the women’s rights movement and the suffrage movement was ambiguous; and his ambivalent views on the figure of the New Woman are imprinted in his last novel Jude the Obscure (1895). He did sympathize with the New

Woman and the women’s suffrage movement, but one may assume he was skeptical about it, since he refused, for example, to become Vice-President of the Women’s

Progressive Society in 1892, right after the appearance of his celebrated novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891), the sub-title of which – “A Pure Woman” – shocked the

Victorian public. But who could better understand women than the author of Tess? That was the logic of feminists when they suggested that Hardy participate in the Women’s

Progressive Society.

Thomas Hardy’s interest in New Women and the suffrage movement could also be dictated by the influence of his first wife Emma Hardy, who was a supporter of the movement. Hardy confirms his interest for the women’s suffrage in a letter to an English feminist Millicent Fawcett (1847-1929):

I have for a long time been in a favor of woman-suffrage. I fear I shall spoil the effect of this information (if it has any) in my next sentence by giving you my reasons. I am in favor of it because I think the tendency of the woman’s vote will be to break up the present pernicious conventions in respect of manners, customs, religion, illegitimacy, the stereotyped household (that it must be the unit of society), the father of a woman’s child (that it is anybody’s business but the woman’s own, except in cases of disease or insanity), sport (that so-called educated men should be encouraged to harass & kill for pleasure feeble creatures by mean stratagems), slaughter houses (that they should be dark dens of cruelty), & other matters which I got into hot water for touching on many years ago. I do not mean that I think all women, or even a majority, will actively press some or any of the first mentioned of such points, but that their being able to assert themselves will loosen the tongues of men who have not liked to speak out such subjects while women have been their helpless dependents (my emphasis).10

10 Hardy, Thomas, Richard L. Purdy, and Michael Millgate. The Collected Letters of Thomas Hardy. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), pp. 238-239. Quoted in Dutta, Shanta. Ambivalence in Hardy: A Study of His Attitude to Women (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000), p. 199. 226

In his last novel, Hardy depicts a woman who is no longer a helpless dependent.

She is responsible for her own choices. “Mr. Case,” however, determines the position of the protagonists. Moreover, Jude the Obscure belongs to the category of “Novels of

Character and Environment,” according to Hardy’s own classification. The Environment, from which no one can escape, their social rank determines all protagonists’ actions. The theme of social position was of great interest for Thomas Hardy, since he himself could feel the unbelonging to the upper-class. His father was a stone-mason with a humble income. It was his mother who gave him good education. This pain of class belonging is reflected in many Hardy’s novels.

The Environment, Hardy laments in Jude the Obscure, as well as Grant Allen, is not favorable to New Women, since they are too much ahead of their time. Grant Allen writes in The Woman Who Did: “That is the worst of living a life morally ahead of your contemporaries; what you do with profoundest conviction of its eternal rightness cannot fail to arouse hostile and painful feelings even in the souls of the most right-minded of your friends who still live in bondage to the conventional lies and the conventional injustices. It is the good, indeed, who are most against you.” (p. 95)

Hardy understood it well and refused to part take in the Women’s Progressive

Society. Hardy was largely influenced by Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) and was accused for his pessimism after publishing his last novel. If Jude the Obscure is any pessimistic – it is only because in Grant Allen’s words “All honest art is therefore of necessity pessimistic.” (p. 124) Hardy writes in the preface about his novel:

For a novel addressed by a man to men and women of full age; which attempts to deal unaffectedly with the fret and fever, derision and disaster, that may press in the wake of the strongest passion known to humanity; to tell, without a mincing word, of a deadly war waged between flesh and spirit; and to point the tragedy of unfulfilled aims, I am not

227 aware that there is anything in the handling to which exception can be taken. (p. xxvii; my emphasis)

Thus he formulates the focus of his novel – the “tragedy of unfulfilled aims” of two people: Jude and Sue. The writer explains further that Jude the Obscure is a “series of seemings, or personal impressions,” emphasizing the subjectivity of his observations

(p. xxvii) Also, in the preface to the first edition Hardy states that he wrote this novel under the influence of the “death of a woman in the former year.” (p. xxvii) The theme of death is central to this novel. The last pages of Jude the Obscure are a poem about death, written in the language that engrosses, hypnotizes with its rhythm, alluding to infinity. It is known, however, that Hardy was largely influenced by Darwinism. His protagonists struggle for survival throughout the novel; nonetheless, it is symbolic that the New

Woman Sue returns to her religious views at the end of the novel, although in the beginning she challenges women’s conventional role. As Penny Boumelha notes the

“radicalism of Hardy’s representation of women resides, not in their ‘complexity’, their

‘realism’ or their ‘challenge to convention,’ but in their resistance to reduction to a single and uniform ideological position.”11 Indeed, Sue is resistant, but at the end she still reconciles with her position, when she returns to her first husband.

Hardy supported women’s right to vote, although he was uncertain what it would ultimately bring to women. Perhaps he hoped for better time for women and saw his participation in the suffrage movement as futile for that particular moment. If his position about the suffrage was ambivalent, on the matter of educational rights for women he had a distinct position. He blamed men for women’s intellectual starvation. His position about

11 Boumelha, Penny. Thomas Hardy and Women: Sexual Ideology and Narrative Form (Sussex: Harvester Press, 1982), p. 7. 228

New Women was quite ambiguous as well. Shanta Dutta writes about Hardy’s attitude to the figure of the New Woman at the fin de siècle:

Towards the bright, independent, articulate modern women of the turn of the century – the ‘New Women’ – Hardy’s attitude was again ambivalent. He appreciated them in literature, but in real life he probably found them somewhat overwhelming (my emphasis).12

Hardy published Jude the Obscure in installments in Harper’s New Monthly

Magazine from 1894 to 1895. He classified his major novels as “Novels of Character and

Environment.” He had three categories of novels: “Novels of Character and

Environment,” “Novels of Ingenuity and Experiment,” and “Romances and Fantasies.”

To the first category belong Under the Green Tree (1872), Far from the Madding Crowd

(1874), The Return of the Native (1878), The Woodlanders (1887), The Mayor of

Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891) and Jude the Obscure (1895).

Second category includes Desperate Remedies (1871), The Hand of Ethelbertha (1876) and A Laodicean (1881). A Pair of Blue Eyes (1873), The Trumpet Major (1880), Two on a Tower (1882) and The Well-Beloved (1897) belong to the third category. Arthur

Compton widened Hardy’s classification:

1. Pastoral tragedies: The Return of the Native (1878), The Mayor of Casterbridge

(1886), Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891), and Jude the Obscure (1895).

2. Pastoral comedies: The Hand of Ethelbertha (1876), A Laodicean (1881) and

Two on a Tower (1882).

3. Pastoral Romances: Under the Green Tree (1872), Far from the Madding

Crowd (1874), A Pair of Blue Eyes (1873), The Trumpet Major (1880), and The

Woodlanders (1887).

12 Dutta, Shanta. Ambivalence in Hardy: A Study of His Attitude to Women (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000), p. 206. 229

4. Pastoral Extravaganza. The Well-Beloved (1897).

5. The shorts stories. Wessex Tales (1883), A Group of Noble Dames (1891),

Life’s Little Ironies (1894) and A Changed Man (1913).

6. Hardy’s poetry. Wessex Poems (1898), Poems of the Past and Present (1901),

The Dynasts (1903-1908), Time’s Laughing Stocks (1909) and Satires of

Circumstances (1914).13

Many critics of his time had a limited interpretation of Jude the Obscure because they concentrated their attention on the problem of the institution of marriage. It is not surprising – for late-Victorians “free union” was a new notion, and “Victorian society held rigid ‘views on marriage’ and the role of women in life.”14 In a letter to Edmund

Gosse Thomas Hardy writes:

It is curious that some of the papers should look upon the novel as a manifesto on ‘the marriage question’ (although of course, it involves it) – seeing that it is concerned first with the labours of a poor student to get a University degree, & secondly with the tragic issues of two bad marriages, owning in the main to a doom or curse temperament peculiar to the family of the parties. The only remarks which can be said to bear on the general marriage question occur in dialogue, & comprise no more than half a dozen pages in a book of five hundred. 15 (original emphasis)

This misinterpretation and misunderstanding of the complexity of his last novel made him fall silent as a novelist. His novel was not accepted in two countries – America and England, – and even burnt publically by the bishop of Wakefield, as Thomas Hardy himself claimed. Hardy’s position on marriage and divorce, however, was radical and ahead of his time: “My opinion at that time, if I remember rightly, was what it is now, that a marriage should be dissolvable as soon as it becomes a cruelty to either of the

13 See Arthur Compton-Rickett. A History of English Literature (New Delhi: UBS Publishers, 1993), p. 541. This classification is also given in Barad, Dilipsinh P. The Women Characters in the Novels of Thomas Hardy (New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers & Distributors, 2009), p. 8-9. 14 Barad, Dilipsinh P. The Women Characters in the Novels of Thomas Hardy, p. 37. 15 Ibid., p. 93. 230 parties – being then essentially and morally no marriage – and it seemed a good foundation for the fable of a tragedy, told for its own sake as a presentation of particulars containing a good deal that was universal, and not without hope that certain cathartic,

Aristotelian qualities might be found therein.” (p. xxix)

In the first drafts of Jude the Obscure, Sue appears in the first part of the novel.

Hardy changed the title from “The Simpletons” to Jude the Obscure and erased the figure of Sue from the beginning of the novel. Thus, originally, Hardy conceived the novel as

“having binary focus,” but in the final version he “privileges Jude over Sue and erases her primary status as (joint) protagonist of this novel.”16 Hardy also considered as the title for this novel “The New Woman” and “A Woman with Ideas.” In the postscript Hardy writes about Sue:

Sue Bridehead, the heroine, was the first delineation in fiction of the woman who was coming into notice in her thousands every year – the woman of the feminist movement – the slight, pale ‘bachelor’ girl – the intellectualized, emancipated bundle of nerves that modern conditions were producing, mainly in cities as yet; who does not recognize the necessity for most of her sex to follow marriage as profession, and boast themselves as superior people because they are licensed to be loved on the premises. (p. xxx; my emphasis)

Thomas Hardy, as a keen social observer, captures that new femininities appeared in a large number, and he calls them “the woman of the feminist movement.” He also highlights that this phenomenon takes place in cities. These women consider themselves as “superior” and criticize the institute of marriage. Marriage ceases to be their

“profession.” They strive for intellectual life.

The novel opens up with poetic description of Jude Fawley’s boyhood and his dreams about education. An orphan boy is attached to his teacher Mr. Phillotson, who

16 Dutta, Shanta. Ambivalence in Hardy: A Study of His Attitude to Women (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000), p. 113. 231 wants to move to Christminster, a fictional town and university, to become the

“University man.” The narrator emphasizes that Jude has a sensitive soul, “tears rose into the boy’s eyes,” when his teacher is leaving (p. 2) The teacher forgets the poetic soul of

Jude pretty fast and later even does not remember him at all. Jude is very persistent in getting education; he is, in Sue’s words, “a man with passion for learning, but no money, or opportunities, or friends.” (p. 139) His aunt, Miss Fawley, says about Jude and his cousin Sue: “The boy is crazy for books, that he is. It runs in our family rather. His cousin Sue is just the same – so I’ve heard.” (p. 5) He teaches himself Latin and Greek; he has “acquired and average student’s power to read ancient classics, Latin in particular.” (p. 28) His dream is to go to Christminster, where the “tree of knowledge grows.” (p. 17)

The narrator underlines boy’s lonely childhood: “They [the birds] seemed, like himself, to be living in a world which did not want them.” (p. 7). However, as the narrator explains further in detail Jude’s character and his sensitivity, “This weakness of his character, as it may be called, suggested that he was the sort of man who was born to ache a good deal before the fall of the curtain upon his unnecessary life should signify that all was well with him again.” (p. 9) This weakness of his character is also Jude’s strength. The narrator hints at Jude’s tragic end, when he is liberated from this unbearable ache that tortured him all life.

Jude does not want to grow up, since he is afraid of the cruel world that brings responsibilities. Perhaps he has presentments about his tragic life, his “‘hell of conscious failure’, both in ambition and in love.” (p. 114). His boyhood ends with his unfortunate marriage with Arabella that leaves him pretty soon and goes to Australia, marrying

232 another man. The narrator describes that power the attraction that Jude felt when he met

Arabella: “The unvoiced call of woman to man, which was uttered very distinctly by

Arabella's personality, held Jude to the spot against his intention – almost against his will, and in a way new to his experience.” (p. 32)

Sue is never presented to the reader directly in the beginning, but rather through the eyes of other protagonists. Her figure is very ambiguous and dual: she is a martyr and an inconsistent, selfish, flirting femininity at the same time. She wants to be sexually attractive, but at the same time to remain chaste. Hardy presents a “vivid, volatile and unpredictable human being rather than a clinical case which can be objectively analyzed, neatly labelled, and conventionally filed away in a medical journal.”17

Dostoevsky’s protagonist Polina in The Gambler (1867) resembles Sue in many respects. As Thomas Hardy, Dostoevsky had a “feminist impulse” because he admired independent women. Perhaps it is difficult to classify Dostoevsky as feminist writer, as he was a Slavophile, and the Slavophiles, as it is known, were arduous fighters for women’s traditional roles. However, the figure of Dostoevsky was more complex than fitting into any specific categories. M. M. Bakhtin writes in his Problems of Dostoevsky’s

Poetics that Dostoevsky’s work “does not fit any of the preconceived frameworks or historical-literary schemes that we usually apply to various species of the European novel.”18 The same would be true for Thomas Hardy. Dostoevsky, as Bakhtin defines him, is an Artist. He is not just a writer, thinker, and philosopher. He is an Artist who created his own individual world(s), densely populated by “autonomous subjects,” independent from author’s position characters.

17 Ibid., p. 116. 18 Bakhtin, M. M. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, p. 7. 233

In 1871, ten years before his death, Dostoevsky wrote that although he is fifty years old, he has not started living his life yet. He also added that it is the main feature of his life and his work. His main protagonist Alexej Ivanovich in The Gambler, as it seems, has not to start living his life yet either. From the very beginning, Alexej is a shadow in the novel. Alexej’s identity is always in flux in The Gambler, at times being a mere supplement and sometimes attempting to dominate. In the beginning, when Alexej returns from two weeks leave of absence, the General and Maria Philipovna ignore him.

In his own consciousness, everyone is waiting for his arrival in Roulettenberg, a fictional city. Even mysterious Polina seems to not be interested in his personality. Alexej rebels in his function as a mere shadow, concluding that her coldness is on purpose. He defines himself as belonging to the General’s suite, who is a wealthy Russian nobleman.

For Alexej, it is important how he is perceived by others. He wants himself to appear and not to be. It is his own consciousness that makes him a minor element. Thus, the fact that he appears in Roulettenberg in a position to be thought as millionaire excites him. “To be thought as” is very important for Alexej. Polina emphasizes his position as a secondary element. The narrator has two passions: Polina and gambling. He is going through love-hate shifts towards both. For the narrator, Polina is the mysterious female soul that he tries to comprehend. When the narrator thinks he knows her, she slips off.

Similarly, Hardy’s Sue is the mysterious female soul for Jude. Love-hate relationships are characteristic of Hardy’s protagonists as well: Jude loves-hates his first wife Arabella, and then he loves-hates Sue. At times, Polina is like the Empress and treats Alexej as a slave. Polina’s feelings towards the narrator are also miscellaneous. She does not hide her contempt and dislike if she feels so. She is a direct personality, exactly as Sue. Polina

234 does not hide at all that she needs the narrator because he is “necessary” to her, and is never completely frank with people.19 This love-hate relationship can perhaps be interpreted through the Bakhtinian lens. Polina ignores the narrator and thus she does not rush to transform him “from a shadow into an authentic reality.” Polina, unlike people surrounding her, is in Bakhtinian’s terms an “authentic reality.” Everyone “sees” her, but she is not in hurry to choose and turn someone into reality. Alexis, a shadow, has an air of uneasiness and impatience about Polina’s choice. Polina is also a kind of roulette for the narrator. Upon her choice, it depends whether he becomes an “autonomous subject.”

The “catastrophe of the disunited consciousness” (Bakhtin’s term) is inevitable for the narrator.

We do not know anything about Polina’s past. She is here and now in the novelistic structure. As if she is outside of time, but she is within a certain space. We also do not know the biographies of other characters either. Both female characters – Sue and

Polina – are volatile femininities. As we understand at the end of the novel, Polina always loved Alexej. Her behavior can be seen as her desire to remain independent that is perhaps why she does not admit her feelings. It is obvious that Sue loves Jude, too, but she returns to her husband perhaps because she does not want to be a slave. Polina’s complex image is also the author’s farewell with Apollinaria Suslova and his passion for gambling. After his last marriage with Anna Grigoryevna Snitkina (1846-1918), the author himself gives up this habit.

Sue is perhaps an “authentic reality” as well. Her attitude to marriage does not differ from Grant Allen’s Herminia and Dostovesky’s Polina. The New Woman Herminia sees marriage as slavery and Polina perceives it as selling herself. For Sue, marriage is

19 Bakhtin, M. M. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, p. 10. 235

“dreadful contract to feel in a particular way in a matter whose essence is its voluntariness!” (p 230) She perceives a loveless marriage as a form of prostitution. That is why she leaves her husband in the first place. Manjit Kaur points out that “Sue

Bridehead in Jude the Obscure becomes the most emancipated of Hardy’s heroines who take up the issue of freedom not only in the choice of lovers but also in the most private matters of sexuality and marriage.”20 Both relatives (they are cousins) Jude and Sue think unconsciously that they do not fit in marriages because of their family history. Sue wants to become a teacher, which was a traditional professional feminine role at the fin de siècle. Hardy’s Tess also wants to become a teacher in the very beginning of the novel.

Sue, however, unlike Tess, who went to the village school, is educated for a woman of her time and openly criticizes Christianity. Sue “had passed some sort of examination for a Queen's Scholarship, and was going to enter a training college at Melchester to complete herself for the vocation she had chosen” (p. 118). Sue knows J. Stuart Mill by heart and reads “Lempière, Catullus, Martial, Juvenal, Lucian, Beaumont and Fletcher,

Boccaccio, Scarron, De Brantȏme, Sterne, De Foe, Smollett, Fielding, Shakespeare, the

Bible, and other such” (p. 135)

The death of Sue’s children is a turning point and culmination in her relationships with Jude. Symbolically, the Father Time, Jude’s son from his first marriage, kills their children. Sue sees a sign in this tragedy: “Arabella's child killing mine was a judgment – the right slaying the wrong.” (p. 332) The Father Time commits suicide after killing

Sue’s children; the boy writes after the murder: “Done because we are too many.” (p.

318; original emphasis) Sue is opposed to Arabella, Jude’s first wife. If the (male) narrator calls Arabella “a complete and substantial female animal – no less no more” in

20 Manajit, Kaur. The Feminist Sensibility in the Novels of Thomas Hardy (New Delhi: Sarup, 2005), p. 59. 236 the beginning of the novel, he never refers to Sue as an animal, but Sue once compares herself with a “domestic animal” in the letter to Jude:

According to the ceremony as there printed, my bridegroom chooses me of his own will and pleasure; but I don't choose him. Somebody gives me to him, like a she-ass or she-goat, or any other domestic animal. (p. 158; original emphasis)

Hardy criticizes double morality predominating in Victorian England. Sue who chooses her lover openly and is honest about her relationships with this man is the victim of society. (p. 30) Arabella, an animal-like woman, who could be regarded as a “fallen” woman, but is not rebellious openly, escapes from societal labels. Sue bears Jude’s children out of wedlock that barely makes her a “fallen” woman as she is perceived in the

Victorian society. Thus, Thomas Hardy also dwells on the problem of “free union,” like

Grant Allen. Sue’s understanding of marriage is far ahead of her contemporaries:

If a marriage ceremony is a religious thing, it is possibly wrong; but if it is only a sordid contract, based on material convenience in householding, rating, and taxing, and the inheritance of land and money by children, making it necessary that the male parent should be known—which it seems to be—why surely a person may say, even proclaim upon the housetops, that it hurts and grieves him or her? (p. 196)

Thomas Hardy, as well as Grant Allen, anticipates the changes, shifting, and restructuring of roles in society, but both were attacked for their advanced views. Hardy expresses his view through the figure of the New Woman Sue: “When people of a later age look back upon the barbarous customs and superstitions of the times that we have the unhappiness to live in, what will they say!” (p. 201; original emphasis) According to Sue,

“Domestic laws should be made according to temperaments, which should be classified.

If people are at all peculiar in character they have to suffer from the very rules that produce comfort in others!” (p. 208) Sue thinks that women enter into marriage only “for

237 the dignity it is assumed to confer, and the social advantages it gains them sometimes.”

(p. 244) The narrator’s attitude to the femme fatale Arabella is not negative, although he finds her to be an animal-like creature. Hardy also depicts Tess as a pure woman, whom he compares still to “wild animal” in the beginning. The voice of the narrator sympathetic with this Arabella at times as well. The fact that Sue loses her children and miscarriges one makes her a martyr-like figure. Whether it is her punishment or mere circumstances,

Sue chooses to return to her first husband, whom she left once for Jude. Sue explains why she married the man she did not love in the first place:

But sometimes a woman's love of being loved gets the better of her conscience, and though she is agonized at the thought of treating a man cruelly, she encourages him to love her while she doesn't love him at all. Then, when she sees him suffering, her remorse sets in, and she does what she can to repair the wrong. (p. 227; original emphasis)

Similarly, Dostoevsky’s Polina in The Gambler likes “being loved.” Sue recognizes providence and sign in her tragedy of losing her children and wants Jude to return to his first wife. Jude’s first marriage was unhappy, however. He was seduced by

Arabella, who skillfully caught him in her net, pretending to be pregnant. For Jude, in his words, it was “a complete smashing up” of his plans, his dreams “about books, and degrees, and impossible fellowships.” (p. 80) Besides, Arabella and Jude are very different. He is very sensitive and starves for knowledge and “something higher.”

(p. 139) She is calm and rational in the scene of slaughtering the pig that perhaps characterizes her. Arabella rather strives for pleasure in her life. At the end of the novel,

Sue returns to her first husband Mr. Phillotson, and Jude – to his first wife Arabella. Sue believes now in the indissolubility of marriage.

238

Hardy criticizes the institution of marriage as “fundamental error” of basing a

“permanent contract on a temporary feeling” and as a “month’s pleasure with a life discomfort” (p. 60; p. 244) He dwells upon the theme of the dual nature of women in the novel, writing about Sue’s “curious double nature” and her “cruelly sweet” attitude to her lover Jude (p. 195; p. 160). The two antithetical women – Arabella and Sue are perhaps those struggles that are inside of Jude himself. In this sense, in Simone-de

Beauvoir’s words, man is here “self” and women here are the “other,” or supplement.21

Thus, at the end of Jude the Obscure, Sue, returning to her husband whom she does not love, returns to her role of supplement again. She fails, then, as the New Woman in “free union.” Arabella is an embodiment of Jude’s “demons” and lower instincts, whereas Sue represents his “angels” and spirituality. Jude, however, escapes from both – his angels and demons by committing suicide. Through this action, he becomes a unity himself because he does not need any female complement. Moreover, his aspirations for education become absurd. Jude whispers his powerful last words:

"Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, There is a man-child conceived."

("Hurrah!")

"Let that day be darkness; let not God regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it. Lo, let that night be solitary, let no joyful voice come therein."

("Hurrah!")

"Why died I not from the womb? Why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly? … For now should I have lain still and been quiet. I should have slept: then had I been at rest!"

("Hurrah!")

21 Beauvoir, Simone .The Second Sex. New York: Knopf, 1953, p. 9. 239

"There the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the oppressor… The small and the great are there; and the servant is free from his master. Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter in soul?" (p. 384; original emphasis)

Hardy provides a powerful contrast of Jude’s death and the honorary degrees that are being conferred to students, perhaps expressing his own disillusionment. Thus, he underlines the equality of everyone, facing death and the tragedy of unfulfilled dreams of every human being. Jude embodies the whole humanity at the end. He went through a difficult journey of life, through the labyrinths in a search of self-identity. He associated his self-identity with education, but his hopes are ruined because of circumstances and environment and finally suicide. Sue also suffers from environment and circumstances.

This New Woman, who is ahead of her time, protests against the conventional society, living with Jude in “free union,” but she is not ready emotionally for her new role as many New Women. She is “at once Hardy’s major contribution to feminism and the expression of his doubt in it.”22 This ambivalence is very characteristic for Hardy in many aspects. She “fails” at the end as the New Woman, returning to conventional

“cage.” Her failure, however, is not “the result of feminine weakness but the cruelty of the social forces taxing on the personal freedom of a woman.”23 Besides, what is failure?

Thomas Hardy wrote in his diary in 1907 that critics can never be made to understand that failure may be greater than success. Thus, Sue’s and Jude’s failure is perhaps also greater than success.

Hardy focuses on women’s sexuality in both novels – Tess and Jude the Obscure, questioning the role of the Victorian woman. It is valuable that the women he depicts are not from the upper society. His women are from lower ranks. It is interesting that both –

22 Katharine Rogers, “Women in Thomas Hardy,” Centennial Review, 19: 4 (1975):254. 23 Manajit, Kaur. The Feminist Sensibility in the Novels of Thomas Hardy (New Delhi: Sarup, 2005), p. 72. 240

Tess and Sue – have some “masculine” traits; they are androgynous types. Tess and Sue, and Dostoevsky’s Polina, are portrayed as strong and independent women. Sue and Tess

“fail” at the end. Hardy contributes to the fictional gallery of New Women with one of the most complex figures that is hard to compare with any other new female identities.

Her position on marriage, family, marital law is similar to New Women Vera Pavlovna and Herminia Barton, who defend freedom for the woman to choose her lover, a “free union,” or marriage. Chernyshevsky’s Vera Pavlovna chooses a legal marriage, but the second one, which was out if societal norms. Perhaps Hardy saw the contradictions of the actual New Women in the late-Victorian society and imprinted them in his Jude the

Obscure. As an observer, he prefers “failure” for his protagonist, as well as many New

Women novelists. In this sense, the figure of the New Woman, represented by Russian writers that were discussed in this work, are more optimistic: both Vera Pavlovna and

Vera Barantsova succeed at the end and find their “purpose” and their “cause.”

Khvoshinskaya’s Lelenka also overshadows the male character, becoming and independent and professional woman. Herzen chooses a “failure” for his heroine

Lyuobonka, as well as Hardy, lamenting about circumstances and environment.

Victorian women writers also often choose “failure” for their New Women heroines.

Sarah Grant and Ella Dixon represent the New Women as social misfits. The next chapter reads the female voices advocating the New Woman.

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Chapter Six: The “New Woman” through the Female Gaze

6.1 Sarah Grand’s Ideala Elena Gan’s The Ideal

Henceforth Charlotte Bontë’s existence becomes divided into two parallel currents – her life as Currer Bell, the author; her life as Charlotte Bontë, the woman. There were separate duties belonging to each character – not opposing each other; not impossible, but difficult to be reconciled. When a man becomes an author, it is probably merely a change of employment to him. He takes a portion of that time which has hitherto been devoted to some other study or pursuit; he gives up something of the legal or medical profession, in which he has hitherto endeavored to serve others, or relinquishes part of the trade or business by which he has been striving to gain a livelihood; and another merchant or lawyer, or doctor, steps into his vacant place, and probably does as well as he. But no other can take up the quiet, regular duties of the daughter, the wife, or rye mother, as well as she whom God has appointed to fill that particular place: a woman’s principal work in life is hardly left to her own choice; nor can she drop the domestic charges devolving on her as an individual, for the existence of the most splendid talents that ever were bestowed. And yet she must not shrink from the extra responsibility implied by the very fact of her possessing such talents. She must not hide her gift in a napkin; it was meant for the use and service of others. In a humble and faithful spirit must she labour to do what is not impossible, or God would not have set her to do it.1

Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865) The Life of Charlotte Brontë

Analogous obstacles, described in Gaskell’s biography of Charlotte Brontë (1816-

1855), faced many female authors, including Sarah Grand and Elena Gan. Elaine

Showalter in A History of Their Own (1977) determines three phases of the feminist literary development: feminine, feminist, and female. Charlotte Brontë starts the feminine phase that lasts until the death of George Eliot in the 1880s. The feminist phase begins in the 1880s and ends in 1920 when the female phase begins. Charlotte Brontë featured new female identities in her novels. Shirley Keeldar, the main protagonist of Shirley

(1849), is one of the first fictional New Women.

Although time and space separate the two –late-Victorian and Russian – novels

Sarah Grand’s Ideala (1888) and Elena Gan’s The Ideal (1837), both oeuvres touch upon the theme and phenomenon of marginalized femininity and the New Woman in society.

Elena Gan’s novel was quite ahead of her time, when the distinct New Woman image

1 Gaskell, Elizabeth C. The Life of Charlotte Brontë (New York: D. Appleton, 1857), pp. 237-238. 242 was not yet introduced to Russian literature. Sarah Grand’s Idelala kept up with her time, when in England the image of the New Woman became popular in literature and periodicals. Ideala is the name of the main protagonist of Sarah Grand’s novel. It is doubtful that the choice of the name of the female character Ideala was random, since, for

Sarah Grand, she is the ideal of the New Woman who, as if a romantic hero, rejects norms and conventions of contemporary society. The New Woman novels were mostly autobiographical or semi-autobiographical in Russia and late-Victorian England. Sarah

Grand’s novels depict her own resentment and protest against society.

Sarah Grand, born Frances Elizabeth McFall (1854-1943), was the daughter of a naval officer. Her whole trilogy The Heavenly Twins (1893), The Beth Book (1893), and

Ideala (1888) published between 1888 and 1897 were bestsellers discussing the “woman question.” Grand’s female characters are suffering, caring, and noble women who marry without love. Grand’s marriage was also full of unhappiness and pain. She published short stories, but her trilogy is considered to be her most important literary work. In addition to fiction, Grand wrote essays for literary journals and magazines, primarily focusing on women’s status. As literary critic John Kucich observes, “In all her novels, for example, Grand struggles with late Victorian conundrums about roles of candor and secrecy in women’s lives, or the certainty of traditional feminine ideals of self-sacrifice within the feminist cause.”2 The “self-sacrifice within the feminist cause” is characteristic for most New Women. Interestingly enough, albeit Grand is considered to coin the term the “New Woman” itself, she always distanced herself from belonging to the New

Womanhood.

2 Harman, Barbara L, and Susan Meyer. The New Nineteenth Century: Feminist Readings of Underread Victorian Fiction (New York: Garland Pub, 1996), p. 196. 243

Elena Gan could not boast to be the New Woman, either, but already her daughter

Helena Blavatsky (1831-1891) could. Elena Gan (née Fadeeva) is one of the most significant writers of the period of early Realism in Russia in the 1840s. Her novel is written in the tradition of Romanticism, a society tale. Her work was highly praised and positively accepted by the public and Belinsky; she was even called the “Russian George

Sand” for imitating Sand’s style and spirit. Gan’s literary career, however, was quite brief. Her daughters, Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and Vera Zhelihovskaya

(1835-1896), lost her when they were children. Before her death, at the age of twenty- eight, Gan expressed a deep concern for her daughter Helena, who was her most sensitive child. She sensed that Helena would have a very difficult life. In fact, Blavatsky’s life deserves a separate study. Her figure is mysterious and dual. Some consider her as a woman who lied, and some believe that she was a powerful spiritual leader. Whether or not that Mystic Knowledge that she preached exists, there will always be a natural aspiration for a deeper search for Truth. Perhaps Madame Blavatsky was a real soldier looking beyond wide-accepted beliefs, or just another talented performer, she was interesting anyway from a historical perspective. Her story is an inspiring path, proving that a woman of the nineteenth century could be more than a wife. Her life ended in

London, England, although through a fictitious marriage she was naturalized in the

United States.

Gan’s heroines are, just like Sarah Grand’s, intelligent, sensitive, and educated women, who were confronted with a cruel reality of subordination and injustice. Gan began writing in the 1830s when Russian women started entering the literary world.

Although Gan complains about women’s status, unlike George Sand and Sarah Grand,

244 she admits and accepts that women’s inferiority is natural and normal. Women, according to Gan, are weak creatures. One can find a place and a self-realization in this world only if one is a man. Gan’s own position in society was very difficult. This difficulty was related to her occupation as a writer, as well as her alienation from surrounding contemporaneous society. Gan was a learned woman for her time, a woman genius. She lamented that male writers looked at her as a rare animal, a crocodile in flannel. Osip

Ivanovich Senkovskiy (1800-1858), was a protector of Gan; he helped her publish her stories. At that time, he worked as the editor of the thick literary journal Biblioteka Dlya

Chteniya (Library for Reading) (1833-1856). However, their relationship grew very tense when he rewrote her stories before publication.

The heroines of her novels are also alienated creatures as she was herself, living in the periphery as opposed to “society” women and coping with local mores and narrow- mindedness. Barbara Engel confirms that “the alienation of Gan’s talented heroines reflects her own self-image.”3 Her heroines are extraordinary women with exceptional characters – that kind that is often despised, as Gan laments, by the public. Gan’s first novel The Ideal (1839) imitates Sand’s style and plot of Indiana (1832), where the unhappily married heroine leaves her husband. The novel was published in 1837 in

Biblioteka Dlya Chteniya (Library for Reading). The theme of self-sacrifice is central to both novels – The Ideal and Ideala. Although Elena Gan worked in the tradition of

Romanticism, one can find many traits of Realism in her society tale. From the very beginning, the female narrator in The Ideal and the (male) narrator of Ideala underline both female protagonists’ marginalization and alienation from society. The society in

3 Engel, Barbara A. Mothers and Daughters: Women of the Intelligentsia in Nineteenth Century Russia, p. 31. 245

Gan’s The Ideal is “like a huge idol which had not yet had a soul allocated to it.” (Gan, p.

2) This huge idol judges new femininity Olga for her progressiveness, trying to find her

“hidden vices,” only because she is a writer, and then prescribing her many other vices.

Olga’s and Ideala’s “otherness” is even in the way they dress. Both – Olga Goltsberg and

Ideala – are indifferent to their appearance. When the narrator introduces Olga, we recognize the new femininity by the simplicity of her style:

At that moment a young woman of about 22 entered the room. She was not beautiful, but graceful, nice and dressed extremely simply: not a single flower, no bronze ornaments. At first glance one could say about her – she’s not bad looking – but the second glance gave rise to the wish to look more closely into her features, and the more you looked in them, the more unwillingly would you look away from this sweet little face. (p. 2; my italics)

The narrator’s voice is compassionate to Olga – “this radiant poetic soul,” as if the narrator predicts already a tragic outcome for a woman who dares to be different from everyone else. (p. 4) The narrator underlines the awkwardness of Olga’s position, beckoning a reader to forgive her excessive dreaminess: “There are individuals who are born into society for reasons I do not know – because to a world which is full of cold reasoning and calculations, they bring a spirit which thirsts for profound, true feeling.”

(p. 11) Olga is that individual and an “uncommon woman,” who is born “to be adornment of humanity,” but she is surrounded by “poisonous swarm of wasps, who found their pleasure in stinging her from all sides” (p. 4) Writing a novel alone “which will soon appear in print” is an irritation for the huge soulless idol. (p. 3) Besides, society cannot forgive Olga “her cold indifference” to rumors and gossip, her “liking for a solitary life,” and “especially they couldn’t forgive the simplicity with which she dressed, with no bronze.” (p. 6) The fashion in the nineteenth century is another interesting topic. To be

246 simply dressed was either a sign of poverty, lack of taste – or protest. The narrator of

Ideala also underlines the simple style of the female protagonist:

But what the secret of her charm was I cannot say. She was full of inconsistencies. She disliked ostentation, and never wore those ornamental fidgets ladies delight in, but she would take a piece of priceless lace to cover her head when she went to water her flowers. And she said rings were a mistake; if your hands were ugly they drew attention to them, if pretty they hid their beauty; yet she wore half-a-dozen worthless ones habitually for the love of those who gave them, to her. (Grand, p. 7)

Here also comes to mind Vera Barantsova, the character from Kovalevskaya’s A

Nihilist Girl, and Allen’s Herminia Barton – also wearing a simple dress and indifferent to the external matters. Ideala, like Olga, is not understood in society, because she is the

Other: “It was said that she was striking in appearance, but cold and indifferent in manner. Some, on whom she had never turned her eyes, called her repellent.” (Grand, p.

7) The narrator distances himself from this opinion. He understands the reason of her

“otherness.” He notices that “men who took her down to dinner, or had any other opportunity of talking to her, were never very positive in, what they said of her afterwards,” adding that “she made every one, men and women alike, feel, and she did it unconsciously.” (p. 7) This heroine, making others feel, awakens other people’s consciousness. “Without effort, without eccentricity, without anything you could name or define,” Ideala impresses people, “and she held you – or at least she held me, always – expectant.” (Grand, p. 7; original emphasis)

Olga Goltsberg marries her husband – Colonel Goltsberg – without love. Elena

Gan also was married to a German officer, but there is no evidence that her own marriage was unhappy. Olga marries unwillingly, because “her mother’s death tore her from peaceful heaven.” (p. 11) This tragic moment changes everything for the heroine, but it is the first crucial step towards New Womanhood. She follows first a traditional plot of

247 marriage, since her uncle wants to get rid of the girl with no dowry. When Colonel

Goltsberg proposes, “the poor orphan, her heart still no recovered from the first blow,” not really knowing what she was doing, was “at the altar with a man she hardly even knew by sight.” (p. 11) Her husband marries Olga only because it was time for him to marry. He does not even make any attempt to understand his wife, her “otherness,” new femininity, poetic and elevated soul, her rich inner world: “He had a succinct and clear picture of what made women happy: treat them nicely, be tolerant of their whims, and let them have a fashionable hat – this was what, in his opinion, couldn’t fail to make a woman happy and when he got married this is what he mentally subscribed to.” (p. 12)

Thus, Elena Gan emphasizes the tragedy of many women in the first half of the nineteenth century, who followed the same paradigm of marriage.

It is ironic that Olga is capable of awakening consciousness of people surrounding her, but not of her husband. She also makes them feel, like Ideala that will be discussed further in detail. Olga, on the contrary, tries to understand her husband, but they are very different – any attempt to approach him is futile. Since her childhood, Olga is an imaginative and dreaming person. Her dream was to meet her ideal; “sometimes, when she read some moralistic novel an ideal appeared to her.” (p. 12) Society ascribes a love affair that has not yet happened to Olga and Monsieur Neretskii, only because she is the

“subject of the merciless attention of the inhabitants” of the small provincial town and also because Neretskii “a serious rival of all the followers of fashion in the town,” was dancing with her. (p. 6) Olga knows about all the ridiculous accusations on her account regarding, in fact, an unexciting love affair. It is another step towards her New

Womanhood – her opposition to society: “like molten lead it poured into her heart, but

248 her pride did not let her try to justify herself: the accusation was too base.” (p. 17) The narrator resumes: “A woman’s beauty, courtesy, and purity seem to them as personal insult.” (p. 18)

Olga Goltsberg falls in love, eventually, but not as society prescribes with

Neretskii. She falls in love with her ideal, who awoke her imagination and consciousness when she was a child. She loves poet Anatolii “not with an earthy love.” (p. 19) Her love is a protest and rebellion against all the accusations she meets from the huge soulless idol

– society. Anatolii is for her the creature, who, she feels, thinks her thoughts. However, she does not recognize that she is blinded by his poetry, and “Anatolii’s character was in complete disharmony with the feelings which he expressed in his works.” (p. 31)

The poet is well aware of the strength of Olga’s feeling for him; he has no doubt about it. In Olga’s soul, there is a terrible battle – she loves Anatolii, but “religion battled with her love.” (p. 37) Thus, Elena Gan emphasizes that this new femininity is still unprepared for choices in her life, as many other female protagonists, who, despite societal judgmental attitudes are able to break the existing paradigm. In the first half of the nineteenth century, it is almost impossible. The fact that Olga falls in love is boldness on her part. It is symbolic, however, that Olga falls in love after many accusations.

Perhaps the non-existing love-affair with Neretskii pushes her to this threshold and moral crime. After a while, when Olga realizes Anatolii’s hypocrisy, and retreats to the religious path – the most common one for Russian women in the nineteenth century.

Olga does not know that Anatolii is wearing a mask all this time. Anatolii’s true face is discovered in a letter he has written to his male friend, that Olga accidently reads in Anatolii’s apartment. She finds out that she is a toy in Anatolii’s hands; he has never

249 loved her. It is a turning point, culmination, which brings the narrative to a new phase.

After this denouement, Olga finds her ideal in religion. This escape is rather a form of reconcile. She fails to become a genuine New Woman, although she was en route to forming the new femininity because she opposes the huge idol of society.

The Ideal is a traditional Bildungsroman (or novel of development and social formation of a young woman), the narrative about a female education, apprenticeship, and incorporation into society. In Olga’s case, she fails to be incorporated into society, becoming a social misfit, a marginalized woman instead of preaching freedom for women. However, she cannot break relationship with her husband after her affair with

Anatolii because it is prohibited by law and social moral law. Ideala (1888), in comparison, does not have an account of how the new femininity Ideala was formed and brought up in childhood. Elena Gan, on the contrary, gives a vivid picture of Olga’s misfortune in her childhood. Olga’s mother was a free-thinker, and she can hardly escape from her influence. Since childhood Olga, like Ideala, had read a lot. Elena Gan provides a specific reading circle of the girl: “at first Plutarch and then the inventions of Countess

Genlis and Baroness de Staël.” (p. 10) We witness the transformation of the female tradition in Gan’s novel. Olga’s consciousness, as Vera Pavlovna in What is To Be Done? is awakening; first she is a “sleepwalker in society,” “almost mechanically fulfilling all the duties which society imposed upon her.” (p. 10) She comes to life again when she is either alone, or in a company of her spiritual companions. Olga is that type of heroine who is unable to become like everyone else, coming “to terms with the conventions of society”; she, as the narrator predicts, “will be a burden” to herself and “to others,” and even her voice is “so alien to the whole world that” it “will never find an echo.” (p. 11)

250

The narrator again underlines the tragedy of the position of the first emancipated women in Russian society and Olga’s in particular. She tasetes the first bitterness of life when she loses her mother, the woman with advanced views.

The narrator in Ideala (1888) does not inform us about the New Woman’s past:

“When she talked she made you wonder what her past had been, and when she was silent you began to speculate about her future.” (p. 8) Thus, Sarah Grand avoids the traditional

Bildungsroman plot that is characteristic for the New Woman novel tradition in the nineteenth century. We do not see the formation of the New Woman in her novel. Ideala is a mysterious femininity. As if Sarah Grand consciously chooses not to inform the reader about Ideala’s past. Every woman can, thus, associate herself with the protagonist.

Ideala avoided small talk, when she did speak “it was always some subject of interest, some fact that she wanted to ascertain accurately, or some beautiful idea, that occupied her.” (p. 8) We perceive Ideala as a learned and searching woman.

It seems Ideala measures every word and takes it seriously throughout the narrative structure, being aware of her position as a New Woman and her ability to awaken consciousness in others. Her perception in society is that of contrast: “Some of these called her a cold, ambitious, unsympathetic woman; and perhaps, from their point of view, she was so. She certainly aspired to something far above them, and had nothing but scorn for the dead level of dull mediocrity from which they would not try to rise.”

(p. 8) Sarah Grand emphasizes her idealistic nature. Ideala is dual and unpredictable. She might seem as unsympathetic to people, but only she is in a process of creation of herself.

She is not complete, but in a process for self-identity determination. The entire novelistic structure beckons, however, to see her spiritual beauty. Sarah Grand defends the New

251

Woman and calls forth readers to ruminate over the uniqueness of the New Woman character.

The male narrator first meets Ideala at a garden party; Ideala scarcely notices him, even though they were introduced to each other. Her thoughts always bring her far away

– she is absorbed by the beauty of the sky, “great masses of white cloud drifting up over the blue above the garden” are of her interest, rather than earthly garden party events.

Thus, Sarah Grand underlies that the new femininity is not only looking for prudent and practical ways. She strives for more. It is not only employment, money, social position that interest her. Society perceives the New Woman as an over-excited femininity, always demanding and unsatisfied with her plight and rights. The New Woman is more of an idealist. She wants to make the world around her better, but does not know yet how. Both female characters – Olga and Ideala – are dreamers and idealists. Ideala’s name already suggests her idealistic nature. Ideala is able to read peoples’ hearts and souls, and that is probably why she is so “unsympathetic” to many people. (p. 9) It is important that she cares little about people, what they think of her, “but those whom she loved once she loved always, never changing in her affection for them, however badly they might treat her”; “and she had the power of liking people for themselves, regardless of their feeling for her.” (p. 10) Similarly, Kovalevskaya’s female protagonist Vera Barantsova is not looking for people’s love. She chooses herself whom she will sacrifice to. At the end, her choice is unexpected, she dedicates herself to an exiled student.

Ideala is full of contrasts and has many peculiarities. She is very unpredictable in her judgments; no one knows exactly what will strike her – something pathetic or humorous, because her thoughts are not stereotypical. Being an absent-minded person,

252 she is still a woman of action. Ideala tells a story of rescuing a child that was in the way of a heavy wagon pulled by a couple of horses. However, she does not see anything heroic in her action of rescuing the child, although the wagon comes tearing over her. She does not only think about what surrounds her, but she is also mourning “poignantly” about people who are remote, like the female protagonist of A Nihilist Girl: “What a pity it is those gay, pleasure-living, flower-clad people of Hawaii are dying out!” (p. 13)

Similarly, the idealistic nature of Vera Barantsova is underlined throughout the novelistic structure. Vera wants to dedicate herself to her exiled professor, then, she thinks much about suffering people in China. She ruminates over lives of other people and completes herself by exiling together with the student Pavlenkov, whom she hardly knows. The narrator of The Nihilist Girl highlights that she does not have this idealistic nature and cannot become like Vera, who strongly believes in everything what she pursues.

Ideala, as the New Woman, is a writer and a poet. Grant Allen also chooses his female protagonist Herminia Barton to be a writer. It demonstrates their vivid interest in everything that surrounds them. Ideala knows that everyone is curious about her: “People always want to know if I write, or paint, or play, or what I do.” (p. 15) She does not fit into any societal paradigms, conventions, rules, restrictions. She reads her poem at a garden party, but does not say to anyone that it was her poem, because “Ideala saw no merit in her own works, and would not take the credit she deserved for them; nor would she have had her good deeds known at all if she could have helped it.” (p. 16) Like Olga,

Ideala is unhappily married. That could be also the reason of her disillusionment in men.

Ideala criticizes contemporary masculinity and the institution of marriage:

The truth is that we have lost faith in our men. They claim some superiority for themselves, but we find none. The age requires people to practise what they preach, and

253 yet expects us to be guided by the counsels of those whose own lives, we know, have rendered them contemptible. They are not fit to guide us, and we are not fit to go alone. I suppose we shall come to an understanding eventually – either they must be raised or we must be lowered. It is for the death of manliness we women mourn. We marry, and find we have taken upon ourselves misery, and lifelong widowhood of the mind and moral nature. (p. 20)

But we have to mourn for the death of our manhood! Where is our manhood? Where are our men? Is there any wonder that we are losing what is best in life when only women are left to defend it? Believe me, the degradation of marriage is the tune to which the whole fabric of society is going to piece –"(p. 68)

Sarah Grand laments perhaps about her unsuccessful marriage. Thomas Hardy and

Grant Allen continue Sarah Grand’s tradition. They also question the current institution of marriage. Perhaps Sarah Grand fathoms that it is inappropriate that women must suffer in marriage. Divorces were frowned upon. The boldest advanced women challenged societal norms, as Grant Allen’s Herminia Barton, who wanted ideologically to live in a

“free union” to liberate her sisters in the future. Herminia Barton perceives herself as part of a feminist sisterhood and takes her role as a pioneer seriously. Her “free union” is not just a rebellion against society, her caprice or principle, it is a liberation for future generations. She cannot stand that her daughter, the representative of this future generation, refutes her position. Herminia’s entire life, thus, does not make sense. Her daughter negates her choices. Grant Allen thus sees only one way out for Herminia – suicide.

Sarah Grand does not see any superiority in men, moral or intellectual. She does not agree that men can offer guidance because she observes the death of manliness. She does not accept that women marry not knowing exactly whom they marry because there is no way to look closer. “Free union” does not mean immorality or committing crime, it can be seen as a test what was impossible in Victorian England. Thus, these “blind”

254 marriages were no better than arranged marriages, when women did not know their husbands.

Most New Woman novels were an open critique of the institution of marriage and acknowledged its degradation. Ideala has been married for eight years, but her marriage is “a mere commercial treaty and only professional preachers speak of it in other terms.”

(p. 68) Thus, Thomas Hardy is in dialogue with Sarah Grand, who describes marriage in

Jude the Obscure as a “permanent contract on a temporary feeling” and as a “month’s pleasure with a life discomfort” (p. 60; p. 244) The narrator sees this marriage as a failure. It reflects Grand’s own unfortunate experience with her abusive husband. Ideala’s husband wants her to be a submissive and voiceless wife. When her child was about six weeks old, her husband ordered her to give up nursing the child. The child died of diphtheria some time afterwards, when Ideala was twenty-six, and it was a turning point in her relationship with her husband. (p. 47) As the death of Olga’s mother is a turning point in the woman’s inner development, the loss of Idelala’s child is a crucial step towards feminist way of thinking. From this time on, she starts thinking critically about her marriage and women’s plight. While Olga becomes religious at the end of the novel,

Ideala neither believes, nor disbelieves. She is in a state that she both doubts and believes at the same time; and she goes “indifferently to either church, Protestant or Catholic.”

(p. 25) It is a New Woman-like position to openly express her religious doubts. Hardy’s

Sue also criticizes Christianity and is negatively treated by society for her alternative views.

Olga and Ideala feel disharmony and spiritual loneliness in their marriages, which perhaps reinforces their tendency to solicitude and dream. Olga confesses that only when

255 she is alone she becomes herself, and when in society and at home – she plays a “well- rehearsed role.” (p. 19) However, the unhappiness of Olga’s and Ideala’s marriages and loss of mother and child makes them reflect more about women’s position. It makes Olga read more and become a poet – “it was to them,” to her books and poetry, “she owed no small number of her happy moments. (p. 14) When Olga falls in love, she starts thinking more about women’s plight and marriage, she critically observes women’s destiny:

But what evil genius has so distorted the destiny of woman? Now she is born for the sole purpose of pleasing, flattering, entertaining men’s leisure, of putting on her finery, dancing, holding sway in society, although she’s only a paper queen to whom the clown bows down while the audience is there, but then chucks into a corner. They set up thrones for us in the society; our vanity adorns them, and we don’t notice that there’re tinsel – and have only three legs, so that we only have to lose our balance slightly to fall over and then be trampled underfoot by the blind mob. Truly, it sometimes seems that God’s world has been created for men alone; the universe is open for them, with all its mysteries, for them there are words, the arts and knowledge; for them there is freedom and all joys of life. From the cradle a woman is fettered by the chains of decency, ensnared by the terrible “what will people say” – and if her hopes for family happiness do not come true, what does she have left outside herself? Her impoverished, restricted education doesn’t even allow her to dedicate herself to important things, and willy-nilly she has to throw herself to important things into the maelstrom of society or drag out a colorless existence until she dies!.. (p. 22)

These words are a turning point in Gan’s The Ideal that brings the novel to an emotional climax – a girl becomes a woman and reveals the great power of critical awareness. The narrative now enters a different phase, when Olga evolves into the new femininity; this role, however, does not last long. Perhaps she gives up the role of the new femininity entering a religious path. It was the only way where women could find their liberation in the nineteenth century.

The narrative of Ideala reveals two emotional climaxes – one is when Grand’s protagonist loses her child, and another, when her husband beats her. She leaves her husband for a while and finds her true love, but she is not prepared for a radical change in

256 her life. Sarah Grant expressed again the disillusionment of many women, who wanted to leave their husband because of abuse or other reasons, but they could not because of moral laws. Although Ideala discusses and criticizes the unjust position of a divorced woman, she is not ready to betray her traditional woman’s role. She continues living with her husband without love. It is essential that she decides to become useful to others and use her influence. She finds her “cause” as Kovalevskaya’s Vera Barantsova, who also sacrifices her life to rescue a convict.

The Ideal and Ideala raise the question of the institution of marriage and the exclusion of the New Woman figure from society. The themes, problems, and questions of both novels overlap and are inherently related. There is an evolution and development of two characters throughout the novel: form a rebellious love to calm observance and reconcile. Olga and Ideala remain with their husbands. For Olga, it is impossible to become a Sandean type, because her love was an illusion. She takes a crucial step when she comes alone to Anatolii’s apartment (just like Tatiana Larina who writes to a man a love letter), but instead of sick Anatolii, she finds the letter that reveals his mask. For

Ideala, there was a chance to be a Sandean type, but she decides to be faithful in favor of duty. These two New Women mix in their characters incompatible traits – conservatism, rebellion, independence, and obedience. Their consciousness awakens in when they think they find love, but this temporary feeling is followed by disillusionment. Olga is betrayed by Anatolii; and Ideala is pessimistic about the institution of marriage. Olga and Ideala are victims, facing the cruelty of life and society. Both female characters are writers; and being a female writer was associated with women’s search for emancipation from the domestic sphere. The only way out for Olga, as Gan shows, is to retreat to the realm of

257 religion and martyrdom. Her figure is associated with martyrs. Olga’s retreat, however, is not perceived as her downright failure. It is rather her maturity and wisdom that make her step back. Besides, as Barbara Engel notes “religion provided not only consolation, but also as source of strength” for Russian women in the nineteenth century.4 Elena Gan predicts her daughter’s destiny, Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, who also found a retreat in religion. Life of this woman was too complicated, surrounded by mysticism.

She ran away from her husband and settled down in the United States first, but then she continued her search in Victorian England.

Both novels provide a crucial insight into the controversial and multi-faced figure of the New Woman. Sarah Grand and Elena Gan reflect on psychological contradictions that women experience in a society with a set of rules. When the narrator reminds Ideala about her duty to society, she replies: “I owe nothing to society.” Although Ideala considers herself to be free in the beginning, she is, in fact, trapped in societal rules.

Sarah Grand’s Ideala is usually considered as “radically feminist”; however, “even a reputedly radical genre provides a typically conformist resolution.”5 The end of both radically feminist novels provides a conformist resolution – religious retreat and reconcile with the plight.

6.2 Hepworth Dixon’s The Story of a Modern Woman

Marriage is the union of two people of different sexes, the most intimate relationship between man and woman. The connection between two rests on the power of attraction. Human attraction is what we call love…

4 Ibid., p. 4. 5 Thompson, Nicola D. Victorian Women Writers and the Woman Question (Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 6-7. 258

Now let us ask, if love is the condition of marriage, and happiness the purpose of life, above all in marriage, what is the cause of not realizing both?… We believe that we can answer this question briefly: the case is the economic and political dependence of the woman.6

Louise Dittmar (1807-1884)

Most New Woman novels are forgotten and read only by literary historians and scholars, although the New Woman novels “offer much more than tableaux of a certain social, political, and literary period in England’s history” and “helped to make feminist discourse possible” (original emphasis).7 According to M. M. Bakhtin, every meaning will celebrate its rebirth. Thus, even forgotten novels should be read and re-read by

(feminist) scholars, especially because the New Woman novel documents English women’s history. The Story of a Modern Woman is a novel about the New Woman’s inner development process: from a child to a wise woman, from a painter to a journalist and writer worrying about mankind and Universe. The paradigm of emancipation can be seen in the space Hepworth Dixon offers in the novel: from “limited” London to the cemetery as a symbol of everyone’s liberation.

The New Woman, Erin Williams observes, “was often perceived as a figure that thrives in the heart of the city, and the existence of women living independently and supporting themselves was made possible only by the institutions and structures available in central London.”8 As W. T. Stead (1849-1912) notes, this novel “is not merely a novel written by a woman, or a novel written about women, but it is a novel written by a

6 As quoted in Weedon, Chris. Gender, Feminism, & Fiction in Germany, 1840-1914 (New York: Peter Lang, 2006), p. 68. 7 See Dixon, Ella H, and Steve Farmer. The Story of a Modern Woman (Peterborough, Ont: Broadview Press, 2004), p. 9 and Browne, Alice. The Eighteenth Century Feminist Mind (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1987), p. 14. 8 Williams, Erin. "Female Celibacy In The Fiction Of Gissing And Dixon: The Silent Strike Of The Suburbanites." English Literature In Transition (1880-1920) 45.3 (2002): 267. 259 woman about women from the standpoint of Woman.”9 One would also add – from a standpoint of the New Woman, who is closely examining modern English girls. He writes further that there were many novels about women written by female authors, but “either from the general standpoint of society or from the man’s standpoint, which comes, in the long run, to pretty much the same thing.”10

As Dixon herself writes in her memoirs As I Knew Them: Sketches of People I

Have Met on the Way (1930), this novel is a “somewhat gloomy study of the struggles of a girl alone in the world and earning her own living.”11 Valerie Fehlbaum reveals that

Ella Hepworth Dixon uses the term “New Woman” only once in her memoir As I Knew

Them: Sketches of People I Have Met on the Way.12 Nonetheless, Dixon wrote many articles as a journalist about the New Woman. The Story of a Modern Woman is the

Dixon’s only novel.

The novel opens up tragically with a funeral atmosphere; Mary Erle loses her dear father who was a role model for her, having achieved his fame by constant work. Now she is alone with her little brother and preoccupied with her own place in life:

The life of Mary Erle, like of many another woman in the nineteenth century, had been more or less in the nature of an experiment. Born too late for the simple days of the fifties, when all it behooved a young woman to do was to mind her account-book, read her Tennyson, show a proper enthusiasm for fancy-work stiches, and finally, with many blushes accept the hand of the first young man who desired to pay and fulfil the duties of a loyal British subject ( and the young man, it must be remembered, in the middle of this century, actually did both), Mary was yet too soon for the time when parents begin to take their responsibilities seriously, and when the girl is sometimes as carefully prepared, as thoroughly equipped, as her brother for the fight of life. A garden full of flowers, a

9 Dixon, Ella H, and Steve Farmer. The Story of a Modern Woman (Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2004), p. 193. 10 Ibid. 11 Dixon, Ella H. "As I Knew Them": Sketches of People I Have Met on the Way (London: Hutchinson & co. ltd, 1930), p. 136. 12 Ibid., p. 41; Fehlbaum, Valerie. Ella Hepworth Dixon: The Story of a Modern Woman (Aldershot, Hampshire, England: Ashgate, 2005), p. 23.

260 house full of books, scraps of travel: these things were her education. Out of the years she could pick scenes and figures which typified her bringing-up. (p. 50; my emphasis)

So simply and so precisely has Dixon outlined the life of the woman in the middle of the nineteenth century – the limited life of a wife who will marry anyone who will propose to her. The motif of “threshold” is central to this novel as to most New Woman novels. This “threshold” is marriage for a girl. The limited role reduced to “a proper enthusiasm for fancy-work stiches” will never, however, satisfy Mary, who is able to think critically because she grew up in the family of a professor. Nonetheless, her New

Womanhood is also an experiment. Dixon’s main protagonist is also an experiment – as if she puts Mary in certain circumstances and observes her development. Mary does not only read Alfred Lord Tennyson – the symbol of “Victorianism,” she is interested in natural sciences – which is also the sign of her new femininity; “a child who was devoted to animals and insects, who was on intimate terms with the many-legged wood-lice, which curled themselves up with all haste into complete balls when she touches them; a child for whom snails and black – beetles had no terrors, and who had much to say to the fat, hairy caterpillars which hung about the pear-tree.” (p. 50) She is not so much afraid of insects as a girl, but she is scared of the immensity of London as a woman. When she was a child, she read all day long; and it is symbolic that her favorite novelist is Charlotte

Brontë, whose novels also depict new and emancipated women. Her governess is

“unimaginative” and her lessons are rather unattractive. When Mary is fourteen, she is a

“rather plain girl,” but she “began to understand something about life now.” (p. 55) She discovered that there were “dreadful things, sad things, horrible things,” things “that the girl only could guess at.” (p. 55) At this age, she thinks about many subjects: marriage,

261 maternity, and education. Jean-Jaques Rousseau, Robert Browning, and Charles Dickens shape her consciousness.

When she travels with her father to Germany, she meets New Women – Frau

Professorin and her daughter Fräulein Ottilie. The latter, as the New Woman, reads David

Strauss and Arthur Schopenhauer and smokes, announcing “herself as a determined agnostic.” (p. 59) Besides, she is “addicted to the surreptitious perusal of the romances of

George Sand.” (p. 60) When Mary is eighteen, she discovers her beauty, her “fluffy hair,”

“a throat with fine lines,” the graceful “movements of her body.” (p. 63) She knows that she looks pretty. She discovers many other new things about herself, her first taste of woman’s power:

There is the desire of the young girl to coquet, to play, to torture, when she first learns the all-powerful influence which she possesses by the primitive fact of her sex. With all the arrogance which belongs to personal purity, she stands on her little pedestal and looks down on mankind with somewhat condescending smile. She is – and she feels it instinctively – a thing apart, a kind of forced plant, a product of civilisation. At present, the ball-room, with its artificial atmosphere, its fleeting devotions, its graceful mockery of real life, is the scene of her little triumphs. The eyes of all men – young and old alike – follow the girl approvingly, wistfully, as she ascends the staircase, her full heart beating against her slim bodice, the clear, peachlike cheeks pink with excitement, her swimming eyes raised invitingly to some favorite partner, or dropped as she passes a man she wishes to avoid. (p. 64)

Thus, the narrator poetically describes the first burgeons of Mary’s womanhood.

The narrator points out the duality of woman’s nature. On the one hand, woman possesses “by the primitive fact of her sex” that “all-powerful influence,” but on the other hand, the narrator believes that the woman is a “product of civilization” with “personal purity.” Women’s power, however, is a short moment in life. As another female character, Lady Jane, notices perhaps expressing Dixon’s position: “But it is always the same story. When she is young and pretty, society cares for the woman, but when she is

262 old – and well – repaired, it is of course she who cares for society.” (p. 156) The narrator also believes that women are morally superior to men, considering the end of the novel when the New Woman becomes stronger than Vincent, the male protagonist that will be discussed further.

First Mary wants to become an artist but she fails. However, this failure opens up a new opportunity for her to become a woman writer. She goes through the painful journey of realizing that she is lonely and that finding her own place would mean enduring much sacrifice. Mary, as the New Woman, realizes the scope of her intellect and potential, but she is failing to a certain extent in her struggle to find her own place.

She has to endure pain in the process of self-discovery. Besides, the stifling atmosphere of London that is underlined in the novel, complicates her position. This city should be associated with possibilities for women, especially New Women. Instead, the space symbolizes limits and stifling conditions for a modern woman. Mary shares her feelings about the city to her brother Jim:

“Jim,” said the girl suddenly, taking the boy by the arm, “there’s London! We’re going to make it listen to us, you and I. We’re not going to be afraid of it – just because it’s big, and brutal, and strong.” (p. 48)

Mary is trying to convince herself that she can also be part of this cruel organism that can even “listen” to her. It is the city where the New Woman can either succeed or fail – there is no middle. She understands its cruelty and indifference. The space is powerfully similar to Dostoevsky’s St. Petersburg, but his Petersburg with its claustrophobic apartments leads people (Raskolnikov, for instance) to madness. Mary, even after a series of failures, remains sane and becomes even stronger and self- sufficient, an “autonomous subject.” She wants to become an artist in London because she sees herself as an independent woman in the future; however, she fails university 263 entrance examinations. She attends the Central London School of Art instead. Mary is not that type of women who would give up easily. She ends up working as a journalist for

The Fan magazine. In fact, many emancipated women worked as journalists at the fin de siècle. They participated actively in popularizing the “woman question.”

Mary’s one of the first realizations as the New Woman, the narrator associates with her strong desire to become an artist. To become an artist “meant so much to her”; it meant “independence, a profession, and happy union.” (p. 101) She saw herself in imagination as “working, earning, helping.” (p. 101) The first money she earns, however, is the check she receives for her first writing attempts. She becomes a lady journalist who writes about “little bits of gossip.” (p. 112) It was not difficult for her to “catch the pert, omniscient air of those who purvey the gossip,” since she had a “personal knowledge of the things chronicled.” (p. 116) However, society’s attitude to woman journalists was negative at the end of the nineteenth century. Mary is an abjectified femininity, trespassing the unthinkable. As Mary admits, her Aunt Julie thinks she “was given to the

Evil” through her new profession. (p. 144) She fails as a writer only because she wants to realistically observe life around her. In her novel, Mary writes about double standards of the late-Victorian culture: Mary’s protagonist has an affair with his friend’s wife. The editor does not want to accept this novel, since he finds that the “public won’t stand it.”

(p. 146) The British public does not want novels to be like life, as the editor claims. It surprises a young female author as she knows that the same public devours any scandal in the newspaper. Similarly, Allen’s Herminia Barton fails as a novelist because her novel is too realistic. Thus, both Dixon and Allen lament about struggles as New Woman writers.

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Mary fails in both – her professional and personal life, but she succeeds in self- discovery. Mary endures a “double sacrifice,” as Williams puts it: “social marginality” and “bitter solicitude.”13 Her beloved Vincent Hemming marries another woman, because she, unlike Mary, has a fortune. She, on the contrary, falls in love with him, when he is young and poor. In the beginning of the novel, Vincent is sentimental and romantic. He even does serious research on the subject of women’s plight to write a book on the

“woman question.” To compile materials for his research, he embarks on multiple journeys. When Vincent departs, “the girl understood for the first time the helplessness, the intolerable burden which society has laid on her sex. All things must be endured with a polite smile.” (p. 66) Mary is waiting for a little note from Vincent in vain. Then Dixon writes a passage that so strikingly reminds Alexander Herzen’s words in his Whom is To

Blame?:

Had she been a boy, she was aware that she might have made an effort to break the maddening silence; have stifled her sorrow with dissipation, with travel, or hard work. As it was, the trivial round of civilised feminine existence made her, in those days almost an automaton. One looks back, with wonder, at the courage of the girl. To find a smile with which to face her father at the dinner table; to take a sisterly interest in Jim’s exploits at school; to show due surprise each time her brother announced the arrival of a new batch of rabbits; and a partisan’s joy in the licking which Smith minor had administered to Jones major – these were the immediate duties which lay before her. (p. 66; my emphasis)

Only if Lyubonka was a man, Herzen argues in Who is to Blame?, she could have escaped her suffering by fleeing or by going to serve in the army: “Lyubonka was rejected all around: what other choice did she have? Had she been a man, she might have run away or joined the army. But a girl she could only withdraw into herself.” (p. 99; my emphasis)

13 Williams, Erin. "Female Celibacy In The Fiction Of Gissing And Dixon: The Silent Strike Of The Suburbanites." English Literature In Transition (1880-1920) 45.3 (2002): 272.

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Another important female figure Alison is eager to help others, especially women.

She understands that it is important to help each other because women are dependent and asks for a promise from her friend Mary at the end of the novel before she dies:

Promise me that you will never, never do anything to hurt another woman…. I don’t suppose for an instant you ever would. But there come times in our lives when we can do a great deal of good, or an incalculable amount of harm. If women only used their power in the right way! If we were only united we could lead the world. But we’re not. (p. 164; my emphasis)

The narrator underlines the utopian nature of her longing. Alison dies – and she is one of the few who care not only about particular people, but about mankind in general.

Vincent’s marriage based on economic profit turns out to be a failure. His wife is just the woman who sits opposite to him at dinner, who pays bills with her own money and never “misses an opportunity of reminding” him about his failures (p. 181) For a moment, Mary is intoxicated by a personal triumph that Vincent does not love his wife.

He asks Mary to flee with him, but she finds the strength to refuse him, although he still has power over her. Vincent Hemming is the figure of a weak man, who does not really know what he wants in his life – money or love. Mary realizes that he will eventually return again to his wife and his daughter. Besides, she does not want to be a home wrecker. She is his opposite and embodies strength and will, whereas he cries in front of her, which the narrator obviously sees it as a weakness. Dixon, as well as many other female New Woman writers, criticizes contemporary masculinity. Mary’s decision not to live with the man whom she loves is a very difficult one. She is getting older and knows that she will probably never meet the love of her life. His remorse, she feels, is nothing but “the selfish passion of a man who was another woman’s husband.” (p. 184) She

266 thinks that she is the plaything and the sport of Destiny. And Destiny always won, in her opinion.

She follows her best friend’s advice to avoid harming other women and refuses to flee with Vincent. Now she remembers what she promised to her friend Alison: “All we modern women mean to help each other now.” (p. 184) By articulating this position for herself, she suddenly becomes truly independent and liberated. This is perhaps the first moment of triumph for her, when she takes control of her own destiny and not vice versa.

She has failed too many times. Although her love for Vincent is still strong, she chooses freedom. She asks herself big questions now because her mind has awakened. At this juncture, she becomes mature and shows first signs of self-awareness: “Who am I? Why am I here?” She understands now for the first time the fundamental truth, “To live is to suffer; why do you let me live?” (p. 189)

According to Julia Kristeva, the one by whom the abject exists “instead of sounding himself as to his “being” ask (himself / herself): “Where am I? instead of “Who am I?”14 (original emphasis). The abject(ified) New Woman Mary distances herself from those by whom the abject exists, exemplifying “oneness” at the end. For her the settings of London shift to the cemetery where her father is buried. The claustrophobic settings of

London do not frighten her anymore, since space does not define her. Choosing celibacy, she is oblivious to time and space. Her self-identity is positioned in an extratemporal and extraspacial position. Following her beloved into exile, Kovalevskaya’s female protagonist Vera (her name is allusion to “faith”) is indifferent to space as well.

14 Kristeva, Julia, and Leon S. Roudiez. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), p. 235. 267

Besides, at this juncture it is also important for her to show her solidarity with other modern women, including Vincent’s wife. She cares not only for her own happiness and happiness of her beloved, but also for that of his family – to Vincent’s wife and daughter.

She is thinking about her father at the end of the novel. What is our short suffering in comparison to the Unknown? The narrator comes to the conclusion that it is everyone’s goal “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” This was Mary’s father’s favorite quote and is engraved on his tomb. This quote appears on the last pages of the novel and symbolizes that not all her hope is lost, but there is always place for inner protest. The narrator seems to forgive Vincent for his weakness, thinking in terms of

Universe. Dixon wants to show through her philosophical discussions the insignificance of our local sufferings. The final scene in the novel describes the springtime as a symbol of hope, renovation, and rebirth:

All around her was the joyous activity of springtime. Nature, who never ceases, who never rests, was once again at her work of re-creation. Once again the lilac trees were burgeoning with waxen blossoms. Once again a thrush, somewhere among that great city of sleepers. Was swelling its brown throat with an amorous song. The sunset touched her face, her hand the flush of hawthorn above her head. At her feet, beyond the foreground of spreading trees, lay stretched out a vast ocean of houses, softened, made vague with a silvery veil of smoke, and pricked by endless spires. Here and there a blurred block, a monster hotel, a railway station, rose out of the great sea dwellings. It was London that lay stretched out at her feet; majestic, awe-inspiring, inexorable, triumphant London. (p. 192)

The narrator associates Springtime and Nature with joy, contrasting them with

Nature and urbanism. This re-creation and rebirth are also related to Mary. Throughout the novel, the reader witnesses her journey towards New Womanhood, but at the end she becomes a genuine New Woman. Her face is radiant, and she is not afraid of London (the city she wanted to part of once); and the narrator observes the cruelty and coldness of the

268 big city in contrast to Nature. Mary faces loneliness at the end; she “is standing alone on the heights.” (p. 192; my emphasis) This loneliness, however, is finally self-sufficient. W.

T. Stead confirms the self-sufficiency of the New Woman, “Woman at last has found

Woman interesting to herself, and she had studied her, painted her, and analyzed her as if an independent existence, and even strange to say, a soul of her own.”15

This story is not the story about a particular woman, but about many “other” modern women, as Dixon saw them. This novel is also of an autobiographical account,

Dixon herself first positioned herself as a woman artist, and only later did she enter the world of belles lettres. She was a successful artist, unlike her main protagonist Mary, and known as “the avant-garde ‘Emancipated Woman’.”16 Dixon exhibited her works at the

Society of Women Artists and the Royal Society of British Artists. She studied at the same time as Marie Bashkiertseff in the AcadémieJulian in Paris, although her name and the name of her sister were not found in the archives of the Académie.

Ella Hepworth Dixon never married and did not have children. However, this fact did not make her a “superfluous” woman. Like her main protagonist, Mary, she became a self-sufficient woman through journalistic, artistic, and literary work. As if through her main female character – Mary – Dixon fights against stereotypes that surrounded spinsters in the nineteenth century. She shows that a woman can find her self-fulfillment outside the family domain. Although Mary’s ending can be read as “failure” – she does not know exactly what awaits her and does not have any certain plans – here, again, Allen

Grant’s words come to one’s mind, as they are formulated by his New Woman fictional

15 Dixon, Ella H, and Steve Farmer. The Story of a Modern Woman (Peterborough, Ont: Broadview Press, 2004), p. 193. 16 Fehlbaum, Valerie. Ella Hepworth Dixon: The Story of a Modern Woman (Aldershot, Hampshire, England: Ashgate, 2005), p. 24. 269 figure Hermina Barton: “To succeed is to fail, and failure is the only success worth aiming at. Every great and good life can but end in a Calvary.” (p. 75)

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Conclusion

Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future And time future contained in time past. If all time is eternally present All time is unredeemable.

T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)

Women's emancipation altered the course of Victorian and Russian literature by challenging the literary conventions that governed the portrayal of women and women's experience at the fin de siècle. Emancipationist writing either explicitly advocated social change or embodied a feminist impulse in their treatment of particular themes and questions. The second half of the nineteenth century was marked by the emergence of the women’s movement. The phenomenon of the new femininity in literature is not limited to the Russian or British context, but it is interesting to study it from a comparative angle.

The new femininity is part of vaguely hostile "others" (de Beauvoir), the abject

(Kristeva), and an autonomous subject (Bakhtin, de Beauvoir). The ambiguity and volatility of the fictional New Woman characters reflect the prevalent artistic, social, and moral confusion into which Russian and Victorian societies were suddenly thrown at the fin de siècle. It is evident that the literary form and the social movement existed in remarkable closeness in Russia and England, and that literature of the time was influenced considerably by new developments.

In this work, the focus has been on the key phases of the early women’s movements of nineteenth-century Russia and Victorian England. The emancipatory disposition was reflected in many novels of the end of the century; the height of both movements was associated with male and female advocate figures who discussed the

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“burning” “woman question.” First discussions of the “woman question” penetrated society along with literary publications, discussing the role of women. The “woman question” was discussed in many European countries simultaneously. Men and women were participants of the women’s movement, thus, it is important to take into account the

“authoritative discourse.” As Kathryn Gleadle suggests, Sarah Flower Adams (1805-

1848) claimed that “society could be changed through the triumph of the mind,” moreover, “writers possessed the capacity to express the wants of and needs of the age and to envisage and make possible the formulation of new solutions.”1

Sylvia Paletschek and Bianka Pietow-Ennker provide the periodization of the

European women’s movement in their book Women’s Emancipation Movement in the

Nineteenth Century (2004). The focus of this dissertation is mainly on the third phase of the European woman’s movement. The first changes in women’s plight in Russia took place in the eighteenth century, thanks to the essential reforms of the Peter the Great and

Catherine II. In eighteenth-century England, the proliferation of female writers had its positive impact on the development of the “woman question.” Historians also highlight that the French Revolution played a crucial role in the formation of the women’s movement, when the first political women’s organizations were founded.2 Thus, the

European women’s emancipation movement that was at its height in the second half of the nineteenth century had several key moments: “the European Enlightenment discourse, the revolutionary experience of 1789, the political conditions in the ensuing reactionary periods, the mobilization of women in the cause of nationalism and revolution, literary

1 Gleadle, Kathryn. The Early Feminists: Radical Unitarians and the Emergence of the Women’s Movement, 1831-51. (New York, N.Y: St. Martin's Press, 1995), p. 55. 2 Paletschek, Sylvia, and Bianka Pietrow-Ennker. Women's Emancipation Movements in the Nineteenth Century: A European Perspective, p. 308. 272 feminism, and the first organizational attempts in association with contemporary social, political, religious, and moral movements.”3

Unlike the women’s movement in England, the early Russian women’s movement was circumscribed to the issues of education and employment, whereas political rights, sexual ethics, family reform were largely avoided because of fear to be exiled or imprisoned. The Russian women’s movement did not fade because of the loss of public burning interest for a lingering discussion at the end of the nineteenth century; women’s mobilization developed into two women’s movements – feminist and socialist.4 Both movements had emerged at the turn of the nineteenth century. The feminist movement grew stronger in England in the twentieth century. It could be a fascinating topic to analyze how the image of the New Woman influenced the development of feminist philosophy; inasmuch the New Woman continues its existence to the early twentieth century.

The image of an emancipated woman displays many similarities in the two national literatures – such as her critique of women’s position in society, her aspiration for education, her questioning of the marriage institution. Thus, dialogue between

Western culture and Russia is evident. It is known that George Sand’s feminist ideas had a great impact on Russian thinkers. The work of John Stuart Mill The Subjection of

Women (1869) was a turning point for the development of the “woman question” in

Russia. This political pamphlet that was translated by Russian poet Mikhailov changed

3 Ibid., p. 312. 4 The socialist women’s movement emerged within the Social Democratic Party to awaken class consciousness and fight against feminism by conducting antifeminist campaigns. The social women’s movement organizers were primarily interested in attracting women workers, even though leaders of the movements were mainly representatives of the Russian intelligentsia. The journal Woman Worker (Rabotnitsa) was established within the movement, but in 1913 it was liquidated by exiling the main editorial board because of their propagandistic activity among working women. 273 people’s attitude to women’s plight in Russia. John Stuart Mill could harvest the fruits of his work pretty soon. Inspired by his ideas, women began to be more active on their search for freedom and education because they saw education as a way of liberation. John

Stuart Mill praised Russian women’s efforts and fast development. He saw the seeds of an emerging civilization in their activism.

Russian female writers of the beginning of the nineteenth century dramatize women’s position and do not formulate the solution of the woman problem; at the same time, however, they create a positive ideal of new female identities. They discuss and explore such important questions, as women’s education, family position, and new female identity. 5 As John Stuart Mill, they compare women’s lot with that of a slave and dependent creature. The only retreat for women was their family and religion. Many women, however, dreamt of professional realization.

At the fin de siècle British women faced the demographic problem when not every woman could marry and have children. Some of them remained spinsters; and this position of a woman was ridiculed in society. Thus international feminist and literary dialogue prepared the development of a new disposition and a positive perception of a working and professional woman. Of course, many lower class women were workers or peasants in Russia and active contributors to the economy. However, professional women were seen as evil.

When we ruminate over nineteenth-century women, those women who brought the “woman question” to the boiling point, we usually imagine upper- or middle class ladies, ignoring lower class females. No wonder that our thinking is circumscribed; it is

5 See introduction in Andrew, Joe. Russian Women's Shorter Fiction: An Anthology, 1835-1860 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996). 274 happening because we do not really know much about a female peasant in the nineteenth century. A woman worker or a peasant is an obscure figure for us, since she was rarely able to leave a written account of her life as many educated women did. A wonderful expiation is the daughter of a former peasant Nadezhda Suslova who first in the world received the doctorate degree in medicine and also left an semi-autobiographical account

From the Recent Past. This short novel is about her years when she was a student in

Zurich.

Thomas Hardy, for instance, created one of the most beautiful lower class women characters in world literature enriching that scarce picture of women’s lives. His novel, however, caused a thunderstorm of criticism, since he “dared” to label Tess of the d'Urbervilles as “a pure woman,” and it was something unheard-of in the Victorian epoch. Thomas Hardy simply revealed common problems, but society was not yet prepared to look at itself in the mirror. He fell silent to write only poems; one may assume, thus showing his protest with his profound silence as a novelist. Of course, his poems are a treasury of world literature, but we may only fancy what kind of female characters could have been created under his feather. Hardy’s last novel Jude the Obscure where he represented the New Woman Sue Bridehead was the last point in his career as a novelist.

Chernyshevsky’s and Herzen’s novels depict raznichintsy, or people of miscellaneous ranks. Their novels portray women, who are still dependent on men, whereas in Kovalevskaya’s novel, the role of a rescuer belongs to the main female protagonist Vera. Alexander Herzen’s Who Is to Blame? (1840), Sara Grand’s Ideala

(1888), Elena Gan’s The Ideal (1839), and Ella Dixon’s The Story of a Modern Woman

275

(1894) are realistic narratives about the New Woman, Chernyshevsky’s in What Is To

Be Done? Tale About New People (1863), Kovalevskaya’s The Nihilist Girl (1890), and

Grant Allen’s The Woman Who Did (1895) exemplify rather utopian narratives about the

New Womanhood. The intensive debates on the “woman question” arose in the popular press in both societies – Russia and Victorian England. In a popular magazine Punch the image of the New Woman was often lampooned.

Russian female voices did not fit the dominant narratives of the nineteenth century, Victorian female writers had a large female readership and a profound impact on women, since “the nineteenth century was hailed as the age of the woman writer” (my emphasis).6 It were literary critics, who forced Russian women to abandon Romanticism and the notion of “writing as a woman.” The Russian female tradition becomes apparent in the 1860s when women writers began to write in the mode of realism in the 1840s. In the 1860s, women cease to be anxious of writing and the representation of an ideological heroine occupied Russian women’s writing.

New Woman writers in Victorian literature participated in the feminist debate not only in novels but also in journalism and publicist works. Whereas the New Woman novel genre in England was predominantly occupied by women, the theme of female emancipation as well as the image of the New Woman in Russian literature was often featured by male writers.

This work aimed at discussion of Russian emancipationist writing and its links to late-Victorian novels. Sarah Grand recognizes a strong social influence of the New

Woman novel, writing in a letter to Professor Viëtor: “[T]hanks to our efforts the “novel

6 Helsinger, Elizabeth K, Robin A. Sheets, and William R. Veeder. The Woman Question: Society and Literature in Britain and America, 1837-1883 (New York: Garland, 1983), p. 3. 276 with purpose” and the “sex novel” are more powerful at the present time, especially for good, than any other social influence.”7 Grand also wrote many articles on the subject of the New Woman and the “woman question.”8 The impetus for the proliferation of the feminist novel was disillusionment in the moral double standards, sexual violence, and marriage inequality. The New Woman fiction in late-Victorian England manifested itself as a tradition of “feminist political literature.”9 The theme involving women’s subjection to their husbands or parents, criticism of the institution of marriage, and double moral standards in patriarchal societies is central to works of the emancipationist writers in

Tsarist Russian and Victorian England. Most writers fictionalizing new female identities attempt to deconstruct the traditional marriage plot and explore new possible alternatives.

Emancipationist writers emphasize the unpreparedness of the nineteenth-century society for the new femininity. The “failure” of the New Woman reflected inability of the patriarchal society to “accept new modalities of otherness.”10 The development of feminist literary discourse was important to “capture accurately the state of society, and inform the reader of the hidden truths which lay beneath the layer of unreliable conventions.”11

7 Foerster, Ernst. Die Frauenfrage in Den Romanen Englischer Schriftstellerinnen Der Gegenwart (Marburg: N.G. Elwert'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1907), p. 56. 8 Heilmann, Ann. New Woman Strategies: Sarah Grand, Olive Schreiner, Mona Caird (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), p. 20. 9 Ibid., p. 2. 10 Kristeva, Julia, and Leon S. Roudiez. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), p. 265. 11 Gleadle, Kathryn. The Early Feminists: Radical Unitarians and the Emergence of the Women’s Movement, 1831-51. (New York, N.Y: St. Martin's Press, 1995), p. 55. 277

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Vita

Elena Shabliy is from Moscow, Russia. She came to New Orleans right after her graduation on July 3, 2005. She graduated from Lomonosov Moscow State University with honors holding B.A. and M.A. in German Language and Western Literature. 2002- 2003 she spent at the University of Rostock, Germany, as an exchange student. Her undergraduate thesis was devoted to “Modality Category in German.” She became increasingly interested in a major branch of linguistics – stylistics, so important to literature study of all dimensions. In 2009, she earned an Interdisciplinary Master of Liberal Arts degree. She continued at Tulane to pursue a doctorate degree in Comparative Literature. She has taught one semester Introductory Russian course at Tulane. After her graduation, Elena plans to “strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

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