Gender, Body and Parenthood in Muscovite Russia
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Apollo GENDER, BODY AND PARENTHOOD IN MUSCOVITE RUSSIA Rosemary Jane Finlinson Fitzwilliam College, University of Cambridge April 2020 This dissertation is submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2 DECLARATION This thesis is the result of my own work and includes nothing which is the outcome of work done in collaboration except as declared in the Preface and specified in the text. It is not substantially the same as any that I have submitted, or, is being concurrently submitted for a degree or diploma or other qualification at the University of Cambridge or any other University or similar institution except as declared in the Preface and specified in the text. I further state that no substantial part of my thesis has already been submitted, or, is being concurrently submitted for any such degree, diploma or other qualification at the University of Cambridge or any other University or similar institution except as declared in the Preface and specified in the text. It does not exceed the limit of 80,000 words set by the Degree Committee of the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics. Word Count: 62 879 3 4 ABSTRACT Gender, Body and Parenthood in Muscovite Russia Rosemary Jane Finlinson In Muscovite Russia, political power was often articulated through the image of the ruler and his family. Ideologies of family were crucial to the cultural envisioning of dynastic legitimacy and social order. Beginning from the sixteenth century, under the cultural influence of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, conventions for representing the body and human reproduction in Russian literature underwent a transformation. There was a proliferation of scientific and medical literature, on the one hand, and poetry, on the other hand. As a result, ideologies of family came to be expressed across a new range of textual genres. Focussing on the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, this thesis explores how ideological constructions of parenthood shape and are shaped by changing forms of conceptualising and representing the gendered body. In so doing, it underscores the need to interrogate modern assumptions about sex to recognise the variable signification and significance of the body in early modern Russian gender ideologies. The first chapter is broadly theoretical. It destabilises the modern relationship between anatomy and gender by looking at the construction of sex in Muscovite medical discourse. In this writing, anatomy is depicted as being in communication with social forces. Correspondingly, visions of bodily difference are formed in the interaction of the body with existing social norms and hierarchies: namely, masculine authority and feminine subservience and responsibility for childrearing. This social gender hierarchy was maintained through the regulation of bodily practices (breastfeeding and growing a beard) rather than by an idea of sex as a fixed anatomical binary. I demonstrate the instability of the body in Muscovite definitions of masculinity and femininity by exploring how breastfeeding was consolidated as a gender marker and the beard was lost in seventeenth-century ecclesiastical debates about gender. The remaining chapters demonstrate the importance of literary factors in shaping the construction of parenthood and the gendered body over this period. The second chapter analyses the sixteenth-century Stepennaia Kniga, a royal genealogical history which utilises depictions of parenthood to embed patriarchal authority in the dynastic and ecclesiastical establishments. The text does not clearly differentiate between mothers and fathers in terms of anatomy or behaviour. Instead, the behaviour of both parents is aligned with that of ruler and priest, and their competence as parents is expressed in how well they embody those patriarchal roles. The mother’s subordinate position is established through her inability to perform regal and ecclesiastical tropes associated with parenthood and as a result mothers do not play a central role in the text’s depiction of parenthood. In the Stepennaia Kniga, parenthood is embodied primarily by fathers. The third chapter examines how parenthood came to be embodied by mothers in seventeenth-century poetry about the family. It posits that the figurative language characteristic of emergent Baroque verse cultivated novel relationships between body and gender. Although the principle of feminine subservience did not change, it was now embedded in the flesh of the mother through the development of a discourse of maternal suffering. Through metaphor, allegory and emblem, ideas of parental love, sacrifice and caregiving were tied to maternal body parts and processes specifically: the utroba, childbirth and breastfeeding. The maternal body thus came to represent both parents, 5 creating a new and distinctly gendered vision of parental love. As the century developed, this gendered vision of love was extended beyond the context of parenthood. The suffering maternal body was cast as an emblem of Christian sacrifice more broadly. 6 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Firstly, I would like to thank my supervisor, Olenka Pevny, for more things than I can write down here. I am so grateful for her enthusiasm and interest in my work, for her insight, advice, encouragement, her unfailing patience and, above all, her faith in me. Thanks also go to the many members of the wider academic community who have inspired, encouraged and shared their expertise with me at various stages in this long process: particularly to my examiners, Simon Franklin and Valerie Kivelson, to Clare Griffin and Evgenii Akelev for their help and support with my archival research along with colleagues at RGADA, RGB, RNB and GIM, and to Katie Sykes, for her expert help with translations. I am also grateful to CEELBAS (Centre for East European Language-Based Area Studies), whose funding made this research possible. Thank you so much to my parents, sister and friends for their constant support and for putting up with me during this time. Particular thanks go to my fellow graduate students and friends in Cambridge for their empathy, humour and companionship: Maya, Katie, Oliver, Martin, Syaivo, Syamala, Bohdan, Blake, Matt, Alejandro, Jonasz and Agota. Thank you also to Peter for helping me make it to the end. Last, but by no means least, I would like to thank Nick Mayhew, for everything. Thank you for encouraging me to go down this road and being my companion on the journey. Thank you for always being there to exchange and discuss ideas, to read my work at short notice, to make me take breaks when I didn’t want to and for being a constant source of insight, inspiration, humour and friendship. 7 8 TABLE OF CONTENTS Gender, Body and Parenthood in Muscovite Russia List of Abbreviations ................................................................................. 11 Note on Transliteration and Orthography ............................................. 12 Introduction ............................................................................................... 13 1. Literature review ............................................................................................................. 15 2. Approach to the Muscovite body .................................................................................... 22 3. Scope of the thesis and use of sources ............................................................................ 23 4. Contents of the thesis ...................................................................................................... 24 Chapter I: (De)constructing Sex in Muscovy ......................................... 27 1. Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 27 1.1 Theorising sex difference in pre-modern Europe .................................................... 29 1.2 History of anatomy in early modern Europe and in Muscovy ................................ 31 1.3 Methodology and sources ........................................................................................ 37 2. Abandoning anatomy ...................................................................................................... 46 2.1 In search of Muscovite penises ............................................................................... 47 2.2 In search for Muscovite wombs, vagina and vulvas................................................ 50 3. Gender hierarchy and bodily practices ............................................................................ 59 4. Breasts and beards under debate in seventeenth-century Muscovy ................................ 65 5. Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 78 Chapter II: Mother as ‘Father’: Parenthood as patriarchy in the Stepennaia Kniga ....................................................................................... 81 1. Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 81 2. Fertile men and chaste women in the SK ........................................................................ 85 3. ‘Fathering’ in accounts of royal mothers in the SK ......................................................... 92 3.1 Ol’ga of Kyiv .........................................................................................................