The Russian Woman
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 23629534 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Anna A Berman (0000-0001-7606-1596, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Pages | 772-787 |
| Publication date | 2024-12-12 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | CHAPTER |
| Venue | New Cambridge History of Russian Literature (SOURCE_BOOK) |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1017/9781108655620.046 |
| OpenAlex | W4405905245 |
| ISBN | 9781108655620 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 7 |
This chapter traces the evolution of a specific character type that began with Aleksandr Pushkin’s Tatiana Larina in Eugene Onegin . In the hands of future authors such as Ivan Turgenev and Fedor Dostoevskii, Tatiana came to represent an ideal for the Russian woman based on soulfulness, fidelity, and self-sacrifice. Russian women writers, too, used Tatiana as a model for their heroines. With the rise of the ‘woman question’ in the 1860s, the Russian woman was redefined to reveal her new potentials in a shifting society, with Nikolai Chernyshevskii’s Vera Pavlovna as a new ideal. In the Soviet period, she was rethought yet again to respond to shifting political mandates, variously downplaying or emphasising her maternal, caregiving side. The faithful, all-enduring Tatiana took on a new form in Anna Akhmatova’s Requiem and continues to evolve in contemporary feminist writing.
| Highly cited | No |
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