On the wedding eve, the bride was brought by her mother to the bridegroom's house with her trousseau and the nuptial bed. In the morning, heavily veiled, she went through the ceremony, pledging fidelity by exchanging rings and then falling at her husband's feet, touching her forehead to his shoes in a gesture of subjugation. With his wife on the floor beneath him, the bridegroom benevolently covered her with the hem of his coat, acknowledging his obligation to support and protect this humble creature. Then, while the guests began to banquet, the newlyweds went straight to bed. They were given two hours, after which the doors of their room flew open and the guests crowded around, wanting to know whether the husband had found his wife a virgin. If the answer was yes, congratulations were lavished upon them, they were led to a bath of sweet-smelling herbs and then to the banquet hall to join in the feast. If the answer was no, everyone, but most of all the bride, suffered.
Once married, the new wife assumed her place in her husband's home, as an animate domestic chattel, and possessed no rights except through him. Her functions were to look after his house, see to his comfort and bear his children. If she had sufficient talent, she ruled as mistress over the servants; if not, in the master's absence the servants took charge without asking or telling her anything. When her husband had an important guest, she was permitted to appear before dinner, dressed in her best ceremonial robes, bearing a welcoming cup on a silver tray. Standing before the guest, she bowed, handed the cup, offered her cheek for a Christian kiss and then wordlessly withdrew. When she bore a child, those who feared her husband or wanted his patronage came to congratulate him and present a gold piece for the newborn. If the gift was generous, the husband had good reason to be happy with his excellent wife.
If the husband was not happy, there were procedures for improving his situation. In most cases, where only a mild correction was necessary, he could beat her. The Domostroy or Household Management Code, dating from 1556 and attributed to a monk named Sylvester, gave specific advice to the heads of Muscovite families on numerous domestic matters, from preserving mushrooms to disciplining wives. On the latter issue, it recommended that "disobedient wives should be severely whipped, though not in anger." Even a good wife should be taught by her husband "by using the whip to her from time to time, but nicely, in secret, and in a polite fashion, avoiding blows of the fist which cause bruises." In the lower classes, Russian men beat their wives on the slightest pretext. "Some of these barbarians will tie up their wives by the hair of the head, and whip them stark naked," wrote Dr. Collins. Sometimes the beatings were so severe that the woman died; then the husband was free to remarry. Inevitably, a few wives, tormented beyond endurance, struck back and murdered their husbands. The number was small because a new law, published early in Alexis' reign, dealt harshly with such criminals: a wife guilty of murdering her husband was buried alive in the earth with only her head protruding above the ground, and left to die.
In serious cases, where a wife was so hopelessly unsatisfactory that she was not worth beating, or where the husband had found another woman whom he preferred, the solution was divorce. To divorce his wife, an Orthodox husband had simply to thrust her, willing or not, into a convent. There, her hair was sheared off, she was dressed in a long black gown with wide sleeves and enshrouding hood and she became, in the eyes of the world, dead. For the rest of her life, she lived amid the crowds of women in nunneries, some of them young girls forced to abandon life by greedy brothers or relatives who wished to avoid sharing an estate or paying a dowry, others simply wives who had run away and preferred anything to going back to their husbands.
Once his wife was "dead," a husband was free to remarry, but this freedom was not unlimited. The Orthodox Church permitted a man two dead wives or two divorces, but his third wife had to be his last. Thus, a husband who had violently abused his first two wives was likely to handle his third with care; if she died or ran away, he could never marry again.
This isolation of women and disdain for their companionship had a grim effect on seventeenth-century Russian men. Family life was stifled, intellectual life was stagnant, the coarsest qualities prevailed and men, deprived of the society of women, found little else to do but drink. There were exceptions. In some households, intelligent women played a key role, albeit behind the scenes; in a few, strong women even dominated weak husbands. Ironically, the lower a woman stood in the social scale, the greater her chance for equality. In the lower classes, where life was a struggle for simple existence, women could not be pushed aside and treated as useless children; their brains and muscle were needed. They were considered inferior, but they lived side by side with men. They bathed with men, and ran laughing through the snow with men, completely naked. On endless winter evenings, they joined the men in feasting and drinking around the stove, packed together, allowing embraces from whoever was next to them, laughing, crying and finally falling asleep in drunken communion. If a husband was cruel, still he had once been kind; if he beat her, it permitted her to forgive again. "Yes, he beats me, but then he falls on his knees with tears in his eyes and begs my forgiveness. ..."
At the summit of the female social order stood the tsaritsa, the wife of the tsar. Her life, although more comfortable than that of her lesser sisters, was no more independent. She devoted her time to her family, to prayer and to good deeds and charities. Within the palace, she directed the household, seeing to her own wardrobe and watching over that of her husband and children. Usually, the tsaritsa herself was skilled with a needle and embroidered robes and vestments, either for the tsar or the church; in addition, she supervised the labor of many seamstresses. It was her duty to give generously to the poor and to oversee the marriages and ensure the dowries of* the numerous young women of her household. Like her husband, the tsaritsa spent much time in church, but, even with all her duties, there were many empty hours. To pass the time, the tsaritsa played cards, listened to stories, watched the singing and dancing of her maidens and laughed at the clowning of her dwarfs dressed in bright-pink costumes with red leather boots and green cloth caps. At the end of the day, after vespers and when the tsar had finished his work, the tsaritsa might be summoned to visit her husband.
Whether or not marriage was a desirable state for a seventeenth-century Russian was arguable. But there were some women in Russian society who would never know. By rank, they were at the very top, the sisters and daughters of the tsar. By fortune, who can say? None of these princesses, called tsarevnas, would ever meet a man, fall in love, marry and have children. Similarly, none would ever be haggled over, marketed, legally raped, beaten or divorced. The barrier was their rank. They could never marry Russians beneath their own royal rank (although the tsar could choose a wife from the nobility), and they were barred by religion from marrying foreigners—by definition, infidels or heretics. Therefore, from birth they were doomed to live their lives in the narrow gloom of the terem, an apartment, usually at the top of a large Russian house, reserved for women. There, they passed their time in prayer, embroidery, gossip and boredom. They would never know anything of the wider world, and the world would notice their existence only when it was announced that they had been bom or died.
Except for their close male relatives and the patriarch and a few selected priests, no man ever set eyes on the shadowy royal recluses. The terem itself was an exclusively female world. When a tsarevna was ill, the shutters were drawn and the curtains closed to darken the room and hide the patient. If it was necessary to take her pulse or examine her body, it had to be done through a covering of gauze so that no male fingers would touch the naked female skin. Early in the morning or late at night, the tsarevnas went to church, hurrying through closed corridors and secret passageways. In cathedrals or chapels, they stood screened behind red silk curtains in a dark part of the choir to avoid the gaze of male eyes. When they walked in state processionals, it was behind the moving silken walls of closed canopies. When they left the Kremlin on pilgrimage to a convent, it was in specially constructed bright-red carriages or sledges, closed like movable cells, surrounded by maids and men on horseback to clear the roads.