The fundamentally patriarchal character of Russian society nevertheless remained unaltered. Grounds for divorce did not include wife-beating; in Peter's day, husbands could rid themselves of unwanted wives by depositing them in a nunnery, as Peter did with his first wife Evdoksia. For the crime of adultery, wives were sentenced to forced labour, whereas men who killed their wives were merely flogged with the knout. Making it more difficult for women to avoid family life by entering a convent, in 1722 Peter raised the age at which women could take the veil to sixty.[156] Developments after Peter's death further buttressed the patriarchal family. The laws governing marriage permitted husbands and fathers to exercise virtually unlimited power over other family members, and required a wife to submit to her husband as head of the household and to live with him in love, respect and 'unlimited obedi- ence'.[157] The strictures on marital dissolution tightened. Over the course of the eighteenth century, the Russian Orthodox Church steadily increased its authority over marriage and divorce, emphasising more than ever before the sacramental and indissoluble nature of marriage. The Church made divorce virtually inaccessible to the Russian Orthodox faithful, the majority of the population. Grounds for annulling a marriage also narrowed and were even more narrowly applied.[158] It became much more difficult for a woman to escape an abusive or unsatisfactory marriage by obtaining a divorce; the law strictly forbade marital separation.
Yet in the final decades of the eighteenth century, literature imported from the West introduced new ways of thinking about marriage and the family. Conduct books and education manuals celebrated motherhood's sanctity, and instructed mothers to be the moral and spiritual guides of their children.[159]Sentimental literature elevated woman's role, presenting her as sensitive and emotional, a friend to the man whom she married.[160] Even Russian Orthodox views of marriage were affected by these trends: the Church placed new emphasis on the affective ties of spouses and their reciprocal responsibilities towards one another, while downplaying - although not eradicating - the patriarchal and misogynist elements of its previous stance.[161] In the reign of Nicholas I, a modified patriarchal ideal became the model of imperial rule. The private life of the tsar was staged so as to portray him as a loving and devoted husband and caring father, while the empress provided a model of maternal love and tenderness - a family idyll that was disseminated in paintings and engravings to a broad audience as well as to the elite. The new imagery dramatised a 'sharp division of sexual spheres' that mirrored developments in other European courts.[162]
Although arranged marriages continued to be the norm well into the nineteenth century, there is evidence that by the reign of Nicholas I, a portion of the nobility had embraced the new affective ideal of marriage and come to value intimate and loving family relations. 'Can a marriage be stable and happy, when it is not based on feelings of mutual respect and the most tender love?' rhetorically inquired the governor of Nizhegorod province in 1828.[163] However, it is questionable whether Nicholas's ideology of separate spheres had a broad popular basis in Russia, as it had in Great Britain and France.[164] While the 'domestic' was defined as women's proper sphere, as it was elsewhere, for Russian noblewomen the domestic extended well beyond the confines of home and housekeeping. Women's subordinate status in law coexisted, sometimes uneasily, with their legal right to own and manage immovable property, which Russian wives, as well as single women and widows, enjoyed. Even married women could buy and sell and enter contracts, a status that was unique in Europe. Noblewomen's activities as property managers often tookprecedence over childrearing and brought such women into contact with local and central authorities and with the legal process.18 Given the lawlessness of provincial life and noblewomen's control of human chattel, estate management could require determination, even ruthlessness, rather than the gentleness usually associated with domesticity.
Outside the circle of privilege
The changes introduced by Peter and his eighteenth-century successors affected women of Russia's tax-paying population, townspeople as well as peasants, primarily in negative ways. The most significant change derived from the practice of conscription that Peter introduced. Conscription created a new social category, the soldier's wife (soldatka). If a peasant, conscription put the soldatka in the most marginal position by freeing her and her children from serfdom, thereby depriving her of her husband's share of the communal land and other benefits. Because they represented an extra mouth to feed and a potential threat to the other women ofthe household and community, soldatki might be driven from the village. Such women became highly vulnerable. The cities to which many migrated offered them little in the way of respectable employment and large numbers of men prepared to pay for sexual companionship. Some women took up petty trade, many more hired out as domestic servants. However, enough turned to prostitution as a temporary or permanent expedient that soldiers' wives acquired an unsavory reputation. They also figured prominently among the mothers of illegitimate children. In the course of the eighteenth century, illegitimacy and infanticide became much more visible than they had been previously, and perhaps more commonplace as well. These social problems moved the state to action. Initially, concern to increase the population prompted Peter the Great to establish hospitals where mothers could deposit their illegitimate children in secret (in 1712, and again
Press, 1990), vol. IV pp. 134-5; Catherine Hall, 'The Sweet Delights of Home', in Perrot,
A History, p. 49.
18 Marrese, A Woman's Kingdom.
in 1714 and 1715). After his death, the shelters were dismantled. In the reign of Catherine the Great, foundling homes were established in Moscow (in 1764) and St Petersburg (1771), with the aim not only of preserving the lives of illegitimate children, but equally important, of creating an enlightened citizenry, capable of promoting the welfare of the country. The homes failed to achieve these goals.[165]
At the same time, the state moved to exert greater control over women's sexuality. A decree of 26 July 1721 stated that women and girls convicted of 'loose behaviour' were to be handed over to the College of Mines and Manufactures and given as workers to industrialists or sent to Moscow. In 1736 Empress Anna ordered all 'debauched' women to be beaten with a cat-of-nine-tails and thrown out of their homes. In 1762 Catherine the Great designated a hospital in St Petersburg for the confinement of women of 'debauched behaviour'. In 1800 Emperor Paul I sentenced to forced labour in Siberian factories all women who 'have turned to drunkenness, indecency and a dissolute life'.[166] The law also enjoined the police to pick up 'vagrant maids' of dubious character who belonged to 'the poorest and most disreputable classes' if they might be harbouring venereal disease.[167] Finally, in 1843, followingthe example ofthe French, the Russians moved to subject prostitutes to regulation. Illicit sexual behaviour would henceforward be tolerated, but only within the boundaries set by the state. A woman who 'traded in vice' could either enter a licensed brothel or register as an independent prostitute, carrying a 'yellow' ticket that attested to the state of her health. Both were required to undergo regular examinations for venereal disease. The policy clearly targeted lower-class women who lived outside the boundaries of the patriarchal family.
156
L. Hughes,
158
G. L. Freeze, 'Bringing Order to the Russian Family: Marriage and Divorce in Imperial Russia, 1760-1860',
159
Diana Greene, 'Mid-Nineteenth Century Domestic Ideology in Russia', in Rosalind Marsh (ed.),
160
O. E. Glagoleva, 'Dream and Reality of Russian Provincial Young Ladies, 1700-1850',
161
W Wagner,
162
R. Wortman,
163
GARF, Tret'e otdelenie sobstvennoi ego imperatorskogo velichestva kantseliarii, 18261880, Fond 109, 2aia ekspeditsiia, 1828, op. 58, ed. khr. 199, ll. 1-19; Mary Wells Cavendar, 'Nests of the Gentry: Family, Estate and Local Loyalties in Provincial Tver, 1820-1860,' unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Michigan (1997), p. 29.
164
M. Perrot, 'The Family Triumphant', in Michelle Perrot (ed.),
165
D. Ransel,
166
Laurie Bernstein,
167
Quoted in Laura Engelstein, 'Gender and the Juridical Subject: Prostitution and Rape in Nineteenth Century Criminal Codes',