Even if the bride had participated in choosing her husband, and even if she happened to be in love with him, that did not mean he would later refrain from exercising his tacit right to abuse her. At the bathhouse ritual in some areas she and her girlfriends had tried not to disturb the smoldering brands in the fire, for a quiet fire portended a home life free of beatings by the husband.79 Yet at this very ritual the venik she used to beat herself had previously been obtained from the groom in a ceremonial exchange of veniki. Smirenie toward her husband was what she anticipated.
The songs sung about the ritual bath give a better indication of how the bride actually felt at that moment than do the ethnographic descriptions. They are termed laments (“prichitaniia,” “prichety”), or sometimes just plain howling (“voi”). They were sung by the bride, by her friends, or sometimes even by a professional wailer (which does not lessen their psychological value, any more than well-played organ music at a funeral lessens the sadness of the mourners there). They express agony, and at the same time a submission to that agony (smirenie). The line “I will beat [my forehead], I will bow down low” occurs repeatedly in the wedding laments. Often the bride will sing “Thank you” for the horrible things that are being done to her. The following excerpts are from Kolpakova’s marvelous chrestomathy of wedding lyrics:
Although the bride goes willingly with her girlfriends to the bania, her emotional pain is obviously great. It is evident that, within herself at least, she is putting up a fight. She wants time to stop, she does not want to go forward into a threatening future.81 She even wants the bania to dismantle itself, as if time could go backward. In another song she wishes that the logs return to the stumps of the trees from which they were cut: “Uzh vy stan’te, eti brevnyshki, / Chto na starye na penushki.” She goes on to sing:
The bride is expressing intense ambivalence about her mother here. She tears apart the bania, her “second mother” in fantasy (cf. the nasty treatment accorded the birch tree during Semik ceremonies). Yet she also wants to maintain the relationship with the loving mother. She wants everything she is going through to stop (“Ty postoi”), so that the relationship with the mother can be preserved as is: “For the sake of my dear mamushka.”
The break with the mother was very important. In another song the “krasota” to be washed away in the bania is the mother herself: “Matushka—div’ia krasota.”83
The future was indeed bleak for the bride. She was about to be separated from the very friends who were bathing her. She was also about to be separated from her parents, to acquire an “alien mother” (“chuzhaia matushka”) and an “alien father” (“chuzhoi batiushka”)84 in her new, patrilocal domicile. What is more, she was about to become the lowest-ranking individual in the new household, with only her (possibly abusive) husband to protect her. The groom suffered no comparable trauma, and it is hardly surprising that there are practically no wedding laments for men, or sung by men.
The new restrictions being placed on the bride added up to a loss of her former “volia.” This loss was sustained not at the wedding itself, but earlier, at the prenuptial bath:
Kolpakova quite rightly pays close attention to those bridal laments which depict the loss of the “volia.” In her desperation the bride gives the “volia” many forms: “…it throws itself onto the walls and ceiling in the form of a white swan, it turns into white steam, in the wash-tub it ends up being a little duck, it transforms itself first into a venik, then soap, then fire, until finally it turns into a bird and flies out the window or door of the bania.”86 The bride’s “volia” does not stay in one place, it does not remain one thing, it is a very slippery creature. According to Kolpakova it is a kind of werewolf or shapeshifter (“oboroten’”). Sometimes it is a girlfriend of the bride, sometimes even the bride’s double. Its ability to metamorphose is remarkable. In its very slipperiness it is the epitome of freedom, “volia.” To part with it is very painful for the bride, for the next stage of her life will be the epitome of unfreedom, that is, bondage, “nevolia.” But part with it she does, and voluntarily. The prenuptial bath she submits herself to is emblematic of the masochism which will characterize the rest of her life. Not pulling off the boot of her new, paternal husband, but losing her “volia” in the maternal bania represents her true sud’ba.