A Woman's Kingdom. Noblewomen and the Control of Property in Russia, 1700-1861 by Michelle Lamarche s> Marrese (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 741 church'), or wholly unsupportableassumptions(e.g., p. Ioi: 'Asa resultof his western contacts Iaroslav was familiar with the contemporary theoretical discussion over the prince's power to ordain bishops'). The specific readings range from the somewhat quirky(e.g. that Ilarion was principallyconcerned to cover up Vladimir's past as a usurper, the better to legitimize his son Iaroslav)to the downrightlax:thus if Korpela is to insistthat Ilarionwas some way from seeing Vladimir as an Apostle of Rus (p. I8I, n. 1030), then he does need to addressthe fact that Ilarion refersdirectlyto Vladimir as an 'apostle among rulers'.Thorough readings of full texts lose out to the need to impose an idea. Korpela's book has an impressive scholarly apparatus,but is itself poorly produced. It needs comprehensive style-editing and copy-editing. There are too many inconsistent renderings of Rus names, as well as phantom designationssuch as the monasteryof 'Pecer',or the 'Churchof Pokrova'. ClareCollege SIMON FRANKLIN University ofCambridge Marrese, Michelle Lamarche.A Woman's Kingdom. Noblewomen andtheControl of Property inRussia,I700-I86I. Cornell University Press,Ithaca, NY, and London, 2002. XiV+ 276 pp. Tables. Notes. Appendices. Bibliography. Index. $39.95. THE question of women's legal right to own and control their property has been one of the most argued over, but least studied aspects of the history of Russian women before I917. The separation of property has rightly been claimed as a featureof Russian law distinguishingit from the propertylaws of many western societies, which until the late nineteenth century gave control of a woman's propertyand earningsto her husband on marriage. Some have argued that as a result Russian women of the property-owning classes possessed greater equality with men than elsewhere. Others have observed, however, that the right to own property must be seen in the context of women's legal and actual subordination in other vital areas, including inheritance rights and personal rights. Even a property-owning woman was required to live with her husband or else obtain his permission to leave the marital home. Moreover, in civil and ecclesiasticallaw a woman was bound to obey her husband in all matters and submit to his superiorjudgement. Divorce was rare and until the early twentieth century the law continued to make legal separation difficult, though for all the real restrictions that remained right up to I9I7, defacto separation had become an increasing possibility. Michelle Marrese has set out to establish the actual extent of Russian women's property-holding and to determine whether or not they did indeed enjoy full control over it. She acknowledges the widely-held view that the separationof property between spouses originated not in individualproperty rights,but in the power of a clan to control its property after the marriageof its female members, but she convincingly demonstratesthat in the eighteenth century -and particularlyaftera Senate rulingin I753 that marriedwomen 742 SEER, 8i, 4, 2003 were entitled to control their property without interference from spouse or family noblewomen were increasinglyable to act independently, and did so. Marrese emphasizes that this development had little to do with a concern for women's rights per se, but with the nobility's attempts to secure the inviolability of private property against the state. However, she believes that the overall effect was to give Russian noblewomen an autonomy that few of theirWesterncounterpartsenjoyed in the same period. Her studyis admirablyresearched. She has examined an impressiverange of material, published and unpublished, including court records, property transfers, personal archives and memoirs. Her study contains over twenty carefullycompiled tables, showingnoblewomen's participationin the sale and purchase of land and serfs,the renting and mortgagingof property,ruraland urban, as well as merchant women's participation in urban property transactions. As well as focusing attention on the day-to-day financial transactionsof noblewomen and their families, she has also been at pains to compare Russianwomen's experience with those of upper-classwomen in the West. For this she has used much of the growing scholarly literature on women's legal and economic situation in western countries in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In the historical debate over the extent and the significance of marital separation of property, Marrese dismisses 'the extravagant...