Lost Arcadia: The 1812 War and Russian Images of Aristocratic Womanhood

Abstract

The Napoleonic invasion of 1812 marks a watershed in the history of Russian aristocratic women. Their social position before 1812, while privileged and sometimes even quite autonomous, had mostly kept their political and social horizons narrow. In addition, eighteenth-century culture had presented them with competing, at times conflicting, models of aristocratic femininity. Based on memoirs by women who experienced the 1812 war, this article argues that the invasion disrupted their pre-war insular way of life and confronted noblewomen with traumas specific to their class and sex. In response, women reaffirmed the aristocracy’s stoic ethos and its claim to leadership in society, and represented women as gentle humanitarians but also patriots and fearless protectors of their loved ones. The women of the 1812 generation thereby helped to crystallize the emerging intelligentsia’s vision of ideal Russian womanhood, which in turn contributed to the rise of the Russian revolutionary movement.