Piano music, fantasy, and Elizaveta Ivanova’s ambivalent feminism

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this article, I investigate the ambivalent feminism of four otherwise unknown, provincial women in late imperial Russia. Through a close examination of feminist piano music that they played, and the private writings of E.A. Ivanova—the dedicatee of this music—I show that these women expressed an intense ambivalence: while raising the ideal of sisterhood, their feminism was also ironic, in support of patriarchy, and loyal to traditional ideals about women's allegedly light-hearted and private art. Through this music and their writings, these women also grappled with the larger question of how to understand the self. These results are relevant because they allow us to move beyond scholarly analyses of feminist activists which historians have interpreted in relation to the Revolution of 1917.