Russianness, Femininity, and Romantic Aesthetics in War and Peace

Abstract

Among the critical innovations that have shaped studies of the nineteenth-century realist novel in recent decades, one of the most striking has been the shift away from questions of representation to broader, ideological concerns. In this context, feminist readings of Russian realism have been especially compelling. Feminist criticism on Tolstoy in the 1980s and 1990s, for example, has shown that his novels often display a misogynistic attitude toward women. As Amy Mandelker recently pointed out, feminist critics have blamed him for mistreating his own wife, turning his character Natasha into a boring housewife, and killing his Anna, while elevating the meek Dolly, Kitty, and Mar'ia to the status of saints.' By contrast, the importance of a strong feminine principle in Tolstoy's fiction has also been noted by critics, most notably Vera Sandomirsky Dunham, who have spoken of Tolstoy's contribution to the strong-woman motif in Russian literature.2 While both positions offer important insights into Tolstoy's works, a more complex understanding of his novels emerges when they are considered in the European literary context in which myths of femininity developed. The romantic underpinnings of Tolstoy's conceptions of gender are particularly important. In this article I trace the ways in which Tolstoy's War and Peace frames mythic femininity in terms of romantic aesthetic principles.3 Femininity in this novel is linked to myths of the folk and national character.