"The Poetics of Everyday Behavior" Revisited: Lotman, Gender, and the Evolution of Russian Noble Identity

Abstract

In a letter to her brother in 1828, describing a course of summer reading that included Shakespeare and Sir Walter Scott, Mariia Mukhanova begged his forgiveness for choice of language in her previous letter. don't know why ! wrote to you in French, she admitted, attributing her decision to capriciousness, to which I, like many women, am susceptible. I have always preferred to express myself in Russian. (1) Mukhanova's apology raises important questions both about relation of Russian noblewomen to European culture and, more generally, evolution of noble identity in pre-reform Russia. Since 19th century, scholars have identified encounter between educated noblemen and European civilization as a central question in history of Russian nobility. motif of alienation of Europeanized nobleman from customs of his native land has dominated this debate: while historians such as Marc Raeff argued that cultural change culminated in isolation of intellectuals from both state and Russian people, producing superfluous man of literary imagination, a competing school underscores persistence of shared superstitions and rituals that bound vast majority of nobility to peasant culture. (2) related question of how Russian noblewomen experienced assimilation of Western manners and morals in post-Petrine era has, by contrast, attracted little analogous attention. Numerous studies have examined advances made in education of noble girls in late 18th century. These works have, however, focused primarily on significance of Western models in fostering women's role as moral and cultural arbiters in family and society. Indisputably, improvements in female education transformed expectations of marriage and motherhood among nobles of both sexes. (3) Yet impact of noblewomen's increasing familiarity with European culture on their own perceptions of national identity, and whether these differed from those of their male counterparts, remains largely unexamined. historiographical convention that highlighted uneasy relationship of Westernized nobleman to native tradition took on new with publication of Iu. M. Lotman's seminal essay The Poetics of Everyday in Eighteenth-Century Russian Culture. During and after Petrine period, Russian nobleman was like a foreigner in his own country, Lotman argued. As an adult he had to learn through unnatural methods what is usually acquired through direct experience in early childhood.... To behave properly was to behave like a foreigner, that is, in a somewhat artificial manner, according to norms of someone else's way of life. nobleman of 18th century thus found himself perpetually play-acting in his existence, adopting European manners while simultaneously maintaining an alien Russian attitude toward these new forms of behavior. Significantly, Lotman denied women similar possibilities for self-fashioning, remarking that the behavior of noblewoman was much closer in principle to that of peasant than to that of nobleman. In her there were no moments of individual choice, and her behavior was determined by age. (4) While semioticized of Russian nobleman created possibilities for a range of behavioral styles, existence of Russian noblewomen was circumscribed by imperatives of marriage and childbirth. appearance of The Poetics of Everyday Behavior and a series of related articles (5) inspired a productive new line of inquiry among scholars of Russian elite. (6) In particular, these works drew upon Lotman's thesis that, in wake of collision of European culture and Russian tradition, art invaded life and everyday behavior of nobility became highly theatricalized. Although scholars countered Lotman's claim with assertions that theatricality, illusion, and imitation of foreign models were also attributes of elite in Western Europe, they followed his lead in maintaining that Russian noble was unique in exporting ritual quality of court to his estate in provinces and transforming his daily into an improvised performance. …