The Influence of British and French Romances on Ea

The Influence of British and French Romances on Early Modern Women in Russia

The way of the romance to the hearts of the Russian women before it became popular and influential in the 18-th century  was very queer. The roots of this fact were deeply  immersed in the history of the country and were based on the particularities of its religious and cultural traditions. First of all Middle Ages, according to the opinions of Russian Historians of literature (Dmitriy Lihachev, 1980),  lasted in Russia longer then in other European countries – almost until the beginning of the   18-th  century. Early modern time started here only about 1700. The second reason was the religious separation from Western Christian tradition (in the 5-th century) and enclosure from the western influence and even contacts until the first part of the 17-th century. Outstanding Russian historian Vasiliy Cluchevsky had written  in  1880-th that Russians were scared to take even material conveniences from the Western  world in order not to spoil the Forefather’s  moral legacy (behest) which they regarded as a holy thing. And the Western world by their thoughts was a source of danger for the pure Russian soul. The traditions of the Orthodox Christianity in Russia were formed under the influence and leadership of Byzantium. Dmitriy Lihachev divided the history of the Russian medieval  literature into 7 periods. 5 of them, which  cover the time from 11-th till 15-th century, consists of translated Byzantine works (Apocrypha) based on biblical stories and written in the shape of the legends, they showed  the life of the Virgin and the lives of the saint Fathers of the Orthodox Christian Church and the real military events of the Russian history and etc. In addition to them there were some imitations of the Russian authors. That was the only possible reading and all educational devices of the medieval Russia. After the fall of Constantinople  in the 15-th century Russia claimed Moscow “the third Rome” and enclosed in its Orthodox space once and for all. It meant that all the European intellectual processes echoed here with a great lateness and distortion. Russian culture didn’t get in time Hellenistic and Roman impact, even in the Renaissance period. Cultural and intellectual Russian life including a literature and an education were submitted to the Orthodox religion. Till the end of the 17-th century even tzars – for example Ivan the Great and Alexis I -  were educated as a clergymen. And there were only few schools for the children in Russia – for the children of priests. Mardgeret wrote in the 17-th century that an ignorance was the Mother of  a piety of Russian people.
Only the reforms of  Peter the Great brought  sciences, secular literacy and foreign languages in the educational programs. He founded the regular educational system for the male offsprings of noblemen. It was an obligation for them but nor their free will. To say nothing about the regular education for women. Literacy and a habit to read were not wide spread at that time both among Russian male and female member of the nobility. To say nothing about other strata of society. One of the Russian Historians of that period said that in the medieval Russia few people read much but not a lot of books. Most of them were religious ones. Only in the 15-16-th century  a translated secular narration came into the light of the Russian reader’s attention. “A Story about Dracula”, “A Story about Basarge”, “A Story about the Kingdom of India”, and etc. Usually they had more retelling form then a translated one. They  also came not directly – usually from Poland, Bulgaria, Chehia, Belorussia or other Slavic countries. And they got there rather new shape of a legend  or a fairy tale, which were very popular in Russia.
The romantic love stories, medieval poetry and chivalric romances, renaissance novels were known in Russia from the first part of the 17-th century.  “King Arthur and the Knights of the round Table”, ”Tristan and Isolde”, “A Tale about Alexander the Great” and other romances (about 10) were popular here and usually they got the oral comprehensible form of a fairy tale, because they were translated not from the original texts but from a cheep  Italian editions issued for a low class readers. Some of them came to Russia orally like “A Tale about Prince Bova” (“Bovo d’Anton”). This chivalric romance was well known to a lot of people from different strata of society as a folk fairy tale.  Usually romances in the Russian version lost their romantic features and became an everyday story with the adventures. The influence of such secular translated literature on the attitude of the people helped the process of emancipation of a fiction literature from a religious control. The readers and listeners  sought in these stories an entertainment,  an excitement, a pleasure but not a “soulhelpfulness”. Adventures and an ideal love exited the hearts of Russian women and men and gave them new impressions and emotions. They found a wonder, an  astonishment and not teaching in the romances. It was the main. Romances gave them “not official”(boring and incomprehensible training books)  but private  reading. And that was enough. The Russian imitations of these chivalric romances in a form of the narration of the everyday life appeared in Russia at the end of the 17-th century.
Until the 18-th century Russia was a very specific country in the aspect of the women’s position in society and their influence on its life and culture. For a long time – till the period of the Peter’s the Great reign (18-th century) they lived in Russia in a oppressive position, under the tyrannical ruling of their fathers and husbands named “Domostroy”. It meant that they were cut in their rights and liberties. They could not walk and act  according to their wills, interests,  and talents. They were obliged to be totally obedient to their male mates. The latters treated them strictly and often violent.  A housekeeping, nursing children, praying and embroidery were women’s sphere of the life in  the high classes and  a hard work in addition – in the low classes. The women of this time may be regarded as a segregate group. Such position was not something unique in world history.   But unlike their Japanese medieval sisters from the 12-th century, for example, Sei Shonagon with her “A Pillow Book” and Lady Murasaki with her “A Tale of Genji”, they didn’t leave any samples of women’s literature written by women for women or personally for themselves as a diary. The lack of an education was  one of the reasons of it. The shortage in books – handwritten and printed - was the other. By the way the first printed book in Russia – “The Apostle” -  was issued in 1564. Peter the Great brought the ideas of the Enlightenment into the country and opened the doors of women’s chambers and ordered them to be the part of the secular life of society. The isolation from the West was broken. The foreign specialists, scientists and teachers  were invited to country and they brought their national literature  and culture   with them. Reading , study foreign language, mostly French, and even writing poetry went hand in hand with the women’s education. A.Posdneev (1971) mentioned the anonymous lyric poetess of the beginning of the 17-th century. Elizabeth and Catherine the Great continued the reforms. The latter made a lot for women’s education, women’s position and enrichment of their interests and attitude. In particular with the help of the literature – she was a playwright herself and she issued one of the first Russian magazines (She took as a pattern English “Spectator”). With the help of them she hoped to improve habits and prejudices, plant the European education to the Russian soil and to prepare a new type of the officials and nobility.  During the 18-th century the noblemen, the women in particular made a great step in the intellectual life and education, They learned the foreign languages and got used with reading. The romances, the novels, novelettes and love stories became their favorite occupation. Education gave the women in the two Russian capitals - Moscow and St.Petersburg new opportunities. For example the Duchess Dashkova became a president of the Academy of Sciences in 1783.  And some time before in 1763 she became a publisher of the magazine “An Innocent Exercise” where a famous Voltaire’s  poem “On the Lisbon’s destruction” was published. She was fond of reading French and English romances and she shared her attitude on the pages of her magazine. So did the others. Most of the magazines published a popular western fiction literature. In 1764 the magazine “The Good Intentions” gave the Russian readers an opportunity to read an extracts from the Italian novels of Boccaccio and Mazucco, the works of the Antique  and the Renaissance authors. But it took women a long time to become an influential part of society. Even a regular system of women’s education was started in 1764, and the first people’s schools appeared in 1782. Politics was a closed sphere for them (if they were not Queens). But they could impact the feelings of people by their doings – the wives of the noble rebels (decabristy – decemberers) in 1826 followed their husbands to the place of exile to the penal servitude in Siberia. One of them the Duchess Maria Volkonskaya wrote the memories  about this time. Some of the women became influential as charity givers – like Ksenia Petersburgskay. But mostly their voices were heard essentially lower than the voices of the males. To say truth Russian women were not so active as their European or American sisters. During the reign of Elizabeth, the daughter of Peter the Great a lot of love song (they are named romances in Russian) written by  the famous writer of that period Sumarokov enriched women’s reading and leisure time. And they captivated their hearts  at once. “The young ladies never dropped them from their tongues”,-  witnessed   their contemporary Bolotov in 1752. Soon a real flood of the western romances  issued in French overcrowded Russian capitals – Moscow and St.-Petersburg and the noble society almost literally  fall in love with them. And just in Catherine’s the Great time romances  and novels – French, German and English - became the most popular reading among a literate people, especially among the women. The works of Didro, Richardson, Milton and other western authors supplanted boring and hard scientific  and training literature. Then Russian romances and novels went further and gave  the female readers an exiting stories – “Russian Pamela or The Adventures of Maria, virtuous villager”, “A Heroism of Love or  the Image of a Generous Lover”, “Henriette or The Hussar Theft” – these titles shows the rush of the reader’s, mostly female reader’s, interests. The life, described in such literature became a dream and a pattern for the high class women and men. They copied  the behavior, the habits, the manners, the lifestyle and the language of the heroes and heroines  of the romances and novels. It became a new fashion, new form of pleasant secular education. It gave the birth for a new class of consumer, mostly female consumers of romances and love stories “with a muslin emotions and  rubbish of sweet words”, according to the opinion of Knyazhin, a playwright of that time.     The contemporaries were not unanimous in the opinion on that new genre. It had the lovers and the protesters.
Nikolay Novikov, a famous Russian publisher of the 18-th century complained in his magazine “The Painter” in 1772 that people proffered to buy romances and novels  than the best translated serious books. Vasiliy Kluchevskiy  wrote almost a century later that a good romance or novel may be a fine device of learning the  reality if the reader is looking for the artistic explanation of fortuitous and chaotic events of the everyday life. For such reader romance or novel is an artistic illustration of the reality. For the others – it’s an empty game of imagination, a cheep popular print without interpretation. He emphasized  that such light reading break Russian male and female readers of the comprehension of reality and put the ghosts in their minds instead of a life experience and observation. Denis Fon-Vizin, a Russian famous playwright of the 18-th century showed in his comic play “The Brigadier” the attitude of the nobility on that subject: “God, bless you, to take anything in your head besides beloved romances. You can’t believe how these books may educate you,”- exclaimed one of the characters. Some foreigners who lived in Russia in the 18-th century wondered that there were a lot of young  Russian ladies speaking good  4 or 5 languages , play few musical instruments and who were well acquainted with the writings of the famous French, English and Italian Romanists. V.Kluchevskiy  stated that fondness of romances and idyllically formed love stories didn’t change the women’s minds and hearts. Novikov gave an evidential example in his “The Painter” – the mother of the noble family after the everyday execution and flogging of the peasants in the stables began reading a French romance and openly explained her 13 age old son in Russian all the pleasures of love and tenderness of the fair sex.
The reading, mostly romances, became a fashion too. Ladies learned  them by heart and spoke about them day and night.. But not all Russian noble women were literate. Major Danilov described in his memories in the first part of the 18-th century his aunt, a provincial landowner. She wasn’t literate but every day she opened the book (“The Acaphist  of the Virgin Mary”) and read it by heart, according to her memory. But this holly reading didn’t mild her habits. She was fond of special Russian soup with a cabbage  and mutton – schi, and while eating them she ordered to flog her cook, not because she made a bad job, but for increasing her appetite.
In the 18-th century the noble society of capitals and large cities constructed  itself according to the patterns given in the romances and novels. It was the ages of French language, light reading and light minds, special style of speaking and accotiating. The Russian pulbisher N.Novikov criticized in his magazine “The Painter” special love language of Russian ladies. He put on its pages a note of a fashionable women: “Man! Bring yourself to me: I am so in want of you, ah, how fine are you!”
V.Kluchevskiy concluded that the main influence of romances and novels of that time was a special nervous receptivity and esthetic impressionability of Russian noble society. They left a strong sediment in its notions, morals and  manners. Russian historians of 18-20-th centuries differently valued this result and this influence. Mostly they disliked it. They regarded it as a sad perversity of the high class people. But, I think, their not totally just opinion  may be easily explained. Literature in Russian society  had a very special and broad function. Because of a long lasted censorship and an absolutism of  the tzar’s authority, a prohibition of public political discussion and political information,  lack of the education and some lateness in the scientific development literature was the substitution and a device of the political, civil  and public life, of the journalism. On the other hand the Orthodox Church attitude regards literature as a moral religious reading and educational device. So it became a traditional point of view on Literature in Russia that it have to teach and educate, to give new knowledge and ideas but not to be a light  entertainment.  This attitude is well pronounced in statement popular in Russia till the 90-th years of the 20-th century: “The poet (the writer) is more than a poet In Russia”.
And for women reading romances and novels was helpful. They got fondness of reading. They accepted new ideas and ideals, they got a new position in the society, another attitude. They receive a suitable food for their minds and hearts. And in due course and with the development of genre it made milder their hearts and souls, helped in further progress in education. Today after the lifting of the Iron Curtain and the end of the Cold war the romances and novels are the most popular reading among Russian women.
Bibliography (in Russian)
V.Kluchevskiy. Russian History. Rostov., Vol.2-3. 2000.
V.Kluchevskiy. A Histirical Portraits. Moscow., 1990.
O.I.Fedotov. A Histiry of the West European Medieval  Literature. Moscow., 1999.
P.N.Berkov. A History of the Russian Journalism of the 18-th century. Moscow., 1952.
A.V.Posdneeb. The Unknown Poetess of the Peter’s the Great times. /Russian Literature on the boundery  of two epochs . Moscow., 1971.
A History of the Russian Literature of the 10-18-th centuries. Moscow., 1980.
Brokgaus and Efron. Encyclopedic Dictionary. Vol. 53-54, 58. St.Petersburg. 1998-1900.   
(in English)
Alberto Mangual. A History of Rreading. London. Flamingo. 1997.
World Civilizations. Vol.1-2. W.W.Norton&Company. New York, London. 1997.