Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-q6k6v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-15T21:55:24.709Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Educating New Mothers: Women and the Enlightenment in Russia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Carol S. Nash
Carol S. Nash*
Affiliation:
Bronx High School of Science, New York City
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

“We do not want them to be prudes or coquettes, but amiable and able to raise their children and take care of their homes.”

Letter of Catherine II to Voltaire, n.d.

“They will be good Russian wives, caring mothers, and zealous homemakers.”

St. Petersburg Gazette, no. 45, 1773

“…The intention and end of the education of girls [is] to make them good homemakers, faithful wives, and trustworthy mothers, …”

Arrangement of studies in the Society of noble and common girls in accordance with the public schools of Russia, issued by the Commission on Public Schools, 1783

In Russia during the era of Catherine II (1762–1796), women's education was advocated as a means to reform family, social and civic life. Fénelon's Traité de l'éducation des Filles (1686) and his didactic novel, Les Aventures de Télémaque, carried this argument to Russia where it was reinforced by the ideas of the Enlightenment. In a society with substantial prejudice against mere literacy for women, this position represents a progressive call for expanded educational opportunities for girls. The message was interpreted in this fashion by its European and Russian proponents who presumed that they were acting in accordance with reason and nature. But the restraints inherent in this domestic orientation make it as much a campaign against excessive emancipation as a plea to remove women from complete ignorance. In this essay, I explore this limited advocacy from the Russian perspective. This ambivalence is demonstrable throughout the reign of Catherine II and at different social levels, though most attention was focused on the nobility for whom the Society for the Education of Noble Girls (the Smol'nyi Institute) was founded.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 21 , Issue 3 , Fall 1981 , pp. 301 - 316
Copyright
Copyright © 1981 by History of Education Society 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1. Stone, Lawrence, “The Rise of the Nuclear Family in Early Modern England: The Patriarchal Stage,” in The Family in History, ed. Rosenberg, Charles E. (Philadelphia, 1975), pp. 14, 24–25, 55 and Stone, Lawrence, The Family, Sex, and Marriage in England, 1500–1800 (New York, 1977), pp. 140, 152–53, 240.Google Scholar

2. Betskoi, I. I., “O vospitanii iunoshestva oboego pola” [About the Education of youth of both sexes], Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiskoi imperii, sobranie I (hereafter cited as PSZ), Vol. 16, no. 12103 (March 22, 1764), p. 671.Google Scholar

3. Catherine, II, “Nachertanie o privedenii k okonchaniiu kommissii proekta novago ulozheniia” [Inscription on bringing to conclusion the commission for the drafting of a new code of laws], PSZ, Vol. 18, no. 13095 (April 8, 1768), p. 504 for the quotation; “Nakaz kommissii o sostavlenii proekta novago ulozheniia” [Instructions to the commission for the drafting of a new code of laws], PSZ, vol. 18, no. 12949 (July 30, 1767), ch. 18, para. 407, pp. 262–63 and ch. 14, paras. 350–56, pp. 255–56; “Ustav blagochiniia” [General police regulation], PSZ, vol. 21, no. 15379 (April 8, 1782), para. 41, p. 461.Google Scholar

4. Novikov, Nikolai I., “Stat'i N. I. Novikova v ego satiricheskikh zhurnalakh,” pt. 3: “Pustomelia na 1770: ‘Istoricheskoi prikliuchenie,”’ [The Babbler for 1770: Historical adventure] pp. 57–61, in Izbrannye pedagogicheskie sochineniia , ed. Trushin, N. A. (Moscow, 1959).Google Scholar

5. Fonvizin, Denis I., The Young Hopeful, trans. Patrick, G. Z., in Masterpieces of the Russian Drama (New York, 1933), pp. 65–66. See also, Novikov, N. I., “Razgovor Aspazii s Aristippom o tom prilichno li zhenshchinam byt uchenym” [Conversation between Aspaziia and Aristipp about whether it is decent for women to be learned], Moskovskoe ezhemesiachnoe izdanie 2 (1781): 121–38; Pokrovskii, V. I., “Shchegolikhi v satiricheskoi literature XVIII-go veka” [The Coquette in eighteenth-century satirical literature], Chteniia v Imperatorskom obshchestve istorii i drevnostei Rossiiskikh pri Moskovskom universitete (hereafter cited as Chteniia), no. 3 (1903), pp. 57–58, 60, 63, 84–85; Pokrovskii, V. I., ed., “Russkaia literatura XVIII veka o shchegolikhakh” (Eighteenth-century Russian literature about the coquette], Appendix of Pokrovskii, , “Shchegolikhi,” Chteniia, no. 3 (1903), Appendix 19, from Zhivopisets 7 (1772): 53–56; Appendix 27, from Pochta Dukhov 1 (1789): 276–82.Google Scholar

6. Bolotov, Andrei T., Zhizn' i prikliucheniia Andreia Bolotova, opisannye samim im dlia svoikh potomkov, 1738–93 [Life and adventures of Andrei Bolotov, described by himself for his descendants], 4 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1870), 2: 555. For Bolotov's arranged marriage, see Ibid., 2: 413–14, 478–79, 488–90, 506.Google Scholar

7. Ibid., 2: 554–57.Google Scholar

8. Dolgorukov, Ivan M., “Zapiski kniazia I. M. Dolgorukova” [Notes of Prince Dolgorukov], I. M., Russkii Bibliofil 1913, p. 86. The name is usually spelled Dolgorukii.Google Scholar

9. Novikov, N. I., “O vospitanii i nastavlenii detei” [About the upbringing and instruction of children], in Pedagogicheskie sochineniia, pp. 57–61, 67–68, 89–91. Alexandra Weinbaum comments on Novikov's challenge to the State in “N. I. Novikov, 1744–1818: An Interpretation of His Thought and Career” (Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1975), pp. 319–20.Google Scholar

10. Novikov, , “Razgovor,” pp. 121–23, 131.Google Scholar

11. Ibid., pp. 133–34.Google Scholar

12. Ibid., pp. 124–26, 129–30, 134.Google Scholar

13. I have delineated these two images and the moral conception of knowledge in my dissertation, “The Education of Women in Russia, 1762–1796” (PhD. dissertation, New York University, 1978), pp. 11–20, 36–40, 44, 123–31. Many examples of the two images are excerpted in Pokrovskii, , “Shchegolikhi” and Pokrovskii, , ed., “Russkaia literatura.” Evidence can also be gleaned from Dolgorukii, I. M., “Kapishche moego serdtsa ili slovar' vsiekh tiekh lits s koimi ia byl v raznykh otnosheniiakh v techenie moei zhizni” [The idol-temple of my heart or dictionary of all those persons with whom I was in different relations in the course of my life], Chteniia, (1872–73). See also Mrs. Prostakov in Fonvizin's The Young Hopeful and Golovine, Varvara Nikolaevna, Memoirs of Countess Golovine , ed. Waliszewsi, K., trans. Fox-Davies, G. M. (London, 1910).Google Scholar

For the moral conception of knowledge, see Betskoi, I. I., “O vospitanii iunoshestva oboego pola” [About the Education of youth of both sexes], PSZ, Vol. 16, no. 12103 (March 22, 1764), pp. 669–70; speech of Barsov, Anton A. Professor, “On the purpose of study,” cited in Shevyriov, Stepan, Istoriia Imperatorskago Moskovskago Universiteta [History of Moscow University] (Moscow, 1855), p. 68; Fonvizin, , The Young Hopeful, pp. 64, 77; “O smylse slova vospitanie” [On the meaning of the word upbringing], Sobesednik liubitelei Rossiiskago slova 2 (1783): 22; Metropolitan Platon (Levshin), “‘;Pouchitel'niia slova [Sermons], Polnoe sobranie sochineniia , ed. Soinin, P. P., 2 vols. (Moscow, 1913), 1: 171–75; John Locke on Education , ed. Gay, Peter (New York, 1964), p. 141.Google Scholar

14. Novikov, , “Razgovor,” p. 124.Google Scholar

15. Ibid., pp. 134–36.Google Scholar

16. Fonvizin, , The Young Hopeful, p. 64; Novikov, , “Razgovor,” p. 134.Google Scholar

17. Likhacheva, E. O., Materialy dlia istorii zhenskago obrazovaniia v Rossii [Material for the history of the education of women in Russia], 4 vols. in 1 (St. Petersburg, 1899–1901), 1: 263; Shchepkina, E. N., “Zhenskaia lichnost' v staroi russkoi zhurnalistke [Female personality in old Russian journalism], Zhurnal ministerstva narodnago prosveshcheniia (hereafter cited as ZMNP) 40 (July 1912): 84, 116.Google Scholar

18. Novikov, , “Razgovor,” p. 130.Google Scholar

19. Ibid., p. 121. For Novikov's views on sexuality, see Weinbaum, , pp. 294–95, 314–15 and Pokrovskii, , “Shchegolikhi,” pp. 70, 79, 82–83, 85.Google Scholar

20. Novikov, , “Razgovor,” pp. 130–31.Google Scholar

21. For complaints like Novikov's about female vanities, see Fénelon, , “The Education of Girls,” in Fénelon on Education, trans. Barnard, H. C. (Cambridge, 1966), pp. 3–6. To Fénelon the solution was proper moral upbringing through which a girl is trained to take her domestic functions seriously; see Ibid., pp. 65–90 passim. But, unlike Fénelon, Novikov encouraged women's literary pursuits. Novikov's “About education,” pp. 89–177, is clearly indebted to Locke. Still, perhaps because Locke could assume female literacy and Novikov could not, Novikov is much more explicit than Locke regarding women's education. Locke implied a female role in upbringing; see Locke on Education, pp. 110–11, 129, 141–42. But, except regarding their physical upbringing, even when explicitly asked, his orientation is vague and casual; see his letter to Mrs. Clarke, February 1685, in The Educational Writings of John Locke: A Critical Edition , ed. Axtell, James (Cambridge, 1968), pp. 344–46. Rousseau's antifeminist educational program was more restrictive and domestic than anything envisioned by Novikov or Catherine; see Rousseau, J. J., “Sophy or Woman,” Émile , trans. Foxley, Barbara, Everyman's Library (London, 1974), pp. 321–414. For the attitudes of the philosophes, see Kleinbaum, Abby, “Women in the Age of Light,” in Becoming Visible: Women in European History , eds. Bridenthal, Renata and Koonz, Claudia (Boston, 1977), pp. 217–35.Google Scholar

22. Likhacheva, , 1: 130–36, 219, 286; Cherepnin, Nikolai P., Imperatorskoe Vospitatel'noe Obshchestvo Blagorodnykh Devits, 1764–1914 [The Imperial Society for the Education of Girls of Noble Birth], 3 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1915), 1:205–6; Maikov, P. M., Ivan Ivanovich Betskoi, opyt ego biografii [ Betskoi, I. I., a biographical description] (St. Petersburg, 1904), p. 287; Miliukov, P., Ocherki po istorii russkoi kultury [Outlines in the history of Russian culture], 3 vols. (Paris, 1930–37), 2 (1931): 752; Stoiunin, V. Ia., Pedagogicheskiia sochineniia [Pedagogical Writings], 3d ed. (St. Petersburg, 1911), p. 442; Black, J.L., “Educating Women in Eighteenth-Century Russia: Myths and Realities,” Canadian Slavonic Papers 20 (March 1975): 29, 38. Rozhdestvenskii, S. V. must be excepted from this tendency; see his Komissiia ob uchrezhdenii narodnykh uchilishch [The Commission for the establishment of public schools] (n.p., n.d.), p. 11.Google Scholar

23. Betskoi, , “O vospitanii,” p. 670.Google Scholar

24. Letter of Locke to Mrs. Clarke, February 1685, Educational Writings, pp. 344–46.Google Scholar

25. Kleinbaum, , “Women in the Age of Light,” p. 226; Rousseau, , “Sophy,” Emile .Google Scholar

26. Letters 3 and 4 of Catherine, to Levshina, , Russkii arkhiv 8 (1870): 534–36, 539 and 529–40 passim; Letter XV of Catherine to Levshina, Russkii vestnik 247 (November 1896): 341.Google Scholar

27. Letter of Catherine to Voltaire, n.d., in R[ospopova], Nina, Khronika Smol'nago Monastyr v tsarstvovanie Ekateriny II [Chronicle of the Smol'nyi Monastery in the reign of Catherine] (St. Petersburg, 1864), Appendix 14, pp. 90–92 (hereafter cited as Khronika). See also her letter of January 30, 1772 to Voltaire, in Ibid., Appendix 12, pp. 88–90.Google Scholar

28. S. Petersburgskiia Vedomosti, no. 45, 1773, in Khronika, , pp. 34–35.Google Scholar

29. “Raspolozhenie ucheniia v obshchestve blagorodnykh devits i meshchanskikh po primeru narodnykh uchilishch Rossiiskoi Imperii” [Arrangement of studies in the Society of noble and common girls in accordance with the public schools of Russia], in Cherepnin, , Vol. 3, Appendix 22, pp. 134–35.Google Scholar

30. The various projects are compiled in Rozhdestvenskii, S. V., ed., Materialy dliaistorii uchebynkh reform v Rossii v XVIII–XIX vekah [Material for the history of educational reform in Russia in the 18th and 19th centuries], Appendix to Ocherk po istorii sistem narodnago prosveshcheniia v Rossii v XVIII–XIX vekah , Vol. 1 (St. Petersburg, 1910), pp. 5–257.Google Scholar

31. Panin, N., “O imenovanii Novoserbskago seleniia” [About certain Novoserbsk villages]: “O Shkolakh” [About schools], PSZ, Vol. 16, no. 12099 (March 22, 1764), p. 667.Google Scholar

32. Betskoi, I.I., “General'ny plan Moskovskago vospitatel'nago doma,” PSZ, Vol. 16, no. 11908 (August 26, 1763), pp. 347–52.Google Scholar

33. Tikhanov, I. N., ed., “Propozitsii Fedora Saltykova (ob shkolakh)” [Propositions of Saltykov (about schools)], Pamiatniki drevnei pis'mennosti , 83, no. 5 (1891), p. 26.Google Scholar

34. Raeff, Marc, Origins of the Russian Intelligentsia: The Eighteenth-Century Nobility (New York, 1966), p. 135.Google Scholar

35. Betskoi, I. I., “Ustav vospitaniia blagorodnykh devits” [Statute for the education of noble girls], PSZ, Vol. 16, no. 12154 (May 5, 1764), pp. 742–55, ch. 1, pt. 6, no. 3 and ch. 2, no. 2; see also sample diplomas and graduation announcements in Cherepnin, vol. 3, Appendixes 17–18, pp. 117–21.Google Scholar

36. Instructions to the head mistress, in Cherepnin, , Vol. 3, Appendix 8, pp. 63–67, no. 5.Google Scholar

37. Lougee, Carolyn, Le Paradis des Femmes: Women, Salons, and Social Stratification in Seventeenth-Century France (Princeton, 1976), pp. 173–208. Catherine's social aims also distinguish her from Rousseau; see Kleinbaum, pp. 224–26. For a variety of planned social activities, including even a salon for the older girls, see Betskoi, , “Education of noble girls,” ch. 1, pt. 6, nos. 2, 5, 11–12; Instructions to the head mistress, in Cherepnin, Appendix 8, pp. 66–67; Piles and Beaujolin, in Khronika, Appendix 28, pp. 112–13.Google Scholar

38. Ariès, Philippe, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life, trans. Baldick, Robert (New York, 1962), pp. 128–33, 363–404; deMause, Lloyd, “The Evolution of Childhood,” in The History of Childhood, ed. Lloyd deMause (New York, 1975), pp. 32–25, 51–52; Hunt, David, Parents and Children in History (New York, 1972), pp. 26, 39, 46, 95, 98, 102, 125, 129–30; Shorter, Edward, The Making of the Modern Family (New York: Basic Books, 1977), pp. 170–75, 191–99, 203–4; Stone, , Family, Sex, and Marriage, pp. 105, 116–19, 405–13, 449–76, 656.Google Scholar

39. Dunn, Patrick P., “That Enemy is the Baby': Childhood in Imperial Russia,” in History of Childhood, p. 391; Darrow, Margaret H., “French Noblewomen and the New Domesticity, 1750–1850,” Feminist Studies 5 (Spring 1979): 44; Stone, , Family, Sex and Marriage, p. 451.Google Scholar

40. Raeff, , pp. 122–23; Dunn, , pp. 391–92.Google Scholar

41. Fonvizin, , The Young Hopeful, p. 77. See also Chechulin, N. D., “Vospitanie i domashnee obuchenie v Rossii v XVIII veka” [Education and domestic training in eighteenth-century Russia], Dela i Dni, no. 2 (1922), pp. 44–45.Google Scholar

42. Rozhdestvenskii, S. V., “Proekty uchebnykh reform v tsarstvovanie imperatritsy Ekateriny II do uchrezhdeniia komissii o narodnykh uchilishchakh” [Projects for educational reform in the reign of Catherine II up to the establishment of the Commission of Public Schools], ZMNP, n.s. 12 (December 1907): 197, 210 and 15 (May 1908): 45. For Dilthey's complete proposal, see Rozhdestvenskii, , ed., Materialy, pp. 10–81.Google Scholar

43. Betskoi, I. I., “General'ny plan Moskovskago vospitatel'nago doma, pts. 2–3,” PSZ, Vol. 18, no. 12957 (August 13, 1767), pt. 3, pp. 309–10.Google Scholar

44. Rozhdestvenskii, , “Proekty,” ZMNP, n. s. 12: 222–23. See also, Maikov, , pp. 138–39.Google Scholar

45. Betskoi, , “Foundling Home,” pt. 3, p. 310.Google Scholar

46. Ibid.Google Scholar

47. Rozhdestvenskii, , “Proekty,” ZMNP, n.s. 12: 223–24.Google Scholar

48. For illustrations of hostility toward female education during Catherine's reign, see my dissertation, pp. 11–27; for Betskoi as a carrier of western attitudes, see Ibid., pp. 114–19.Google Scholar

49. Betskoi, , “Foundling Home,” pt. 3, p. 310. Betskoi recalls here the original statement of this intention in the first part of the statute, “Foundling Home,” pt. 1, pp. 347–52. However, the foundling homes never came close to realizing Betskoi's objectives.Google Scholar

50. Betskoi, , “Education of noble girls,” ch. 1, pt. 6, nos. 16–19.Google Scholar

51. Report of the Commission on Public Schools, in Cherepnin, vol 3, Appendix 28, p. 152. See also Cherepnin, , 1: 233 and Likhacheva, , 1: 288–89.Google Scholar

52. Likhacheva, , 1: 288–89; Cherepnin, , 1: 465–69; Instructions of Maria Feodorovna for the staff of the Education Society of Noble Girls, January 11, 1802, and her Instructions for the girls in the teacher training unit, February 16, 1912, in Cherepnin, , vol. 3, Appendixes 43, 49, pp. 236–37, 261; letter 11 of Speranskii, M. to his daughter, September 2, 1819, “Pis'ma Speranskago, M. M. k ego docheri,” Russkii arkhiv 6 (1868): 1694–95.Google Scholar

53. Tourneux, Maurice, Diderot et Catherine II (Paris: 1899), pp. 350–63. Kleinbaum, , pp. 220–24, 232–33 explores a trend toward the equality of the sexes, but she finds it weak, incomplete, and sometimes contradictory. See also Darrow's reference to the “incipient feminism” arising from the individualism of the philosophes, p. 54.Google Scholar

54. Tourneux, , Diderot, p. 385.Google Scholar

55. For a similar conclusion regarding the education of women and the Enlightenment in England, see Stone, , Family, Sex and Marriage, pp. 266–69, 345, 355–56. For evidence of how mothering could give women a sense of fulfillment or control, see Ibid., pp. 456–57 and Sussman, George, “Three Histories of Infant Nursing in Eighteenth-Century France,” paper read at the Fourth Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Mount Holyoke College, August 23, 1978.Google Scholar