Russian woman

“ A tall, graceful figure, well set off by her picturesque peasant dress, tiny hands, delicate and white, a clear, fresh complexion, deep violet eyes with long black lashes, wavy auburn hair, and small white teeth just visible between a pair of lips that seemed made alone for kisses, while her features had that sweet, half-sad expression that is the birth-gift of every Russian woman, rich or poor. ”

“ A beautiful and clever woman always charms, whatever her nationality may be, and it is possible for her to make conquests that predicate nothing of the nation to which she belongs. That is true, and therein lay the true grace and genius of Madame Novikoff. She was not merely a clever and charming woman, she was Russia herself. Russia lent her charm. Thus her friends were drawn from serious and vital England. ”

“ Woman's Lot in Russia.—Here and there the popular songs hear traces of the griefs which in the rough furrows of daily life the Russian woman finds it prudent to conceal. "Ages have rolled away," says the poet Nekrasof; "the whole face of the earth has brightened; only the sombre lot of mowjik's wife God forgets to change." And the same poet makes one of his village heroines say, apropos of the enfranchisement of the serfs, "God has forgotten the nook where He hid the keys of woman's emancipation." ”

“ She is always at the height of her passion, never at its approach. Compare her with Anna Karenina. The Russian woman is flesh and blood, nerves and temperament, has heart, brain, body and mind where the English girl is flat and crude as a face painted on a playing card; she is without depth, without range, without intricacy. But as we say this we know that we have missed something. We have let the meaning of the play slip through our hands. We have ignored the emotion which has been accumulating because it has accumulated in places where we have not expected to find it. ”

“ In reality, she is not domesticated at all and would far sooner be following her lover—the one chosen for the day—down the street with a flag. Here you have the reason why a Russian woman appeals to us. She is rarely beautiful—some of them would themselves admit the deficiency—but she is never an embarrassment. ”

“ The Russian writer, with his gentle erotic nature and sensitive yearning soul, can wander whither he will. He has the sharp eyes of a young race, the unshrinking gaze which has not been blunted by generations of culture, and which is quick to realise all that it has seen. The young Russian girl is not only “a girl,” she is a woman. She has not undergone the hypocritical convent education of the French girl, she knows nothing of the German girl’s bourgeois conventions, and she has more temperament and more natural spontaneity than either. ”

“ There are women in Russian hamlets
With a dignified calmness of face;
With a beautiful strength in their movements,
With mien and glance of an empress in grace.
A blind man alone could ignore them;
And he who can see them must say:
"She passes—'tis as though the sun shineth!
She looks—'tis giving rubles away!"
A noble-minded, splendid peasant woman, who has worthily fulfilled all the duties of her hard lot, at last becomes a widow. The manner of it; the quaint folk-remedies employed to heal the sick man; the making of the shroud by the bereaved wife ”

“ That the amelioration of the lot of woman in Russia has been so long delayed is a matter of surprise, because if Russian writers are fair to their men, the Russian woman is in every respect more practical, energetic and effective ”

“ The married woman is in the full power of her husband, though she is the mistress of her own fortune. Divorce exists. Russian women vote on an equality with men for members of the municipal councils and county assemblies, and these two bodies choose the boards which transact the public business, such as superintending the collection of taxes, keeping the roads in order, directing the schools, etc. The Russian woman does, not however, appear at the polls, but is represented by some male relative or friend (as we have already seen in Austria) who casts the vote for her. ”

“ The heroism, high courage, and magnanimity of the Russian woman are the instinctive protest against such enslavement, against such degradation to the position of a mere factor, an outlaw in the social and national life.
At present, under Soviet rule, having obtained the rights of a "human being and citizen," woman was torn from the family frame, compelled to hard work equal to that of man, carried away by the whirl which tossed her on the men, who more and more lose the sense of respect for the woman that becomes gradually "socialised." ”

“ The most curious part of the work deals with the minute details of domestic economy—one injunction being, that all men shall live in accordance with their means or their salary—and family relations, in the course of which the position of woman in Russia of the sixteenth century is clearly defined. This portion is also of interest as the forerunner of a whole series of articles in Russian literature on women, wherein the latter are depicted in the most absurd manner, the most gloomy colors—articles known as "About Evil Women"—and founded on an admiration for Byzantine asceticism. ”

“ We are now speaking only of the women of Little Russia; but those of Great Russia retain the national costume called serafine, which is very picturesque, and is still worn at court on special occasions.
The women of Little Russia, accustomed to field labour from their childhood, and usually marrying at the age of fifteen or sixteen, are old before they have reached their thirtieth year; indeed, one can hardly say when they cease to be young, since they never exhibit the bloom of youth. Whether a Russian woman's age be fifteen, twenty, or thirty, it is all one in the end. ”

“ Woman in the fulfilment of her natural function—woman as a mother—is that which appeals most to the direct consciousness of the Russian. Hence the artificial barrier, which the postulate of purity had raised between the man and woman of western Europe, falls away, and the Russian beholds woman as unity, as nature. ”

“ My taste is all the other way—I dote upon caviar; golden-haired women are to me just a little more attractive than the angels. But, of course, that does not speak for their tempers."
He laughed at the candor of it, and looking round the brilliant restaurant where they dined to-night, he began to speak in a low tone of Russian and Polish women generally.
"The Polish ladies are old-fashioned enough to love one man at a time—in their own country, at any rate. The Russians, on the contrary, are less selfish. A Russian woman is often the victim of three centuries, of suppressed female ambitions. ”

“ Thus the Russian woman, except that she is ineligible to office, possesses all the political rights of the Russian man—a privilege, however, that is of little value in a country where liberty is crushed under the iron heel of autocracy. The position of the Russian peasant women is not as good as that of the women of the upper classes. ”

“ He has shown what the Russian woman is, what (381) treasuries of mind and heart she possesses, what she may be as an inspirer of men; and he has taught us how men who have a real claim to superiority look upon women, how they love. ”

“ But most wore the common Russian blouse of dark brown canvas, buttoned up close to the neck, and gathered round the waist by a leather belt.
Many women were there, too, but as a rule they were not working women from the mills. Some may have been artisans or the wives of artisans, but most were evidently journalists, doctors, or students, from the intellectual middle classes, which in Russia produces the woman revolutionist—the woman who has played so fine a part in the long struggle of the past, and was now elated above human happiness by the hope of victory. ”

“ Later when Russia and Great Britain had drawn closer together, there appeared in the Press some of the most remarkable tributes ever paid to a woman, from which in justice to her and the Press I venture to quote a few of the many that appeared. ”

“ She knew, and was proud of the fact, that there was hardly a man in Russia, no matter how exalted his position, that she could not have brought to her footstool had she desired to do so. Such a woman was necessarily bound to become notorious and have numberless enemies. ”

“ Russian novelists have given us again and again pictures of typical society women who are thoroughly corrupt. We find them in historical and in contemporary fiction. They are in War and Peace, in Anna Karenina, in Dead Souls, in A House of Gentlefolk, and in the books of to-day. And it is worth remembering that when Tolstoi was a young man, his aunt advised him to have an intrigue with a married woman, for the added polish and ease it would give to his manners, just as an American mother sends her boy to dancing-school. ”

“ It is especially in the domain of fiction that Russian women excel. After the two renowned names of Tourgueneff and Tolstoi, the greatest genius of which our contemporary literature can boast is Krestowsky, the pseudonym of woman. "The reäctionary party," exclaims the same lady with enthusiasm, "counts in its ranks no woman distinguished for thought or talent." Even this brief glance at woman's position in Russia conclusively proves that when the day of liberty comes to the great Cossack empire, the women will be as thoroughly fitted to enter upon all the duties of citizenship as the men. ”

“ Vagrants of both sexes make a good living in Russia by attending wedding-parties and forecasting the future of the bride and bridegroom. As the Russians are a superstitious people, they encourage these fortune-tellers, who are feasted, and generally add to the entertainment [23] by story and jest. Having been treated well in the servants’ quarter, the woman was introduced to the company. The bridegroom, who was hilarious and full of vodka and wine, immediately presented himself to have his fortune told ”

“ To the Russian, love is everything, and in Russia women have more power to change men’s lives than in any other land.
To please the woman he loves a Russian will exile himself to a foreign country, will alter his habits, and change his manner of life completely. It is not, therefore, surprising that members of the House of Romanoff have deliberately incurred the anger of the Emperor and voluntarily left Russia to live abroad for the sake of the women they love. They make their homes in Paris or in the English countryside, and become the humble slaves of the wives{174} they have chosen ”

“ If it does nothing but portray the dignified composure of Russian womanhood in the presence of unspeakable affronts, it will have justified its publication by adding to the diadem of virtue a few more jewels to glorify the crest of motherhood. If it performs no other service than to place upon the pale face of tragic possibility the red-pink blush of romantic probabilities, it will have justified its presence in the society of the learned by the sincerity of its purpose and the candor of its appeal to the conscience of the world. ”

“ And yet one would have thought the creature standing before him most simple and ordinary, a good-natured, kind woman, handsome certainly, but so like other handsome ordinary women! It is true she was very, very good-looking with that Russian beauty so passionately loved by many men. ”

“ I believe the peasant woman is as virtuous as the average woman anywhere. And an intimate acquaintance with thousands of soldiers throughout the winter has given me this belief. Attractive women are not so rare as to fully explain the unusually excellent medical reports of the N.R.E.F. And nowhere in the West has the family tie been stronger nor the family organization so rigidly maintained.
The war-weariness of these Russian people is beyond words to describe. ”

“ We shall now take up the Slavonic countries, beginning with Russia, which stands first, not only because of its vastness, but also because of its liberality toward women. The position of the Russian women before the law is very peculiar. Children, whatever their age and whether male or female, are never emancipated from the control of their parents. The daughter can only escape from this authority, and then only in a limited degree, by marriage, and the son by entering the service of the State. In the provinces alone girls of twenty-one may marry without the parents' consent. ”

“ Before becoming the wives of the men of the Imperial family, all foreign princesses must be baptized and taken into the Russian Church. The ceremony is a very elaborate one, and is made a state affair. The members of the Imperial family are present, together with many high officials, who appear as witnesses, and there can be no exceptions to the rule that requires the Emperor's bride to be of his religion. Family, home, religion, everything must be given up by the woman who is to become an Empress of Russia. ”

“ The women of no other continental nation are perhaps better prepared for complete emancipation than those of Russia. Here, as in several other respects, autocratic Russia resembles free America. The good-will of every transatlantic friend of woman's elevation should ever go forth to this brave, struggling people of the North.
The civil law of the kingdom of Poland, a part of Russia, has been, since 1809, the Napoleonic code; the other Polish provinces of Russia are subject to Russian law. Under the former, the woman has an equal share in the patrimony ”

“ While in France a young girl is more demure still! Where a married woman is concerned in Russia, a man generally kisses her hand—which suits the Russian as much as it renders ridiculous the Frenchman when he tries to imitate. ”