Transgressive women and bad mothers: Alternatives to traditional maternity in the Russian literary context

Taking the long-standing myth of the ideal Russian mother as its starting point, this dissertation explores how fictional depictions of transgressive motherhood—in this case, contraception use, abortion, and infanticide—were used to indicate anxieties that arose alongside the Woman Question and the changing social class fabric in the second half of nineteenth-century Russia. With a particular focus on the intersection of the law, medicine, and expected womanly behaviors, I argue that authors ultimately maintained the myth of the Russian mother by displacing these forms of motherly transgression away from the traditional mother-child dyad. I analyze canonical works by Leo Tolstoy, Nikolai Leskov, Anton Chekhov, and Fyodor Dostoevsky, as well as works by lesser-known woman writers including Aleksandra Bostrom, Mariia Krestovskaia, Anna Korvin-Krukovskaia, and Ekaterina Letkova. My exploration of the fictional transgressive mother is placed in a wider social-historical context, including a discussion of President Vladimir Putin’s recent reinstatement of the Soviet-era “Mother-Heroine” award.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Slavic Languages & Literature

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2023

Author dc:creator

• Orengo, Serenity Stanton

Contributors dc:contributor

• Sobol, Valeria
• Murav, Harriet
• Tempest, Richard
• Hilger, Stephanie

• Russia
• Nineteenth Century
• Literature
• Maternity
• Motherhood
• Pregnancy
• Birth Control
• Contraception
• Abortion
• Infanticide
• Tolstoy
• Dostoevsky
• Leskov
• Chekhov
• Women Writers

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2023 Serenity Orengo

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/120344

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F120344