On Baratynskii, see M. L. Gofman, “E. A. Boratynskii (Biograficheskii
ocherk),” in Baratynskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 1 : lxiv. Gofman makes a point
of telling us that Engel’gardt was not beautiful, although we never hear about
the physical attractiveness of the husbands of women poets.
Pushkin, of course, could make the socially sanctioned decision to turn over
the physical responsibility of his children to others. While he helped care for
them by writing poetry for which he got paid, this was not an option open to
women poets.
9. While the roots of domestic ideology may be traced as far back as the
Greeks and the Bible, the Industrial Revolution—which allowed working-class
women to gain economic self-sufficiency—inspired an outpouring of the ide-
ology in Europe. For the origins of Russian domestic ideology, its promulgation
in the periodic press, and Belinskii’s reactions to it (all discussed later), see my
“Mid-nineteenth-century Domestic Ideology in Russia.” For a recent reconsid-
eration of the ideology of separate spheres see Cathy N. Davidson and Jessamyn
Hatcher, eds., No More Separate Spheres!(Durham: Duke University Press, 2002 ).
10 .Ross, Contours of Masculine Desire,188–90, 192 ; Myers, “Learning, Virtue,
and the Term ‘Bluestocking,’” 285.
11. Ross, Contours of Masculine Desire, 188. For George Sand’s reception in
Russia, see Lesley Herrmann, “George Sand and the Nineteenth-Century Rus-
sian Novel: The Quest for a Heroine,” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1979 ),
and V. I. Kondorskaia, “V. G. Belinskii o Zhorzh Sand,” in Uchenye zapiski,no. 28
( 38 ), ed. G. G. Mel’nichenko (Iaroslavl’: Russkii iazyk i literatura, 1958 ), 141–65.
In Russia during the 1830 s and early 1840 s, a woman who wrote or who showed
too much independence was called a zhorzhsandistka.
12 .“Sovet,” quoted in Bannikov, Russkie poetessy XIX veka, 9. The poem ap-
pears as “Epigramma” in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii E. A. Boratynskogo,ed. M. L.
Gofman (Sankt-Peterburg: Izd. Razriada iziashchnoi slovesnosti Imperatorskoi
Akademii nauk, 1914 ), 1 : 88. For a discussion of the hostility against Russian
women writers at this time, see Kelly, History of Russian Women’s Writing,34–56.
13 .The following discussion is based on Rakhmannyi [N. N. Verevkin],
“Zhenshchina pisatel’nitsa,” Biblioteka dlia chteniia 23 , no. 281 ( 1837 ); Mar’ia
Korsini, “Zhenshchina-pisatel’nitsa,” in Ocherki sovremennoi zhizni(Sankt-
Peterburg, 1848 ); Peterburgskii turist [Aleksandr Druzhinin], “Zhenshchina-
pisatel’nitsa,” Syn otechestva,no. 1 (April 8 , 1856 ): 7–11.
14 .On Druzhinin as “liberator” of women, see B. P. Gorodetskii, ed., Istoriia
russkoi literatury(Moskva: Akademiia nauk, 1955 ), 564.
15 .“Perepiska sestry s bratom” appeared in Zvezdochka 4 (Oct. 1845 ), 27–48,
a children’s magazine published by Aleksandra Ishimova. The italics in the ci-
tations are the author’s.
16 .On women’s writing as sexual display or prostitution, see Kelly, History
of Russian Women’s Writing, 75 , and Catherine Gallagher, “George Eliot and
Daniel Deronda: The Prostitute and the Jewish Question,” in Sex, Politics, and Sci-
ence in the Nineteenth Century Novel,ed. Ruth Yeazell (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1986 ), 39–62. I have found only two mid-nineteenth-century
Russian stories that concern women writers who are depicted as serious artists;
Notes to Pages 24–27 229