(who traveled to Saint Petersburg from Saratov and Riazan’, respec-
tively), Bakunina, Rostopchina, and Pavlova (and only after she left Rus-
sia). Fuks, a lifelong inhabitant of Kazan’, was able to create exotic set-
tings, thanks to her ethnographic studies.
But perhaps the most important male institution for the poets of thisgeneration as discussed in the previous chapter, was the Romantic
Movement itself. All of these women poets—along with their contem-
poraries in the West—faced common problems: the conflict between the
modesty required of women and the self-assertion required by a poetic
vocation in the Romantic period; the issue of who their audience was;
the question of how to respond to the male Romantic personification of
poetic inspiration (the muse) as female sexual partner and nature as ide-
alized mother; the dilemma of how to get published in a literary estab-
lishment consisting almost entirely of men gatekeepers (editors, pub-
lishers, reviewers), who often did not take them seriously as poets. Most
basically, they had to find a way to relate to a poetic institution that con-
flated male experience with human experience, the male poetic tradition
with the poetic tradition, and the male voice and viewpoint with poetry
making. Not only did these women lack literary social capital—access
to the education, mentors, literary gatekeepers and opinion-makers,
and often the social connections they needed to make a successful po-
etic career. They also did not enjoy the credibility—the right to the title
of “poet” along with its prestige—automatically accorded to men. In
such circumstances these women had to resolve the questions of how to
find their voice, write about their experience, and claim a professional
identity as a poet.
Social Conditions 37