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

Orengo, Serenity Stanton

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

Description

Title

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

Author(s)

Orengo, Serenity Stanton

Issue Date

2023-03-28

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Sobol, Valeria

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Sobol, Valeria

Committee Member(s)

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

Department of Study

Slavic Languages & Literature

Discipline

Slavic Languages & Literature

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

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

Language

eng

Abstract

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.

Graduation Semester

2023-05

Type of Resource

Thesis

Handle URL

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

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2023 Serenity Orengo

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