University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

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

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
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
Copyright and License Information
Copyright 2023 Serenity Orengo

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