Early Modern Russian Women and Writing

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Muscovite Russia was demonstratively patriarchal in its attitudes toward women, in part because of the strongly misogynistic inclinations of the Russian Orthodox Church. An influential guide to household management compiled at this time outlined in specific detail a circumscribed and submissive existence for women of means. Elite women were secluded and played little role in public affairs. Except for occasional letters, women did not author literary works during this period. The literary culture of the time remained heavily religious in its orientation. Key genres that provide access to lives of individual women are sermons, lives of saints, and chronicles. While they did not write works of their own, women did figure as strong personalities in certain hagiographical works. In those works, widowhood seems to have offered the greatest opportunities for female expression of religious commitment. Examples of such narratives centered on women are the Tale of Iulianiia (Osor’ina) Lazarevskaia (so called because she was from the village of Lazarevo) and the Tale of Boiarynia Morozova. Each of these works describes a woman recognized as a saint soon after her death.