‘A Crocodile in Flannel or a Dancing Monkey’: the Image of the Russian Woman Writer, 1790–1850

Abstract

As my epigraphs indicate, the position and image of the Russian woman writer at the end of the 1830s were deeply problematical. But this situation was certainly not unique, as the quotation from Virginia Woolf makes plain, referring as she is to ‘Shakespeare’s sister’. The purpose of the present chapter is to examine the image of the Russian woman writer as it began to emerge in the nineteenth century. The main focus will be on the decades in which Gan was writing, the 1830s and 1840s, which was precisely the period when Russian women writers began to appear in any numbers and when, accordingly, their image was first discussed at any length and problematized. To place this discussion in context, however, I will begin with a brief excursus over the previous 40 years, to examine some of the key figures and statements which helped shape the context for the debates of the fourth and fifth decades of the nineteenth century.

… any woman born with a great gift … would certainly have gone crazed, shot herself, or ended her days in some lonely cottage outside the village, half witch, half wizard, feared and mocked at.

Virginia Woolf¹

But here people look at me just like at a crocodile in flannel or a dancing monkey. People look at me as if I were a fairground fright, a snake in flannel.

Elena Gan²