January 21st, 2014 01:43 am
This work aims to show the role of a woman as a housewife and landowner-housekeeper in Russia at the end of the 18th - the first half of the 19th centuries. on the material of fiction, memoirs and reference literature.
In the sphere of housekeeping, which was very complex and extensive in the life of a landowner, a Russian woman has always been a sovereign mistress. This area of \u200b\u200bactivity belonged to her according to custom, and it was not for nothing that the proverb was common among the people: “A good housewife will save the house, and a thin one will shake it with her sleeve.” "Domostroy" called the woman "the sovereign of the house", not disputing either her rights or her abilities as a housewife and housekeeper. Completely on an equal footing with a man, a woman could be a “patrimony” - own an estate and peasants, manage them at her own discretion, acquire and alienate legally. In a word, in this respect, the Russian woman enjoyed civil equality with the man and even significantly surpassed the Western woman in her rights.
The type of Russian mistress - mistress and landowner - has developed historically very clearly. It is difficult to imagine the image of a woman of the 19th century. writer, public figure, administrator, but according to the literature of the XVIII - XIX centuries. one can vividly and vividly imagine a woman-hostess and a mistress-landowner who
Traveled for work
I salted the mushrooms,
Conducted expenses, shaved foreheads,
I went to the bathhouse on Saturdays
She beat the maids in anger -
All this without asking the husband.
The type of mistress, housekeeper and landowner, businesslike, practical and energetically holding the reins of government at home and on the estate, was found in the 19th century. predominantly in the provinces, since in high society the type of hostess of the past was gradually supplanted by the mistress-marquise, a hothouse creature, whose entire lifestyle was limited to a boudoir, a drawing room, a ballroom.
The 18th and 19th centuries differed little from each other with regard to the duties of a landowner - the mistress of the estate. The book "A good landowner or a detailed description of how a rural housewife should look after her house and everything belonging to it ...", translated from French in 1789 and containing detailed instructions in housekeeping, could serve as a desktop for a novice housewife : “This work can especially serve young girls who have determined themselves to be Landowners. It will also arouse curiosity in them, animate their taste that is being born; through him, finally, they will acquire the spirit of the Landowner, before they reach such years when they themselves can be such.
Three chapters of the book characterize the main areas of activity of the landowner.
Chapter I (“On Internal Household Management”) lists the qualities of a “Good Farm Mistress”. She should have a commitment to religion, be a good wife and mother, a caring mistress, caring for loved ones and servants: instead of having a cold and incorporeal love for them, he applies his cares for them, encourages them to work, setting an example of this, and sets peace, abundance and joy among them.
Chapter II is devoted to the kitchen and contains valuable practical advice, teaches economy: “Bread made from rye flour mixed with some wheat flour is very satisfying, healthy and does not go stale so quickly. A prudent housewife should always have more flour in store than what real need requires.
Chapter III lists the duties of a housewife in running a barnyard, gives valuable advice on how to feed and treat cattle, how to plant artificial meadows: “You should have as many cattle as the number of pastures and feed allows. It is better to have a smaller number of good selected cows than a large number of bad ones.” Practical, written in an accessible language, the book, of course, was a valuable tool for young housewives.
G.G. Myasoedov. Congratulations to the young in the landowner's house. 1861
Probably enjoyed success "Complete and universal home remedy" by the English doctor Buchan, published in 1790. No doubt, the landowners, who in their estates acted as healers (in their absence) for their children and servants, could find there a lot of simple and useful tips, for example, on how to treat scabies: “If scabies is fresh, you need to treat it as follows. way. Take by weight 1 part of salt, 4 parts of combustible sulfur, 8 parts of fresh lard. Mix it all together to make an ointment out of it. Take a walnut-sized part from it, smear the part of the body where the scabies is, wait until the whole ointment gets into the body and almost dries. Wash your hand. If scabies is all over the body, then it is necessary to bathe in water heated with oak bark, having previously smeared with this ointment.
The practicality and accessibility of advice made these books a kind of encyclopedia of the household both in Western European countries and in Russia. But housekeeping in Russia, due to the presence of serfdom, differed significantly from Western European traditions. If there existed a kind of labor market, then in Russia the landlords were the absolute masters of their serfs. The very entry of the young mistress into the position of a landowner, the owner of serf souls, was solemnly arranged: “Before dinner, as was customary from old times, all the peasants from our villages gathered in front of the front porch,” recalled the grandmother of the writer D. Blagovo E. P. Yankova, who married in 1793 d. - Then my husband brought me out to show them, and, as they asked, I complained to them to my hand; then all the peasants were treated to beer, wine, pies, and earrings and rings were distributed to the women and gingerbread and nuts were thrown to the children from the window.
Usually, household duties were clearly divided between husband and wife: “After our marriage, Nikolai Grigorievich accurately outlined the roles in the economy of each of us: I had to take care of the children, manage the household, stockyard, servants, and at his disposal regarding serfs and agriculture, I had no right to interfere, ”recalls E. N. Vodovozova.
But there were cases (and very often) when the hostess had to take the reins of government into her own hands. This happened when the husband died, and she remained the full mistress of the estate, or the husband was removed from the management of the estate due to his unwillingness or ill health. The ladies-landowners were not inferior to men in the management of the estate, in most cases they were the same knowledgeable and active housewives. The image of the energetic and active landowner Anna Pavlovna Zatrapeznaya was created in Saltykov-Shchedrin's novel Poshekhonskaya Antiquity. Her son, Nikanor, recalls his mother's entry into the role of mistress of the estate: “Mother introduced measure, weight and counting in all sectors of the economy. She personally stood idle for whole days at threshing and winnowing and forced to measure the winnowed grain in her presence and pour it into the barns with the same measure. In addition, she kept a book in which she recorded income and expenses, and checked cash twice a year. She no longer said that her barrels were filled with tops, but directly stated that the grind gave so many quarters, of which, according to her reasons, so many should go on sale.
A.G. Venetsianov (1780-1847) Morning of the landowner (Landowner engaged in housekeeping) 1823
Sometimes landowners competed with men not only in the ability to manage the household. It happened that women even surpassed men in coolness of character, tyranny and cruelty in dealing with serfs. Such was the famous Saltychikha, who tortured to death 38 serf souls, according to the court, and more than 75 according to her serfs. But nevertheless, the dominant type among the landowners were women not cruel, but of a firm disposition, energetic, active and moderately strict in relation to their serfs. According to the memoirs of E. N. Vodovozova, her mother, nee Gonetskaya Alexandra Stepanovna, was such a humane and good housewife. According to the complaints of the serfs about the cruelty of the manager of the estate of her brother, she was forced to examine the living conditions of the peasants. What she saw horrified her, and she wrote to her brother: “Not out of woman's curiosity ... I decided to go to your estate. I was compelled to this unpleasant action by the duty of conscience, the duties of a Christian, and the desire of my late husband, your friend, to look after the interests of the serfs as far as possible, so that they would not have the right to complain about the injustice of the landlords. Having received from her brother a power of attorney to manage the estate, she announced to the completely impoverished peasants that for three years she appointed them to serve corvee only two days a week. The grain bread in the barns was equally divided among all the peasant families who were starving at that time. The most needy gave a cow from the manor's yard, and those whose huts fell into complete decline, she ordered to release the forest. “When we got into the boat to go home, the peasants gathered near the shore, threw themselves on their knees in front of mother, kissed her hands, and, sailing away, we saw for a long time how they were kneeling without hats,” recalls E. N. Vodovozova.
Patriarchal relations with the "good masters" persisted for a long time after the reform of 1861, which abolished serfdom. In the diary, which was kept in 1874 by the former serf Matvey (surname unknown - T.P.), a servant of the actual state councilor V.P. Golubtsov, the owner of the village. Aleksandrovka, Krasnoufimsky district, Perm province, he describes an old custom, when the next morning after the wedding, the young people came to the bars “to bow with gifts”: “I reported on the wedding. The master ordered me to bring what they brought (gifts). I brought a towel, a handkerchief and two dozen eggs. The master was ordered to leave all this, and they gave me two rubles and ordered me to hand it over and say that the master had just woken up and would lie down for a long time, he didn’t order me to wait.
Actually, the “women's administration” in a prosperous landowner's house contained everything related to food, cuisine, housekeeping, wardrobe, and so on. The hostess was subordinate to the entire female half of the numerous domestics in those days. The economy at that time was very complex, because the landowners, through their serfs, developed all sorts of "skills" and "arts". Thus, the female servants consisted of a whole crowd of dressmakers, seamstresses, lacemakers, spinners, weavers, hairdressers, and so on. All female servants were under the direct supervision and management of the landlady. The work was carried out according to the once established system, and each craftswoman was obliged to do her “lesson” daily under pain of punishment. These "lessons" were sometimes burdensome and excessive. The most unrequited creatures of the female servants were hay girls, who were disparagingly called "girls". “There were at least thirty of them in our house too. All of them were engaged in various kinds of sewing and weaving, while it was light, and with the onset of twilight they were driven into a small maid's room, where they spun in the light of a tallow cinder until eleven at night, ”recalled M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin.
Particular diligence was required of a good housewife in terms of food, kitchen and table, which occupied many hands and fed many mouths. Food stocks were huge, since everything was “our own, not bought”; all products supplied to the manor were grown by serfs. E. N. Vodovozova wrote: “The days of delivery of provisions from the village left the most vivid impression. Noisily and solemnly, the peasants brought tubs, barrels and kegs of sauerkraut, corned beef, butter, cottage cheese, sour cream, and frozen cream. Finally, everything is arranged on the floor in all rooms, which take on the appearance of a disorderly bazaar of the most varied food. Then gradually begin to sort it all. Mother for several days did not have time to think about anything but putting her country property in order. The hostess of the estate had especially much trouble in preparing provisions for the future in the summer, and she had to be in time everywhere, to cover everything with her master's eye, to make the necessary orders in time.
In the manor estates, it was customary to plant vegetable gardens, orchards with greenhouses, greenhouses and soil sheds. The abundance of fruits, and especially berries, was such that from the end of June until the middle of August, the manor house turned into a factory in which “berry exploitation” was carried out from morning to evening: “Even in the front rooms, all the tables were loaded with heaps of berries, around which they sat groups of hay girls, cleaned, selected berries by variety and barely had time to cope with one pile, as another appeared to replace it. At the same time, under the personal supervision of the mother, jam was cooked on bricks laid out in the form of a quadrangle, for which the best berry and the largest fruit were chosen. The rest was utilized for liqueurs, tinctures, waters, etc.
No less care should have been taken by the mistress of the barnyard, since both food supplies and income from the sale of meat and dairy products depended on her reasonable disposal. Even in the location of the barnyard next to the kitchen, the smart housewife saw an advantage: she was able to carry swill to the cows and bring milk from there. The most zealous landowners considered it their duty to be present at the morning and evening milking of cows, watching the milking and taking into account the milk yield. All this made it possible, even with small incomes from the estate, to have plentiful and healthy food.
In compiling the menu for breakfasts, lunches and dinners, diligent housewives could follow the recommendations from the book "Master and Mistress", issued in 1789 in the Moscow printing house of Novikov: “In the kitchen of the nobility, one should keep, so to speak, the middle path, and so that there is neither excess nor lack; why scarce and expensive foodstuffs should be excluded from it; but at least occasionally it happened to be imputed as a curiosity, despite the fact that the nobles do not consider them to be rare: a nobleman should stick to ordinary food, that is, prepared from household supplies.
Young housewives were advised to use the so-called "canteen system", that is, to determine how many dishes to serve on the table daily and on holidays, to observe a constant meal time. Usually, meals in a rural landowner's estate took place at a certain time: “Our day began at 7 or 8 o'clock (tea drinking), we always dined in the village at one o'clock in the afternoon, and if a dinner party, then at 2 o'clock; tea at five o'clock. They usually had dinner at 9 o’clock, and fresh food was always served for dinner, and not that the leftovers from lunch began to be warmed up, and dinner parties at 10 o’clock, ”recalled E. P. Yankova (D. Blagovo. “Grandmother’s Stories”) .
Usually the master's table consisted of six or seven dishes, but on special occasions up to 40 dishes were served on the table. Each landowner, in accordance with her income and ideas about savings, determined the menu herself. There were a lot of meals in rich houses: “two hot ones - cabbage soup and soup or fish soup, two cold ones, four sauces, two hot ones, two cakes ...” And at a dinner party, several cakes were always served to the table, dessert, sweets were prepared each day fresh, because in a rare landowner's house there was no pastry chef.
Good housewives also tried to be economical in cooking, but the savings of stingy landowners sometimes went beyond the reasonable. Having at their disposal a large amount of cheap fresh products, they managed to use yesterday's leftovers from lunch, following the Russian proverb: "From a good lunch and to dinner, there will be left." Saltykov-Shchedrin recalled that a completely fresh dinner was prepared only on major holidays and on those days when guests came. But for all that, the hostess had to “observe decency” in accordance with her position: “In case of accidental visits, several better dishes were prepared separately and stored in the cellar. An unexpected guest will arrive - they run to the cellar and bring out some kind of aspic or easily warmed up from there: here, they say, we eat like this every day. Not stinginess, but precisely economical housekeeping, the ability to organize the household in such a way as to make a profit from it, was considered one of the main features of a good housewife. Therefore, a good housewife was the main manager in the house, its spiritual center. She was supposed to be a model of behavior and diligence for others, setting an example for them with her hard work.
One of the main duties of the hostess in maintaining the house was taking care of the table linen and wardrobe of the household: “... Knowing her condition, in accordance with it, she must support herself and her surname. Should wear not very rich, but decent and neat clothes. Outward neatness is a sign of purity of soul ”(“ Good Landowner ... ”). For all the good things in the house, a register must be drawn up by the hostess, according to which she must give out the necessary things for the household and take back the necessary things on the account. But all these housekeeping responsibilities could not obscure the main duty of a woman mother - taking care of raising children. Although from the very moment of the birth of a noble child surrounded by serf mothers and nannies, the main duties should have been on the mother. First of all, special attention was paid to religious education, and parents had to set an example in this: “We went to mass carefully every Sunday, and on the eve of major holidays, we served all-night vigils and prayers with water blessing in the house, and strictly watched that the children prayed fervently and bowed to the ground. "(M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. "Poshekhonskaya antiquity").
Upon reaching the age of seven, I had to think about teaching children. Usually they were invited home teachers, tutors, who prepared noble children for admission to educational institutions. But mothers considered it their indispensable duty to carefully monitor the studies of their children. They themselves selected governesses and teachers for the education of children, often attended the lessons themselves and tested knowledge, and sometimes they themselves took on the education of children, replacing the teacher. “Mother... wrote to the priest and asked him to come to study with her son. The conditions were as follows: the priest had to come three times a week to teach the law of God, the Russian language and arithmetic... In addition to the priest, Nyuta (Sister - T.P.) had to study daily with her brother; mother herself took up teaching him French in the evenings, since she had no other time, ”recalls E. N. Vodovozova.
As for the sons, the mother had to carefully monitor their studies, try to determine their inclination for one or another occupation and, as far as possible, help him choose an occupation for himself. An indispensable duty of the rural landowner was the acquaintance of her sons with the management of the landowner's economy, agriculture. “One good farmer is more useful for the state than ten lawyers, and one good housewife is better than twenty merchants,” the author of the book “The Good Landowner ...” advises.
But if the mistress could rely on their father when raising her sons, then the upbringing of her daughter belonged entirely to her. “An apple does not fall far from an apple tree,” the groom’s parents said when choosing a bride, while understanding the nature and ability of the bride’s mother to manage the household. True, mothers considered their main task to be such an upbringing and education of their daughters that would help them "make a brilliant match", that is, get married as profitably as possible. This was the only ideal of the future for the girl, and in order to achieve it, she was given an “excellent education”, designed for success in the world: “We ... received an excellent education: we spoke four languages, and in particular we were fluent in French; danced well, knew how to draw; a certain state councilor taught us Italian, and when we expressed a desire to take Russian lessons, Bekhteev studied with us; we had refined and amiable manners, and therefore it was no wonder that we were known as well-bred girls, ”Ekaterina Dashkova points out in her notes. Music lessons, riding lessons, etc. can be added to the list of subjects studied. All this prepared daughters from wealthy noble families for social life, and much less attention was paid to the ability to manage the household, this was considered the duty of the housekeeper.
From rural estates of the middle class, girls were sent to boarding schools, institutes for noble maidens, for education after which they returned home, where they spent time learning how to farm and preparing for the most significant event of their lives - the upcoming marriage. To achieve this goal, the family often moved to Moscow for the winter. Moscow has always been the center to which the local nobility gravitated. Balls in the Assembly of the Nobility served at the same time as a fair for brides. “The sister was dressed like a doll and a rich dowry was prepared. They tried to do the latter in such a way that everyone knew that there was a rich bride in such and such a house, ”writes M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin.
Rarely did any of the noble girls get married "according to the inclination of the heart", regardless of the social position of the future husband and his condition, sometimes doing so against the will of their parents. These girls included M. M. Lermontova, the future mother of the great poet M. Yu. Lermontov. Her mother, the poet's grandmother, Elizaveta Alekseevna Arsenyeva (née Stolypina), managed her estate with great skill. Having bought in 1794 from the Naryshkins an unprofitable estate, she managed to create such a system of farming, in which she could receive a very solid income. By transferring the peasants from quitrent to corvee, she strengthened the stability of her income, not forgetting about other sources of profit. Although the main income was obtained from agriculture and animal husbandry, the energetic landowner in every possible way encouraged the development of trade among her serfs, while not forgetting to receive a cash quitrent from them; supplied her serfs to work at the distillery of her brother, A. A. Stolypin, and subsequently started a distillery. She tried to solve all the affairs of managing the economy herself: “Stepan (Estate Manager - T.P.) looks very diligently, but everything, as I order, is better,” she writes in a letter to M. Yu. Lermontov. Gradually, incomes began to significantly exceed expenses, despite the fact that savings in housekeeping was the main feature of Arsenyeva as the mistress of the estate. Thus, after the death of E. A. Arsenyeva in 1845, the heirs, in addition to a well-arranged and profitable estate, received 300 thousand rubles in banknotes, as the well-known Lermontov scholar P. A. Frolov points out.
This type of energetic and courageous woman, independent and independent, was created by life itself, by the whole way of doing business in Russia. Not being able to apply her abilities in other areas of life, a woman could fully realize herself only as a mother and mistress. The narrowness of the scope of women's activity does not prevent us from adequately assessing its significance in the development of Russian society in the 18th-19th centuries, and contemporaries rightly believed that the field of a woman-mother, housewife and landowner-housekeeper deserves deep respect. As P. A. Vyazemsky wrote, “... when there is a woman who is not only the mother of a large family, but also her moral connection and moral strength; but when this mother, like a strong and valiant woman of the Holy Scriptures, watches in her house and "does not eat the bread of idleness", then, without a doubt, general and deep respect is especially and predominantly due to her.
"Tarkhan messenger" No. 17, l. 177-189
— junior researcher of the archive
State Lermontov Museum-Reserve "Tarkhany"
Literature:
1. Dal V. Proverbs and sayings of the Russian people. M., 2000.
2. Pushkin A. S. Evgeny Onegin // Works: In 10 volumes. T. I. M., 1964.
3. A kind landowner or a detailed description of how this rural mistress should look after her house and everything that belongs to it. Per. from fr. M., 1789.
4. Peken Christian. Home remedy or a simple way of treatment. Per. with him. A. Protasova. SPb., 1766.
5. Blagovo D. Grandmother's stories. From the memoirs of five generations, written and collected by her grandson D. Blagovo. L., 1889.
6. Vodovozova E. N. At the dawn of life. Memories: In 2 vols. T. I. M., 1987.
7. Saltykov-Shchedrin M.E. Poshekhonskaya antiquity. M., 1954. S. 97.
8. Pleshcheeva G. From the diary of a servant // Motherland, 1997. N 5. P. 63.
9. Master and mistress or positions of master and mistress. Part II, sec. I. M., 1789.
10. Lermontov M. Yu. Poln. coll. cit.: In 10 vols. T. 7. M., 2001.
11. Frolov P. A. To the question of the sources of income of E. A. Arsenyeva // Tarkhansky Bulletin. No. 15. Penza, 2002.
12. Vyazemsky P. A. Notebooks. Moscow family of old way of life // Russian memoirs. 1800 - 1825 M., 1989.