Authors

Discussion

The transformation that occurred in the social and legal constructs of motherhood and marriage during the early decades of the twentieth century was nothing short of a revolution in its own right. The aftermath of the war, women's emancipation, obligatory education among other factors improved the position of the woman both as a mother and as a wife. The Soviet Union was for a brief moment the pioneer of gender equality and its decrees encouraged the separation of the woman from the traditional household tasks of rearing children, cleaning, cooking, etc. 

The interwar diaspora was therefore caught in an intriguing crossroads when it came to matrimony and maternity - heirs of the childless 'Symbolist marriage' of the 1900s and 1910s, influenced by both the Western and Soviet models of the family, the émigrés had to reconcile the different concepts of motherhood and marriage with their own experience. I will be analysing this mixture of idealistic and realistic concepts by reference to Ekaterina Bakunina’s second and last novel Lyubov’ k shesterym [1935]. I will focus on the roles of mother, wife and homemaker and the way they reflected (or challenged) the societal expectations of the woman. By comparing Bakunina to a wide variety of émigré and Soviet figures, including Berberova, Odoevtseva, Gippius, Kollontai and Akhmatova, I aim to demonstrate her unique and nuanced approach to both subjects which is enriched by her firsthand experience as a mother as well as by her use of the naturalist writing style, referred to as the ‘human document’.