There is probably not a single poet in world literature who has not written about a woman. Traditionally, the image of a woman in world poetry is the image of a beloved, beloved. This is where the love theme arises in the lyrics. Poets glorify their beloved, her beauty, their feelings, passion, describe suffering from unrequited or lost love, write about loneliness, disappointment, jealousy.

Nekrasov's poetry, in its appeal to women, for the first time expanded the thematic framework. In his lyrics, in addition to love, the theme of the female share appeared, presented widely and variedly. This was largely due to the fact that the poet touched on another social layer: not the nobility, but the common people. Having dedicated the lyre to “his people,” the poet calls his Muse the sister of a young peasant woman who is being whipped in the square.

Nekrasov dedicated many poems to the life of a Russian village woman. There is not a single aspect of peasant life that the poet has ignored. In the poem “Troika,” the poet predicts a difficult married life for the girl.

Having tied an apron under the arms,

You will tighten your ugly breasts,

Your picky husband will beat you,

And my mother-in-law will die to death.

From work both menial and difficult

You will fade before you have time to bloom,

You will fall into a deep sleep.

You will babysit, work and eat.

And in the poem “Wedding” there is again an ominous prediction:

Many cruel reproaches await you,

Working days, lonely evenings:

Will you rock a sick child?

To wait for the violent husband to come home.

The poet also expresses his sympathy for the female lot in the poems “Orina, the Soldier’s Mother”, “Hearing the Horrors of War”, showing the tragedy of the vast majority of peasant women who are killed day after day at backbreaking work:

The poor woman is exhausted,

A column of insects sways above her,

It stings, tickles, buzzes!

The poet also revealed the theme of the difficult lot of Russian women in his famous poems “Frost, Red Nose” and “Russian Women”. The suffering fate of the Russian peasant woman is also described in the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus',” where the entire second part is entirely devoted to her. Her heroine, Matryona Timofeevna, is considered happy among people. Telling men who are looking for an answer to the question “Who lives happily and freely in Rus'?”, about her life, she admits that she “was lucky as a girl”: she had a “good, non-drinking family”, loving, affectionate, who protected her parents. But even in such a family, at the age of five, she had to start working, at seven she had to go after a cow, herd geese, pick mushrooms and berries, stir up hay, and after a hard day and a bathhouse, she went back to work, at the spinning wheel.

And such a life, full of hard work, is remembered by Matryona Timofeevna at thirty-eight years old as happiness. Because everything that awaited her after marriage was sheer suffering. It was not for nothing that the mother wailed when they came to woo her daughter. After the wedding, “I ended up in hell on my maiden holiday.” The bullying of her husband's relatives, beatings, hard labor, the terrible death of her beloved first-born - this was only the beginning of her terrible, but, alas, such a common fate for a Russian peasant woman.

After the death of the first-born, other children were born every year: “there is no time to think, no time to grieve, God willing, I can cope with the work and cross my forehead,” Matryona’s parents died. Timofeevna submitted to everything: “first out of bed, last in bed,” she humiliated herself in front of her father-in-law and mother-in-law, and only became rebellious in one thing: she stood up for her children and did not allow them to be offended. When the village committed lynching against Fedot, who, while working as a shepherd, failed to take a sheep from the she-wolf, his mother lay down under the rod for him.

Matryona had a hungry year, and then an even more terrible test: she took her husband out of turn as a recruit. And again Matryona Timofeevna did not submit. The pregnant woman went on foot to the city to seek the truth and intercession from the governor. She achieved the truth by receiving the intercession of the governor’s wife, who also baptized the child who was born before the time. Since then, Matryona Timofeevna “has been glorified as a lucky woman and nicknamed the governor’s wife.” A peasant woman is raising five sons. One had already been recruited, her family was burned twice, she walked “like a gelding in a furrow.” And in her opinion, it’s not a matter of “looking for a happy woman among women.” And another heroine of the poem, a praying mantis, who came into the village, will say with bitterness that “the keys to women’s happiness, from our free will, have been abandoned, lost to God himself.”

Reading Nekrasov, you come to the conclusion that the poet himself makes in one of his poems - “Your share! - Russian female share! Hardly any more difficult to find." The idea that it is impossible to live like this any longer runs through the entire poem. The author treats with undisguised sympathy those who do not put up with their hungry and powerless existence. It is not the meek and submissive who are close to the poet, but such brave, rebellious and freedom-loving rebels as Savely, the “hero of the Holy Russian”, Yakim Nagoy, the seven truth-seekers, Grisha Dobrosklonov. The best of them retained true humanity, the ability to self-sacrifice, and spiritual nobility. Among them is Matryona Timofeevna.

Let’s not give the topic of “women’s lot” either dark or happy colors, let’s abandon apologetics and deconstruction of patriarchal myths, and take an impartial look into the past. And quite quickly it will become clear that the notorious dense patriarchy is nothing more than a pseudo-historical projection of modern illiteracy.

Chronology of sacred images

The place of women in ancient culture can hardly be said better than an analysis of pagan pantheons. Official science identifies several male deities Eastern Slavs and only one female. There are, however, some who believe that there were one or two more goddesses, as well as supporters of the complete patriarchy of the “Slavic Olympus,” but their versions are too weakly supported by sources.

In any case, there is an idea of ​​men as those endowed with strength and power, this is compatible with the then military-democratic system of society. However, almost all magic was “assigned” to the woman, and the attributes of purely female activities were symbols of prosperity, wealth and fertility: spindle, threads, wool, pattern work, sickle, poneva, tablecloth, dishes, etc. Remember when Ilya Muromets falls to the ground, defeated by Sokolnik, and, after praying, receives a “second wind”? This is very reminiscent of the Indian idea of ​​the boundless feminine energy of Shakti, without which any deity is powerless.

Since those times, a lot of holidays and rituals have been preserved, in which men had no right to interfere, and if they caught their eye, they could even be killed with impunity. This special ritual space gives us an idea of ​​cases of inviolability of the female will. Early princely orders that have reached us also state that if a girl is married off against her wishes, if she suffers physically, the mother and father will be severely punished.

What does this mean? Rather, it is more convenient to consider the then position of men and women not from the point of view of role, but from the point of view of space - internal (home, forbidden rituals) and external (travel, work on the street, protecting the family). This distinction will be a key point in gender relations down to the present day.

"I treated you like a brother..."

Archeology has rewarded us with amazing finds. Most likely, in medieval Rus' they did not even think that birch bark letters could lie in the ground for almost a thousand years, preserving not only the text, but also feelings, details of the way of thinking.

No less famous is the “Order from Priest to Priest,” written at the end of the 14th century, which talks about a certain incident that received unwanted publicity, ending the message with the businesslike phrase “Take care of it.” And the message “From Peter to Marya” contains a request to send a copy of the document on the purchase of the harvest. This means that women were not deprived of legal literacy.

But the letter “From Gostyata to Vasil” contains a complaint that Gostyata’s husband appropriated her dowry, kicked out the woman, and found himself a new passion. Apparently, Vasil was the author’s brother, who had the right to protect his sister from such a demarche.

Studying these written sources about morals in ancient Rus', we can conclude that the woman was a faithful assistant to her husband, not inferior to him in education and ability to manage the household, and had the right to protection from relatives. But, unfortunately, scientists note that this rise in culture and morality was temporary.

Sylvester woman

The word “Domostroy” does not evoke the best associations and is often used as a symbol of deep patriarchal morals in Rus'.

There is a version that this book, written by Ivan the Terrible’s educator, was intended to normalize family relationships in a troubled age. It is worth mentioning that in those days people married very early, and often the husband became almost a father to his young wife. Accordingly, he was equally the head of everyone in his house and had the right to “teach” with the whip whomever he considered necessary.

At the same time, beating household members with wooden and metal objects in front of witnesses was condemned, and most importantly, punishment without love and justice. The Church tended to defend women's rights when it came to open disrespect, and could even threaten negligent sons who did not show respect for their mother, citing the fact that holy women and the Virgin Mary, by the way, meant something.

Most likely, domestic violence has nothing to do with pagan remnants or Orthodoxy, but only with human aggression and irresponsibility.

Perhaps this also had its own catalyst - that same spatial separation, fear of the unknown power that women still possessed, because husbands were strictly forbidden to be present during childbirth, it was undesirable to enter someone else’s half of the hut, an unloved spouse could be poisoned or slandered, interfere this was extremely difficult. There were a lot of secrets in the family, which meant there was no complete trust.

In the ethnographic era

Old songs about women's lot, which today we can listen to in the public domain, are almost one hundred percent sad. In them there is an obvious confrontation between “husband” and “lover”, where the husband is either an old man, or a tyrant, or killed, and the lover is right there. And, on the contrary, in one famous old song, a guy writes from prison to his parents and wife, who abandon him, and his secret girlfriend helps him out at great cost. Girls' songs mainly talk about unrequited love or observing the object of passion from the outside. Among the Cossacks, unloved wives were often drowned, begging to take their lives at least not in front of their children and neighbors, and this happened not only in songs, there are also official reports from informants about this.

Politeness and cunning were valued above beauty and wealth and were the key to success. If, for example, the bride was obliged to give the groom a whip, then why not weave this whip from silk or velvet? After all, if you figure out how not to violate the foundations of society, not to ruin each other’s lives, and at the same time achieve your goal, then you will become satisfied with yourself and respected by people. It is precisely such cases that are described in the famous collections of treasured tales, which constitute a kind of Russian “Decameron”.

All that has been said is about trying to move away from the template “Is the downtroddenness of a Russian woman true or a myth?” and turn to the present day. Narrow-mindedness, illiteracy, and vulnerability in relation to the pre-revolutionary peasantry after all look more natural than the same thing today. If it's enough now social advertising about domestic violence, and women’s forums on the Internet are sometimes simply scary to read because of the grotesqueness that reigns there, it seems that in the past it was even worse, however, this is a logical trap. We have only replaced superstitions about powerful female magic to the statement that “every woman has a mystery” and this barrier, it seems, will never be completely overcome.

The theme of the female share in Nekrasov’s poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'”

The poem Who Lives Well in Rus' was written in 1863. Main character poems - people. Nekrasov describes the life, worries, destinies of the peasants, their way of life and work, which was not easy. The author paid special attention to the life of ordinary Russian women, peasant women. Seven peasant peasants, who could not find happy people among the men, decided to look for happy ones among the women. “Not everything is between men. Let’s find a happy one, let’s touch the women!” A woman needs to be able to manage everywhere: in the field, with the children, and maintaining the house. The topic is not easy female destiny runs through many of Nekrasov’s works. The poet constantly emphasizes that a woman bears double oppression: landowner and family. This oppression is revealed by a phrase from the poem: “And the women in Rus' three loops: white silk Second -- red silk And the third - silk black, choose any! Climb into any!” Women's children die, sons are taken into service, and daughters are taken into governesses. The female part in the poem was most fully shown in the example of Matryona Timofeevna Korchagina. The heroine had a happy, carefree early childhood, and from the age of five she began to be introduced to feasible work: “I took my father to breakfast, tended ducklings,” “raked hay,” etc. And such a life, full of hard work, is remembered by Matryona Timofeevna at thirty-eight years old as happiness. Because everything that awaited her after marriage was sheer suffering. It was not for nothing that the mother wailed when they came to woo her daughter. After the wedding, “I ended up in hell on my maiden holiday.” She got a kind husband. Matryona did not have to, like many other peasant women, live with a “hateful” person and endure beatings. Matryona and her husband lived in love and harmony. This helped her endure troubles and misfortunes. Philip was a stove maker and constantly went to work in St. Petersburg. Matryona had a hard time with the constant separations. She had to adapt to life in someone else's family. The bullying of her husband's relatives, beatings, hard labor, the terrible death of her beloved first-born - this was only the beginning of her terrible, but, alas, such a common fate for a Russian peasant woman. After the death of the first-born, other children were born every year: “there is no time to think, no time to grieve, God willing, I can cope with the work and cross my forehead,” Matryona’s parents died. Timofeevna submitted to everything: “first out of bed, last in bed,” she humiliated herself in front of her father-in-law and mother-in-law, and only became rebellious in one thing: she stood up for her children and did not allow them to be offended. When the village committed lynching against Fedot, who, while working as a shepherd, failed to take a sheep from the she-wolf, his mother lay down under the rod for him. young beautiful woman in the absence of a husband-intercessor, he was pursued by the master's steward. The heroine did not find support from any of her relatives, except for her hundred-year-old grandfather Savely. The character of Matryona Timofeevna is tempered precisely in difficult trials. This is an intelligent, selfless, strong-willed, decisive woman. This is the image of a peasant woman not only strong-willed, but also gifted and talented. Matryona's story about her life is a story about the fate of any peasant woman. Matryona Timofeevna went through all the trials that can befall a woman. This is a working mother, proud, not broken, who became close and dear in spirit to grandfather Savely. But the wanderers came to her in vain in search of a happy man: “It’s not the business of women to look for a happy one.” Matryona had a hungry year, and then an even more terrible test: she took her husband out of turn as a recruit. And again Matryona Timofeevna did not submit. The pregnant woman went on foot to the city to seek the truth and intercession from the governor. She achieved the truth by receiving the intercession of the governor’s wife, who also baptized the child who was born before the time. Since then, Matryona Timofeevna “has been glorified as a lucky woman and nicknamed the governor’s wife.” Speaking about the bitter fate of women, Nekrasov never ceases to admire the amazing spiritual qualities of his heroines, their enormous willpower, self-esteem and pride. Such a woman “endures both hunger and cold.” She is strict towards lazy people, towards the poor, but this does not mean that she is not characterized by love and compassion for people. It is enough to remember how Matryona Timofeevna forgives Savely the hero for his mistake, which led to the death of her first-born. She appreciates his free spirit, folk wisdom, and even tells strangers about him, holding him up as an example. Nekrasov considers the main advantage of a Russian Woman to be her ability to be a real, sensitive mother. Russian women live in constant work, the joys and sorrows of motherhood, in the struggle for family, for home. The theme of women's lot in the poem merges with the theme of the homeland. Female characters Nekrasov's heroines speak of the strength, purity and incorruptibility of the common people. Those inhuman living conditions indicate an urgent need for changes in orders, style and way of life in the villages and cities of Russia at that time.

The keys to female happiness... abandoned, lost to God himself.

N. A. Nekrasov

I. Gallery of female images in domestic and foreign literature.

II. The happiness of a simple peasant woman in Nekrasov’s understanding.

1. Trying to find someone happy among the common people.

2. The happiness of young Matryona Korchagina.

3. Hell among my husband's relatives.

4. The tragic death of Demushka.

5. “Spiritual thunderstorm” of ordinary Russian women.

III. Nekrasov's admiration for a Russian woman.

Perhaps not a single writer or poet has ignored a woman in his work. Attractive images of a lover, a mother, a mysterious stranger adorn the pages of domestic and foreign authors, being a subject of admiration, a source of inspiration, consolation, happiness... But, probably, not a single male creator, except Nekrasov, thought about what it is like - women's happiness, and especially the happiness of a simple peasant woman.

The great and truly popular Russian poet N. A. Nekrasov, in the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus',” depicted the fate of the common Russian people during the period of the abolition of serfdom. The main characters of the work are looking for happy people throughout Rus'. Desperate to find a lucky man among the “men,” they begin to ask Russian village women whether they are happy. Matryona Korchagina told them about what a woman’s happiness is like.

What is women's happiness and does it exist? Matryona remembers that she was happy in her childhood and youth:

I was lucky in the girls...

For father, for mother,

Like Christ in his bosom,

The happiness of young Matryona was not at all in sleeping longer and eating tastier: from an early age she was accustomed to work and loves it:

And a good worker

And the sing-dance huntress

I was young.

The description of the simple happiness of a peasant woman makes my heart warm: to work hard, to freshen up in the bathhouse and gain strength, to sing songs with friends and ride on a sleigh... Honest, straightforward, modest, Matryona does not make eyes at the guys, but, on the contrary, avoids them. But still, “as luck would have it,” a groom was found for her from distant St. Petersburg and finally won her love and hand. “Then there was happiness,” Matryona sighs.

And then - someone else’s family, “huge, grumpy,” where she is an eyesore to everyone, everyone wants to humiliate and insult her. Hard work and constant reproaches from her husband's relatives, frequent separations from her beloved turned her life into hell.

With the birth of her first-born Demushka, Matryona’s life was illuminated with divine light: she now easily endures any hardships and hardships, endures any attacks from her relatives... But the short-lived happiness was cut short by the tragic death of Demushka. And even though Matryona gave birth to five sons, she still cannot forget her first.

This is a woman’s bitter happiness: work tirelessly, be patient and keep quiet, raise children - “Is it for joy? (...) They’ve already taken one!” And so, if you look from the outside, there seems to be nothing to complain about: she’s healthy, strong, she has everything with her, she’s economical, and she’s not been beaten by her husband. But Matryona says:

For me - quiet, invisible -

The spiritual storm has passed,

Will you show it?

The image of Matryona is a collective image of all ordinary Russian women. The author revealed everything in it mother's love and the pain that deep and tender is capable of female soul. Matryona Korchagina is the embodiment of simple-minded straightforwardness, good nature, moral purity and marital fidelity. This image touches the soul, despite the fact that the village woman talks about her life simply, artlessly, without showing off or trying to exaggerate the colors. And every reader finds something relatable in her story.

Nekrasov describes the Russian woman with respect and admiration - loving wife and a mother who, God only knows where, gets her spiritual strength to give her loved ones warmth, affection and happiness, even if the keys to her own happiness are lost.