Principles of Constructing Femininity in O.P. Runova’s Novel Moonlight

Abstract

The article examines the work of the Russian writer Olga Pavlovna Runova (nee Meshcherskaya) (1864–1952) in the context of literary and gender discourse that developed in the modernist period. One of the most striking, accentuated feminine works of Runova is the epistolary story Moonlight, published in 1913 in the leading literary and political publication “Russian Thought.” Later, the story was included in another collection of Runova’s gender-specific prose, published in Petrograd in 1916 with the same title. In Moonlight the writer uses diary genre of unsent letter with first-person narration, trying to penetrate deeper into the inner world of a woman, to demonstrate her vulnerability to the patriarchal environment and to show possible options for overcoming a spiritual split. The story combines various artistic tactics of Runova in the construction of femininity, which were reflected in the prose of the writer of the 1900–1910s (psychosis, conformism, escapism). The character of story goes through all the stages of feminine self-determination: from internal discontent through rebellion/rejection to a compromise acceptance of dictated conditions. Runova sees the main way out for a woman in inner escapism, which gives an imaginary respite from the oppressive reality, the prevailing patriarchy, but not solving the problem of women’s self-determination outside the patriarchal world.