Émancipée Krzhechinskaya and Eudoxie Kukshina: A. Pleshcheev's Vocation [Prizvanie] and I. Turgenev's Fathers and Sons [Otsy i deti]

Abstract

The article considers the female type of an émancipée as a marker of artistic historism in A. Pleshcheev's socially oriented story Vocation [Prizvanie] (1860) and I. Turgenev's multiple-level novel Fathers and Sons [Otsy i deti ] (1862). The author shows the typological and individual interpretations of female emancipation by the two peers. The article reveals how the progressive aspirations of 'the young intelligentsia', 'the people of the 1860s', are debased by incidental rituals and cultural staging, as epitomized in the émancipée characters of Krzhechinskaya and Kukshina. The author argues that both works approach the 'women's problem' as a relevant issue in the social and cultural context of the 1860s, and analyze manifestations of mock progressiveness in the form of alternative cultural models of behavior, very typical of the collective practices among 'imitators' of 'the new social forces'. Pleshcheev and Turgenev contrast genuinely new cultural modes of behaviour with ostentatious and mocking 'cultural staging'