V. Belova, A.

PREGNANCY IN THE STRUCTURE OF THE RUSSIAN REPRO-DUCTIVE CULTURE OF THE NOBILITY IN THE XVIIITH – THE MIDDLE OF THE XIXTH CENTURY

Authors

V. Belova, A.

Keywords:

pregnancy, reproductive behavior, reproductive culture, extramarital pregnancy, the history of everyday life, women's daily life, women's history, gender, gender anthropology, Russian noblewomen

Abstract

The article is an analysis of the unexplored problem of pregnancy as an element in the structure of Russian reproductive culture. The state of pregnancy is investigated as an aspect of reproductive behavior and of the everyday life of Russian noblewomen in the 18th – the middle of the 19th century. Basing on departmental documentation, pedigrees and property documents, unpublished and published sources of personal origin are analyzed the motives for not including numerous pregnancies by representatives of the educated class in the context of autodocumentary descriptions of one's own identity. Methodological approaches of the history of everyday life and gender history made it possible to establish that the traditional practices of tabooing mention-ing, «speaking», visual fixation of this state turned it into an experience of «invisible» everydayness. The author arrives at a conclusion that the noble reproductive culture up to the era of bourgeois modernization remained the sphere of traditional taboo practices, poorly affected by the process of medicalization.

PREGNANCY IN THE STRUCTURE OF THE RUSSIAN REPRO-DUCTIVE CULTURE OF THE NOBILITY IN THE XVIIITH – THE MIDDLE OF THE XIXTH CENTURY