Liberation of Body, Soul, and Writer in Sofya Tolstaya’s Prose

• In Event: 19th-Century Russophone Women Writers II: Sex and Childbirth in Works by Dostoevskaia, Tolstaia, and Shabel’skaia

Abstract

After her marriage to Lev Tolstoy Sofya Tolstaya (1844 1919) became her husband’s secretary, giving up her own literary talents and ambitions. Rebellion against him and his ideas is an important theme in her prose. In my paper I will explore three levels of liberation in her texts: body, soul, and spirit (literature).

Author

• Ingeborg Jandl-Konrad, U of Vienna (Austria)