From Cinderella to Revolutionary: Avdotya Panaeva's Swarthy Heroine

• In Event: 19th-Century Russophone Women Writers I: In Dialogue with Famous Men

Abstract

The heroine of Avdotya Panaeva's The Talnikov Family (1848), Natasha, describes herself as physically unprepossessing, resembling neither a girl nor a boy, and repeatedly mentions her dark complexion, linked in Russian culture of the time not only to unattractiveness, but also racial othering. Assured by her mother and aunts that she would not appeal to potential suitors, she is surprised when the young nobleman Aleksei Petrovich falls in love with her and proposes marriage. The novel's conclusion, in which Natasha prepares to leave for her bridegroom's estate, features details such as asceticism and newfound coldness toward her mother and relatives, which - along with her swarthy complexion - link her to Chernyshevsky's revolutionary heroine Vera Pavlovna of What is To Be Done?

Author

• Alexander Burry, Ohio State U