'Being well read is not always a virtue in an author': Evgeniia Tur, Ivan Turgenev, and Nadezhda Khvoshchinskaya

• In Event: 19th-Century Russophone Women Writers IV: Noblewomen at the Intersection of Class and Gender

Abstract

In the early 1850s, before the woman question acquired its name, Evgeniia Tur, Turgenev, and Khvoshchinskaya sparred over women’s education. When we place their surprising views within the larger context of the long history of European debates on women’s education, it turns out Russians were debating not education for women, but for noblewomen. In women’s education, beginning with Catherine the Great, Russian women participated in the international competition over learned women, who historically knew multiple languages, including the languages of the Bible.

Author

• Hilde M. Hoogenboom, Arizona State U