The Look of

Fathers and Sons

A pictorial aid to envisioning Turgenev’s world

Dr. Nick Melczarek ● ENGL 252 ● Aspects of the Novel

Russia today ...

… the Russian Empire around the time of Fathers and Sons

Carriages, coaches, wagons – personal transportation in 19th-Century Russia

Question: when Bazarov follows behind Arkady and Nikolai’s carriage in the tarantass, and he calls out for a

match, how loudly must he speak to be heard over all the noise that both carriages and their horses and their

passage and the wind make? What does this tell us about Bazarov – what does this add to his characterization?

tarantass – a luggage/baggage/supplies wagon

kolyaska – an open carriage/buggy with

retractable hood (not exactly a phaeton nor

barouche) of the kind in which Nikolai

Petrovich likely collects Arkady Nikolaivich at

the station.

Troika—the

traditional three-

horse arrangement

in Russia

Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin (Алекса́ндр Серге́евич Пу́шкин)

1799-1837

Considered Russia’s greatest writer (before Tolstoy

and Dostoevsky), known especially for his poem-

novel Evgeny Onegin (1833).

Nikolai Petrovich quotes this work (Evgeny Onegin

Ch 7, stanza 2) to Arkady Nikolaivich in the carriage

on the way to the family’s estate at Marino. Besides

the obvious idea of springtime and love, what other

ideas might Nikolai (and/or Turgenev) be getting at

here with this particular quote from Pushkin?

Self-contained worlds: 19th-Century Russian rural/country estates cf. Roosevelt's Life on the Russian Country Estate excerpts PDF

Andrei N. Shilder, Birch Forest (1908) Ivan I. Shishkin, River in a Birch Forest (1883)

Most of Russia outside the great cities of Saint Petersburg, Moscow, etc, was

thousands of square miles of forest, mostly birch and oak—this included large

estates like those described in the novel.

Self-contained worlds: 19th-Century Russian rural/country estates cf. Roosevelt's Life on the Russian Country Estate excerpts PDF

Estate

(main)

house

Estate (main) house Storage/goods house

Storage/goods house

Self-contained worlds: 19th-Century Russian rural/country estates cf. Roosevelt's Life on the Russian Country Estate excerpts PDF

Estate (main) house

Storage/goods house

Ilya Y. Repin, Abramstevo Colony (1887)

Self-contained worlds: 19th-Century Russian rural/country estates cf. Roosevelt's Life on the Russian Country Estate excerpts PDF

In Fathers and Sons, we see

three country estates: the

Kirsanov estate of Marino,

the Odintsova estate of

Nikolskoye, and the Bazarov

estate. Although they’re all

estates, they’re not the same,

however . The Kirsanov and

Bazarov estates are more like

working farms powered by

peasants, whereas

Odintsova’s estate is almost

more of a country pleasure-

villa.

Nikolai Petrovich and Vassily Ivanovich must constantly worry about crops, livestock, the health of the local peasants/serfs, etc.

because to some degree their money comes from their estates (in the form of profits from selling produce or livestock or wood, etc).

Anna Sergeyevna, on the other hand, comes from sufficient money that her estate is more of an away-from-the-city refuge. Such

pleasure-estates were usually easier to afford than palaces or manor houses in the larger cities (St. Petersburg, Moscow, etc) – even for

someone with Odintsova’s wealth.

So, there are country estates . . . and there are country estates.

Self-contained worlds: 19th-Century Russian rural/country estates cf. Roosevelt's Life on the Russian Country Estate excerpts PDF

Photo of a typical Russian farmer

and his wife, of the 1860s. Nikolai

Petrovich wears something like

this jacket while on his estate at

Marino.

An indoor servant

(washerwoman) —

Fenechka would

have started out

as such a servant.

Self-contained worlds: 19th-Century Russian rural/country estates cf. Roosevelt's Life on the Russian Country Estate excerpts PDF

The style of fez that Pavel Petrovich Kirsanov

wears while lounging indoors at Maryino.

This style of fez (not the red one) — luxurious

and “oriental”— was indoor headwear for

elegant, educated, traveled men of the time .

Dress for the educated land-owning class on their country estates would

appear formal to us today. Men would wear suits, or their military dress (if

currently or recently in the military, as does the gentleman in the painting

above, in white) – and sometimes the looser, more common clothes closer to

those of the servants or peasants. Women, depending on their social station,

would wear full skirts, blouses, etc – unless they were wealthier, such as Anna

Sergeyevna Odintsova, who might wear even more decorative dresses.

Nikolai Bogdanov-Belsky’s Woman on a

Balcony (1900?) depicts a woman of some

status (comparable to Anna

Sergeyevna’s) relaxing in her “house

dress” on the balcony of a waterside

estate house.

(This isn’t Pavel Petrovich, but this

image shows the kind of clothing he is

described wearing in the novel.)

Self-contained worlds: 19th-Century Russian rural/country estates cf. Roosevelt's Life on the Russian Country Estate excerpts PDF

Estate rural

Orthodox

Church

(stone, painted)

Estate rural

Orthodox church

(hand-hewn wood,

no nails!)

Rural

Orthodox

priest

Small shrine

outside rural

church

Since such country estates were

practically little villages unto

themselves, they would often include a

small Orthodox church. Religion was a

central part of many common

Russians’ lives, and suffused their

speech, thought, and daily rituals.

Self-contained worlds: 19th-Century Russian rural/country estates cf. Roosevelt's Life on the Russian Country Estate excerpts PDF

Serfs (peasants)

working

the estate fields

Serfs sitting down to tea

(in a samovar on the table)

Even though

emancipated by the

time of the novel’s

publication (1861,

1862), the majority of

Russia (up to 80% of

the population) was

serfs, an entire peasant

class, who lead almost

identical lives to their

great-great-great

grandparents.

Self-contained worlds: 19th-Century Russian rural/country estates cf. Roosevelt's Life on the Russian Country Estate excerpts PDF

Serfs (peasants) taking

a lunch/tea break on

the estate fields

Rural peasant girls with gifts

of food for visitors

A mir (peasant council), a form

of local government in wake of

the reforms of 1874. While they

were emancipated on paper,

their daily lives changed little –

or did their clothing.

Self-contained worlds: 19th-Century Russian rural/country estates cf. Roosevelt's Life on the Russian Country Estate excerpts PDF

Nikolay Petrovich Bogdanov-Belsky, Reporting (1891) – domestic interior scene, a peasant

reports in to his master & the lady of the house. Note the Orthodox icon-shelf in the

“beautiful corner” (красивый угол krasny ugol) at top left – every religiously-observant

home had one

Nikolay Petrovich Bogdanov-Belsky, Family at Tea (1900?) – a more-or-

less typical rural family (not of the aristocracy, nor serfs) at lunch/tea

The 19th-Century interiors shown here reflect those comparable

to the Krisanovs’ and for Bazarov’s parents (although each of

those families was of slightly higher social class than depicted

here). Interiors are simple, mostly functional, occasionally

decorative – unlike the more ample and decorative interiors

enjoyed by someone of Odintsova’s class.

19th-Century Russian Universities & University Students

Recently-graduated students from one of

Russia’s science-technical universities, working

as print-clerks in St. Petersburg, the Imperial

Capital

Russian “universities” of the time (almost exclusively male,

unless very progressive) were of two general sorts: military

academies (which taught military and general history, tactics,

weapons, mathematics, engineering [civil and military], social

graces such as dancing [for balls], etc), and polytechnical or

administrative institutes (general science, philosophy,

medicine, chemistry, history, accounting, etc). (Aristocratic or

socially well-connected families might send their sons to the

Corps of Pages, a training school connected to the Imperial

Court, associated with military academies.) Pavel Petrovich

apparently attended the former, while Nikolai Petrovich,

Arkady Nikolaivich, and Bazarov attended the latter.

19th-Century Russian Universities & University Students

Universities were for the most part, though, open only to those who could somehow afford to pay for them. Usually,

only those with sufficiently wealthy families could attend university. For others, unless apprenticed to someone in a

trade, formal education was skint and rudimentary—for serfs, it was practically nonexistent, as all one would need

to learn about working the land would be taught by one’s parents..

A “public” primary school teaches boys from working families the

fundamentals of woodworking—some of the only “formal” education

they would ever receive.

Of comparable age to but from

wealthier families than the children at

left, these two young academy cadets

gather mushrooms in the forest during

leisure time.

A mathematics lesson at one of the St. Petersburg military

academy-universities.

A little basket (lukoshko) for collecting

forest mushrooms.

19th-Century Russian Universities & University Students

Originally forbidden by law to attend universities, Russian women eventually won the right – but not until the early 1860s, after much

struggle, protest, and political agitation. Not until the late 1870s were women accepted as teachers, doctors, civil servants, and lawyers—

and even then, mostly urban-raised women with liberal-minded parents, or who had access to schools that would accept them.

(Otherwise, they went to Germany for their higher education.) For rural peasant women, such options remained closed until after the

Revolution, and the rise of the Soviet Union.

Women like Fenechka had fewer possibilities available to them than would the urban emancipée Kukshina, or the aristocratic Odintsova

or her younger sister Katya, whose education (because of their social class) would have consisted of private tutors coming to their

aristocratic homes. The Princesses R and K would have received no education whatsoever outside their palaces.

A wealthier, educated woman of the time.

(Actually, Elena Camparetti Raffalovich,

a Russian-Jewish intellectual of the time.)

A young woman of Anna

Sergeyenva and Katya’s social

class

A peasant woman of Fenechka’s class,

in traditional dress costume (not for

working)

Nadezhda Suslova, Russia’s first

female doctor (gynaecology)—

educated in Germany

A woman of Princess K’s

class (actually, the

Dowager Empress Maria

Feodorovna)

19th-Century Russian Universities & University Students

Of course, university education

produced not only Arkady Nikolaivich

and Bazarov, but also political radicals

and agitators . . . and posers, like

Sitnikov. The Slavophiles were very

much in vogue at the time – see the

handout. A “Slavophile” shirt (like one

at left) would look something like the

one shown here, of “traditional”

Russian peasant design, almost a short

tunic, belted at the waist, buttoned

partway to the side up to a low collar.

The female counterpart—the “liberated

woman” such as Avdotya Kukshina—

often dressed the part of the socially-

aware intellectual (see previous slide). Ilya Repin, Study of a Nihilist Student (1883)

Saint Petersburg: Imperial Capital, Showplace of the Russian Empire

Saint Petersburg: Imperial Capital, Showplace of the Russian Empire

The Neva, Moyka, and Fontanka Rivers

and several canals flow through the

capital, spanned by dozens of bridges,

giving the city the nickname “the Venice

of the North.”

A city of palaces of the wealthy, as well as of imperial

government offices, universities, museums, theatres, cathedrals,

fashionable shopping districts, cafés, restaurants, and the

formidable Peter and Paul military fortress-prison.

Saint Petersburg: Imperial Capital, Showplace of the Russian Empire

Tauride Palace

Mikhailovsky Palace

Imperial Winter Palace Catherine Palace

Saint Petersburg: Imperial Capital, Showplace of the Russian Empire

A local official in his

military-style uniform

Three generations of an urban Russian family show some

upward mobility: servant-class (but militarily-decorated)

grandfather, professional-administrative father, clerically-

employed daughter. Urban workers (doormen, shopkeepers,

fetchers).