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Dostoevsky:

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  The Woman Question

The Woman Question

The Woman Question is a matter of changing the roles for women politically, economically, and professionally. It deals with the social and sexual liberation of women. It was brought about by the problem of women’s suffrage and gained importance in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. ((Modernist Journals)) This is when activist became more vehement and in response the government set forth increasingly oppressive measures.

A woman’s authority and role in society was determined to be in a constrained and separate sphere from that of men. Men were stationed in the public sphere, holding economic and social power. Women were situated in the home sphere, their position being to maintain a satisfactory atmosphere for the family.  ((Modernist Journals))

History

The discussion of women’s political rights was brought about by the Reform Bills of 1832 and 1876; petitions were sent to Parliament to advocate women’s suffrage around the 1840s; women in England were not able to vote until 1918. (Norton) There were also significant debates on allowing married women to have ownership of and manage property.

The rise of the Industrial Revolution produced changes for women, with the expansion of the textile industries bringing thousands of women from the lower class into factory jobs with poor working conditions. It is stated that “the new kinds of labor and poverty that arose with the Industrial Revolution presented a challenge to conventional ideas about women” (Norton).

Dostoevsky and The Woman Question

In Dostoevsky’s works, it is noted that there is a “blurring of boundaries between erotic and spiritual experience” (Staus 1). There are multiple instances where the differences between men’s liberties and women’s liberties – and the way they conflict with one another – in his works. His books show character’s endeavours to “repress ‘the feminine,’ only to find it returning to destabilize their former assumptions” (Staus 2). Dostoevsky’s novels portray his anxieties regarding the treatment of women – especially concerning the law – and the effects of the Woman Question.

He seems drawn to show men’s cruelties towards women and the women’s different reactions to this treatment. He holds symbolic femininity in high esteem while degrading real women, which depicts the “ongoing cultural dilemma” of women in a patriarchal society (Staus 6). In his novels, “each woman’s virtue is also her vice” (Staus 8).

To address the woman question, Dostoevsky connects the female characters in his novels to themes of sexuality and chastity. This can be seen in such women as Nastasia Filippovna, Liza Tushina, and Grushekna, who “struggle to forgive themselves for having lost their virginity to unworthy male seducers” as well as in Sonya Marmeladova, who Dostoevsky uses to examine “the motivation for voluntary sacrifice of chastity” (Blake 252).