“A hitherto unheard-of and harmful thing”: Breastfeeding and Violence in Russian Literature

Abstract

This article examines the construction of maternal subjectivity in the context of breastfeeding narratives in Russian literature, from the early 1800s to the 1920s. It draws on historical and contemporary socio-economic contexts, in Russia and the West, to support its major contention that breastfeeding and violence are intrinsically connected at a symbolic level. As a literary trope, breastfeeding tends to be presented either as the antithesis of violence (as in the passages analysed from Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Krylov’s Fables) or as a continuation of underlying structural violence (with examples from Korolenko, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky). Through three detailed close readings of fictions by Ivan Lazhechnikov (the 1859 novella “My Doctor’s Grimace”), Mikhail Voskresenskii (the 1858 novel Natasha Podgorich), and Vsevolod Ivanov’s 1922 short story “The Child”, I argue that realist literary depictions of maternal breastfeeding and wet-nursing demonstrate both the social vulnerability of mothers and the temporary autonomy or even sanctuary gained through these practices. I apply Bourdieu’s definition of “symbolic violence” and Cixous’ notions of “white ink” and “écriture féminine” to the context of Russian maternal fictions. In conclusion, I suggest that the characterization of nursing mothers in Russian realist literature is both revelatory (of female experience) and subversive (of conventional gender norms).