New Aspects in the Study of Female Corporeality in Karelian Culture

DOI: 10.33876/2311-0546/2022-2/141-153

Abstract

In regional Russian historiography, gaps remain associated with the study of women's everyday life. This is due both to the specifics of traditional culture, which tabooed conversation on these topics and to scientific traditions, which for a long time bypassed these problems. This article presents the results of archival research and fieldwork. It investigates some understudied aspects of the life of a Karelian peasant woman, connected with the physical and "cultural" body and the emotional sphere. These include menarche, visual markers of sexual maturity, the first wedding night, the first childbirth, and the ambivalent position of a woman in labor, the end of the fertile period. One of the article sources is the author's expedition materials collected from women born in the 1920s–1950s. Despite the retrospective nature of interviews, this information reveals previously unknown (sometimes quite emotional) aspects of women's everyday life. The material is presented according to the rituals of the life cycle, which mark the transition of a woman from one social status to another. At the same time, the author acknowledges the conventionality of this categorization since female corporeality was not limited to birth, marriage, and death but had many other aspects.