How schoolgirls were brought up in tsarist Russia, and what hardships they had to endure

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

In the 19th century, the word "schoolgirl" was pronounced with a slight mockery. Comparison with a graduate of the women's institute was not flattering for any girl. It was not at all an admiration for education that lurked behind him. On the contrary, for a very long time the “schoolgirl” was synonymous with ignorance, as well as naivety, exaltation bordering on hysteria, a strange, broken way of thinking, language, and absurdly weak health that reached the point of stupidity.

Without a doubt, such a result was not at all what their founder, the daughter-in-law of Catherine II, Empress Maria Feodorovna, wanted to achieve. On the contrary, the queen dreamed of putting an end to the dense ignorance of the women of the Russian nobility. She wanted to literally raise a generation of new noblewomen, filled with noble feelings and thoughts, not sharing the superstitions of their mothers and grandmothers. It was assumed that new mothers of the noble class would raise more progressive and educated children.

Despite the name, in the institutes of noble maidens, education was received, firstly, not at all higher, and secondly, not only girls from noble families. Girls of noble birth could be admitted to the state account, without payment - but there was a competition for these places. Who will study from the applicants was determined not by an exam, but by the most common lot - it was called a ballot. In addition, in some institutes, those who managed to submit a petition earlier than others were determined to the official place. Daughters of merchants, Cossack officers and honorary citizens could study on a par with young noblewomen, but exclusively at their own expense.

READ ALSO: 30 photos of the Smolny Institute for Noble Maidens, where the best maids of honor and respectable wives were raised

In places paid by the treasury, girls were admitted at the age from 10 to 12 years. Girls 9 (in kindergarten) and 13 years old were also taken for payment. In total, they had to unlearn seven classes, and start from the seventh - he was considered the youngest. But the graduates were first graders. In total, since 1764, 30 institutes have been opened in Russia, the most prestigious of which was Smolny. But in it, looking ahead, the order reigned about the same as in any other institution.

Pedagogical techniques in relation to girls-schoolgirls would seriously shock a modern parent.

Torn from family and society

First of all, most of the institutes were boarding schools. Only four semi-open institutes (Donskoy, Nizhny Novgorod, Kerch and Tambov) gave girls a choice - to attend classes, coming from home, or to spend the night in dormitories. Of course, there were days when female relatives could visit. But for most of the history of institutions, female students were not allowed to go on vacation. They were supposed to spend 7-8 years within the walls of the institute.

On the days of the visits, there could be no talk of any free conversations. The teachers watched closely so that the girls behaved decorously and did not blab about anything unpleasant. Letters to relatives were also carefully read.

This isolation from the family was intended to isolate from the bad morals that reign in many landlord houses. Taking into account the fact that the girls practically did not see any other people who did not belong to the school - for example, before the students walked in the park, the park was necessarily closed from other visitors - it turned out that the children grew up speaking Mowgli. They not only did not understand anything in the life of society and lost emotional connection with the closest relatives. At best, they were frozen in their emotional and social development at the level of the pre-institutional period. At worst, they understood and considered vital only the rules invented by the teachers and the students themselves, switched to jargon that they could only understand, and deliberately developed a special sensitivity up to hysteria. In the absence of the opportunity to experience events that would give food to feelings, the girls immediately experienced feelings, having learned to inflate them literally from scratch.

The girls were also completely unprepared to manage the household (and after all, not all of them later married a rich man who could support a staff of domestic workers). Of course, many schoolgirls had to learn to sew dresses and underwear willy-nilly, since the fabric and seams of the uniforms and shirts issued free of charge did not differ in quality.

Free state corsets, obligatory to wear, were a real torment. Instead of steel plates, they kept their shape due to curved thin boards. Planks soon began to break, puff up with chips, painfully dig into the ribs and scratched the skin.

Housekeeping was also often included in the program. In the classroom, the girls had to cook simple and healthy dishes, learn how to handle food, and embroider. In fact, the cook who taught the young ladies was afraid that they would burn themselves or spoil the food, and the girls could only hope for their observation in the lesson - they were not allowed to do practically anything with their hands.

As for embroidery, good wool (and, moreover, silk) was not given away. If the girl could not ask her parents to buy supplies, for most of the lesson she fought with torn threads. Only those who had learned in advance, at home, embroidered well. But they shouldn't have rejoiced. Often, the institute's bosses forced the craftswomen to embroider from morning to evening, to the detriment of lessons, so that later they could boast of what kind of craftswomen they bring up, presenting embroidery to girls in the temple or to important people. Showiness was generally more important than real work.

Adversity Strengthens and Disciplines Your Child

The girls' health was taken care of according to the most advanced methods of that time. In the 18th and 19th centuries, it was believed that it was good for children to gorge themselves, especially meat, and it was good to be in the cold. He makes them strong and disciplined.

In fact, this meant that the girls lived from hand to mouth. They were fed very poorly. This influenced not only the physique, making him, as the educators most likely saw it, exquisitely fragile. Life from hand to mouth greatly influenced the psyche. The girls' thoughts were constantly revolving around the production of food. My favorite adventure was to go to the kitchen and steal some bread there. Those to whom the parents gave money, secretly sent servants for gingerbread or sausage, moreover, the envoy took an exorbitantly high price for his services, taking advantage of the desperate situation of the children.

Until the end of the nineteenth century, girls were instructed to sleep in the cold, under a thin blanket. If you are freezing, it was by no means possible to hide on top of a coat or put on something - you had to get used to being resistant. They washed themselves only with cold water. In the classroom, the girls sat in dresses with a very open neck, without a cape, regardless of the season, and the classrooms were very poorly heated in winter. The girls were constantly sick. True, in the infirmary, they got the opportunity to eat enough and warm up, so that illness, paradoxically, contributed to their survival and physical development.

Often the youngest students suffered from enuresis from nerves and cold. Such girls could be taken out to stand in the dining room in front of everyone with a stained sheet tied around their necks. It was believed that this would fix her. It helped a little, but classmates got down to business. Everyone who woke up at night woke up a sick friend to go to the toilet. But there were several dozen girls in the dormitory, and from such care the poor girl suffered from sleep deprivation and nervous exhaustion.

Developmental physical activity was also assumed. Every day, in any weather, the girls were taken out for a walk, in addition, they were engaged in ballroom dancing. However, on walks, there were few places allowed to run or just look at the garden. More often, walks turned into marching in pairs along the paths, without the right to live conversation, looking at flowers and beetles, outdoor games. True, at the ballroom dancing, the girls were still seriously drilled. But they also became torment if the girl's parents did not have the money to buy her normal shoes. The state house was made for a "fuck off", it was painful and inconvenient even to walk, not that to dance.

The dances were supposed to be practiced at the annual balls in honor of the holidays. At these balls, the girls were given some sweets. At the same time, they strictly observed that the children did not laugh loudly, did not fool around, and did not play. It was necessary to get carried away at least a little, to disperse, and the holiday turned off.

Grades are not the main thing, the main thing is who adores whom

Due to their inability and impossibility to build normal relations, the schoolgirls were engaged in “adoration”. They chose a teacher or senior student as an object of adoration and showed their feelings as exalted as possible. For example, they could pour a bottle of perfume on the subject's clothes or shout out loud “I love it!” At the meeting. - for which they were necessarily punished. They could eat soap, deliberately not sleep at night, sneak into church at night to pray until morning. Meaning? None. Just privation "for glory." That's romance.

Harassment, group boycotts in the event of any conflicts or as a measure of reprimand for, for example, inability to dress quickly and neatly were the norm. This was not suppressed by the teachers, and sometimes even encouraged.

As for the level of education, although the program included many subjects, in fact, the only thing that the graduate of the institute knew for sure was foreign languages. In their regard, the girls were drilled around the clock, but academic performance in other subjects was almost unimportant. Literature, history and other disciplines, female students were taught carelessly. That is, it is impossible to say that the graduates, although they were cut off from the world, at least shone with knowledge.

The girls constantly assessed each other according to criteria mysterious for an external observer and based on the assessment they built relationships. The most understandable criterion was beauty. High school girls constantly decided who was the first in beauty in their circle, who was second, and so on. It was believed that the most beautiful would be the first to marry.

They also could not boast of good manners for a long time. Running away, frightened by a person, talking enthusiastically about some trifling and abstract subject, whipping up hysteria out of the blue, scared to the point of fainting - this is the behavior with which the schoolgirls were associated with society. Memoirist Vodovozova recalls that her mother got married right after college to the first man she got into a conversation with and who promised her to arrange a real ball at the wedding. She did not find his behavior at all strange and obscene, although in fact it was just obscene - it was not accepted to court girls so impudently.

A certain turn from all these customs of closed women's institutions took place at the very end of the nineteenth century, when the outstanding Russian teacher Ushinsky started reforms. But very soon his project was canceled, and the world of college girls remained the same. Many modern children are surprised at the strange tearfulness and tearfulness of the heroines of the singer of the world of boarding schools for girls, Lydia Charskaya. But in her characters there is not a drop of lies, grotesque, unnaturalness. This is exactly what the girls around her were like when Lydia herself studied at the institute. And through no fault of their own.

Alas, but herself Charskaya, who became perhaps the most popular children's writer in pre-revolutionary Russia, ended her life in poverty and loneliness, in the very hardships that her heroine constantly endured. Only without a happy ending.