Tatyana Larina was NOT 13 years old, she was much older
We continue on the topic of 13-year-old brides of past centuries.
Exactly how old Tatyana is is not stated in the novel.
For the first time, her age is mentioned with the word “youth” (3, XII). There is a myth, a version that at the time of her first appearance in the novel, Tatyana is 13 years old, since the novel contains the lines: “A girl is thirteen years old!” And therefore, they say, Onegin showed true nobility and healthy anti-pedophile tastes. This entire “brilliant” concept, which was apparently put forward by sexologist Alexander Kotrovsky, sounds like this: ...also an indication of the heroine’s age are the lines: “Fables of the British muse / Disturb the sleep of a young woman” (the word “youth” speaks of an age from 7 to 15 years, for example, according to Vladimir Dahl’s dictionary). A conversation with the nanny confirms: “That’s enough, Tanya! During these summers We did not hear about love,” the words “these summers” are consistent with the fact that the nanny was married off at the age of 13. Sexologist Kotrovsky claims that this version explains well and puts everything in its place: for 26-year-old experienced Evgeniy, 13-year-old Tatyana seemed too small, and he rejected her. Feelings flared up when he saw her as an adult girl. Another confirmation of Tatiana’s extreme youth is that, having later met Tatiana again at the ball, Evgeny at first barely recognized her - she had changed so much. If Tatyana had been an adult right away, this would not have happened. And the fact that a 13-year-old girl has changed a lot after a few years is a common thing. Returning from the ball, Onegin thinks: “Is it really the same Tatyana? That girl..." (that is, he previously perceived her as a girl). “Wasn’t the humble girl’s love news to you?” - Tatyana confirms. In accordance with this version, the younger sister Olga could have been 12 years old: barely a teenager (that is, according to Dahl, Lensky was a witness to her infantile fun (a baby, according to Dahl, means up to 3 years old), that is, when Lensky was 8 years old, Olga was approximately 2 years old. At the time of the duel, Lensky is approximately 18, and Olga, according to this logic, is about 12 years old. Lines of the novel about the fact that she danced with Onegin: “Barely out of diapers, Coquette, a flighty child! She already knows the trick, Already taught to change!" *** But literary scholars and Pushkin scholars do not agree with this idea of 13-year-old Tatiana; it is traditionally accepted that Tatiana was older. Let us first open the stanza with that same number, here it is in its entirety: Who is not bored with being a hypocrite, Repeating different things one thing, It is important to try to convince everyone of what everyone has been sure of for a long time, Still hearing the same objections, Destroying prejudices, Which were not and are not present
in a girl at thirteen years old ! , Deceptions, gossip, rings, tears, Supervision of aunts, mothers, And the difficult friendship of husbands!
The lines clearly have no connection to a specific person (see the entire chapter); the text shows that this is just a figure within the framework of chatter.
In addition, how many years Onegin hung around Russia, it is known - he left the village in 1821, and arrived in St. Petersburg in 1824. In this case, the “new” Tatiana, the socialite of St. Petersburg, the embodiment of composure, should be only 16, or even 15 years old, which is absurd. *** Yuri Lotman in the comments to the book writes that she was probably born in 1803, since the novel begins in 1819, and in the summer of 1820, according to Lotman, she was 17 years old. (Lensky was 18 years old at the time of his death, Onegin was 26 years old at the time of his departure from the village, as is directly stated in the text). The heroine’s 17-year-old age in the first part of the book is clear from Pushkin’s letter to Vyazemsky dated November 29, 1824. Then, in response to comments regarding the contradictions in Tatyana’s letter to Onegin, the poet wrote to a friend: “... a letter from a woman, also 17 years old, moreover in love!” Lotman calculates the age as follows: “Olga, Tatyana’s younger sister, was Lensky’s bride in 1820. According to the norms of that era, she was most likely somewhat younger than him and at the same time she could not have been less than 15 years old. Most likely, she was 16 years old. Tatyana was apparently a year older than Olga.”
(...) Young noblewomen married at the beginning of the 19th century.
entered early. True, frequent in the 18th century. Marriages of 14- and 15-year-old girls began to go out of common practice, and 17-19 years old became the normal age for marriage. However, the life of the heart, the time of the first hobbies of the young novel reader, began much earlier. And the surrounding men looked at the young noblewoman as a woman already at that age at which subsequent generations would have seen in her only a child. Zhukovsky fell in love with Masha Protasova when she was 12 years old (he was 23 years old). In his diary, written on July 9, 1805, he asks himself: “...is it possible to be in love with a child?” (see: Veselovsky A. N.
V. A. Zhukovsky. Poetry of feeling and “heartfelt imagination”. St. Petersburg, 1904. P. III). Sophia at the time of the action of “Woe from Wit” is 17 years old, Chatsky was absent for three years, therefore, fell in love with her when she was 14 years old, and perhaps earlier, since the text shows that before his resignation and departure abroad, he had some served in the army for a certain period and lived in St. Petersburg (“Tatyana Yuryevna told something. Returning from St. Petersburg, / With the ministers about your connection...” - D. III, iv. 3). Consequently, Sophia was 12-14 years old when the time came for her and Chatsky Those feelings, in both of us those movements of the heart, Which in me were not cooled by distance, Neither entertainment, nor a change of place. I breathed and lived by them, was constantly busy! (D. IV, Rev. 14)
Natasha Rostova is 13 years old when she falls in love with Boris Drubetsky and hears from him that in four years he will ask for her hand in marriage, and until that time they should not kiss. She counts on her fingers: “Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen” (“War and Peace,” vol. 1, part 1, chapter X).
Regarding the age of the nanny at the time of her marriage, Lotman writes this:
“And I was thirteen years old”
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- “The legal provision for peasants has been made very decently - a woman is thirteen years old, and a man is fifteen years old for marriage, through which, at their young age, having become accustomed, firstly, to each other, and secondly, to their parents, they will have direct love with fear and obedience” ( Drukovtsev S.V.
Economic calendar... 1780. P. 125).
To understand the ethical nuances of Tatiana’s conversation with the nanny, it is necessary to take into account the fundamental difference in the structure of peasant and noble women’s morality of that time. In noble life, the “fall” of a girl before marriage is tantamount to death, and adultery of a married lady is an almost legalized phenomenon; Peasant ethics allowed relative freedom of behavior for a girl before marriage, but considered infidelity by a married woman to be a grave sin. Each of the interlocutors talks about forbidden and “disastrous” love, understanding it completely differently.
The mention that “Vanya was younger” (6-7) than his bride indicates one of the abuses of serfdom. Wed. in “The History of the Village of Goryukhin”: “Men usually married 20-year-old girls in the 13th year. The wives beat their husbands for 4 or 5 years. After which the husbands began to beat their wives” (VIII, 136).
According to Baevsky, Tatyana Larina is even older than Lotman suggests.
When she meets Onegin, Tatyana behaves like a young girl: she falls in love at first sight, imagines her lover as the hero of a moralizing novel, and writes him a passionate letter. But then it seems like only a year passes - the concatenation of events in village life, from the end of the first chapter to the middle of the seventh, does not allow one to doubt this - and Tatyana’s mother is concerned:
Find a girl, hey, it’s time; what should I do with her?
And although she has little money, her mother decides to take Tatyana “to the bride fair” in Moscow, and there, against her will, she rushes to marry her off to an unloved, fat, mutilated general.
It is possible, of course, for the mother of an eighteen-year-old girl who, for some reason unknown to her, is fading and sad, to do this, but still it does not look particularly convincing. This behavior is more natural for a woman concerned about the future of her daughter, approaching the age beyond which marriage becomes problematic. No matter how you define such an age, Tatyana, if she is 18 years old, is far from it. Yu. M. Lotman points out that at the beginning of the 19th century. “The normal age for marriage was considered to be 17-19 years old.” The poet's mother got married at the age of 21, his friend Ekaterina Nikolaevna Raevskaya at 24, his sister Olga Sergeevna, shortly before Pushkin began working on the seventh chapter, got married at the age of 31, etc. Tatyana loves unrequitedly, survived the death of her sister's fiancé at the hands of her lover, refused several suitors, and plunged into the world of Onegin’s books. The abundance of experiences that befell Tatiana makes the reader assume that she is over 18 years old. This assumption is further strengthened by the mother's energetic concerns about her marriage.
In St. Petersburg, together with Onegin, we see Tatyana as “the unapproachable goddess of the luxurious, royal Neva.” When she appears at the reception
…the crowd hesitated, a whisper ran through the hall…………The ladies moved closer to her; The old women smiled at her; The men bowed lower, Catching the gaze of her eyes; The girls walked more quietly in front of her through the hall.
She reigns in the great world not through beauty. Even in my first youth
Neither her sister's beauty, nor her rosy freshness, would she have attracted the eyes.
And ladies, old women and girls would not bow to beauty alone. Just as at the beginning of the novel, Olga’s beauty does not obscure the spiritual merits of her older sister from Onegin, so in the eighth chapter the poet reports that Tatyana could not be overshadowed by the marble beauty of the brilliant Nina Voronskaya. At the same time, she not only does not achieve the position of “legislator of the hall,” but she is burdened by all this “rags of a masquerade, all this glitter, and noise, and fumes.”
How old is this lady who confidently and effortlessly rules the capital’s world?
According to the traditional chronology of the novel's commentators, she is 20 years old.
Of course, this is not as impossible as walking around St. Petersburg often during the white nights, leaving it at the beginning of May, but it is unlikely. M.I. Kutuzov’s daughter Elizaveta Mikhailovna Khitrovo, her daughter Countess Dolly Fikelmon, Karamzina’s wife Ekaterina Andreevna, Princess Zinaida Aleksandrovna Volkonskaya became influential society ladies and hostesses of fashion salons when they were 25, 30 or more years old.
Katenin wanted there to be another chapter between the “Moscow” and “St. Petersburg” chapters, which would depict Onegin’s journey, otherwise “the transition from Tatiana, a district young lady, to Tatiana, a noble lady, becomes too unexpected and unexplained” (VI, 197) .
Pushkin himself pointedly told us this remark and expressed solidarity with it. In it we see recognition of the need for not only a psychological, but also a temporal perspective. In short, the researcher summarizes: We can say that the heroes of the novel in each episode are as old as artistic and psychological truth requires. Also on the topic: what kind of women did Pushkin admire for their beauty? Who is “Nina Vronskaya, Cleopatra of the Neva”?
