Tinami Amori
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THIS!!!!! A thousand times this. I remember reading Splendor and Misery when I was about 8 and telling myself, do not be Esther, never be Esther....
Are you talking about High and Low of the Courtasans?

I think you are reading way too much into it. Women have always played a huge role in Russian history and the one thing you cannot accuse Russia of is that they undermined women (as a general rule). Ekaterina the Great was Russia's favourite Tsarina and she murdered the Tsar and ruled with her lover(s). .
Two or three Queens don’t make it a rule. Had Tolstoy introduced the issues faced by Ekaterina during her rule as subjects of discussion for his female characters, I would have enjoyed it beyond words!
I am not asking Tolstoy to attribute to his ladies’ conversations much complexities of Ekaterina's life, not the strategies in Turkish-Russian or Russian-Persian Wars; not positioning of the Black Sea Fleet, not even changes to the Russian Banking industry and introduction of first paper money; just something very little… for example the content of a few letters between Ekaterina - The Enlightened Despot, and Voltaire..

What I meant by Tolstoy reading a woman's mind in Anna Karenina was that men and women think very differently in matters of the heart and he captured it very accurately in Anna's relationship with Vronsky I thought.


......and that is why i hear, from Russian women, for the last 26 years, the same stupid comments "why are not you married and have kids", and "why are working in a Man's Profession", which bothers me very little, and makes me feel sorry for them, as I pay their husbands salaries...

But, given Alica's last reply and mine, I don't want it to look like two Masada girls attacking Fair Vaselissa...
It's just that I rather like the woman's image iin Nekrasov's poety..... and his concept of Russian Woman.
http://www.stihophone.ru/works.php?G=19&ID=26173
In Russ hamlets women are dwelling,
Of countenance earnest, serene;
In all grace of movement excelling;
In bearing and look like a queen.
......
The horseman she'll vanquish in racing;
In danger, not flinching, she'll save:
A galloping steed boldly facing;
To enter a burning hut,brave.

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