PRIVATE ASPECTS OF WOMEN’S EVERYDAY LIVES IN KYIV PROVINCIAL NEWSPAPERS OF THE LAST QUARTER OF THE 19TH – EARLY 20TH CENTURIES

Abstract

The growing interest in everyday history and microhistory predetermines the appeal to historical sources containing detailed information about life worlds of ordinary participants of historical process. Materials about women’s everyday lives in particular in terms of family relations and the intimate sphere were found in Kyiv newspapers: “Zarja”, “Kievskoe slovo”, “Kievljanin” and systematized in the article. In view of a great number of theme-oriented publications, we singled out the materials relating only to Uman district being one of the largest among the twelve districts in the Kyiv province. More than twenty publications about family and intimate relationships of women of the district were found in newspapers from 1884 to 1915. They covered the following issues: the murder of a wife by a husband, rapes, deviations in matchmaking, the revenge of a seduced girl, rivalry for a woman. The material about «love triangle», namely intimate relationships of a married woman, a husband and a lover was published in newspapers. The most common theme was adultery and therefore jealousy of a betrayed husband and his revenge on an unfaithful wife. The tonality of newspaper publications about family and intimate relationships of women gave ground to conclude that men’s violence against women, women’s extramarital relationships and adultery had been everyday phenomena. There were not any evaluations of such actions, condemnations or sympathies in newspaper publications. Accordingly, the published information about deviant behavior of married couples, intimate relationships, punishments for marital infidelity in Kyiv provincial newspapers complement the knowledge about women’s everyday lives, social morality and the society’s life of that period of time in general. The introduction of such information into scientific circulation contributes to the analysis of life worlds of average people corresponding to the establishment of a human-centered approach in history.