Attitude Towards Women Fathers and Sons Essay Example for Free

Attitude Towards Women Fathers and Sons EssayTo analyze the attitudes towards the women question and the most useful starting take would be to look at the representation of the liberated woman, Yevdoxia Kukshina, which can be contrasted with the representation of Bazarovs mother or Nikolai Kirsanovs wife, the women ideals of the older generation. Kukshina is clearly meant to the good example of the radicalism of the 1850s to1860s, the progressive, advanced or educated woman nigilistka or nihilist woman (Richard Stites). She has vowed to defend the rights of women to the last drop of my blood and is scornful of Sand an come to the fore of duration woman. She has separated from her husband and plans to go abroad to study in Paris and Heildelberg. She thus, personifies the emergence of new objectives and tactics among the Russian emancipees of the early 1860s.However, it is also kind of obvious that while much has been written about Turgenevs attitude towards his nihilist her o, there is no doubt that the female nihilist Kukshina is an unflattering exaggeration and as Walter Smyrniw quotes Turgenev has deliberately portrayed Kukshina as a ludicrous and repulsive emancipee. Walter goes on to argue that in his portrayal of Kukshina, Turgenev lampooned only certain undesirable tendencies generated by Russian emancipees. The worst among them was a lack of genuine involvement, an inadequate commitment to the movement itself.Some merely assumed the roles of the emancipated women and hence their behaviour was two contrived and unnatural. Although many critics have argued along the same lines of Turgenevs portrayal of Kukshina as a device for irony the progressive louse which Turgenev combed out of Russian reality (Dostoevsky) and that he has assumed the same sentiment in respect to Russian men who merely assumed the pose of materialists and nihilists (eg. Sitnikov), it is hard to melt that in the description of her person and household we find some of the st ereotyping of radical women found in most conservative writing.He did not hesitate in expressing value judgments when ridiculing the pretentiousness and hypocrisy of Russian women who merely played the role of emancipees. She is dirty and slovenly in her habits and person, her room is scattered and dusty, her hair disheveled and her fit out crumpled. Moreover, her conversation and behaviour is meant to show us that her radicalism is shallow and unaffected. The narrator tells us that she greets her guests with a string of questions without waiting for answers. It is important to notice here the narrators generalization here, which would seem to impute lack of serious concern (feminine casualness) to all women as part of their feminine nature and not to Kukshina as an individual. The narrator draws perennial attention to Kukshinas unattractive physical appearance almost as if that were partly her fault.Kukshina is unfortunate enough to show her gums above her top teeth when she laug hs and her delicate playing revels her flat-cut fingernails. However, what is most significant in terms of the dominant patriarchal ideology of the mid-nineteenth century Russia is her declaration, Im free, I have no children. From a conservative perspective, this would count as near sacrilegious statement. Though Bazarov himself is a serious character, its possible to read Sitnikov as a parody of the younger generation. At Madame Kukshins, the narrator tells us To Sitnikov the chance to be scathing and express contempt was the most agreeable of sensations (13.44).