Hair & Dress in Imperial Russia
William Ryan
wfr at SAS.AC.UK
Fri Oct 17 10:18:59 UTC 2008
I think Moshe was right first time. It may well be that in some remote
areas of academe the word sexist is used in a purely scientific and
non-judgmental sense - but in ordinary parlance, which I take Daniel's
remark to be, is it ever anything except pejorative or polemic? I also
think it unlikely that Paul, for all his bad reputation with feminists,
held views on the relations between the sexes which were strikingly out
of line for his time and place. As Daniel says, the passage in
Corinthians is not particularly clear, particularly in the KJV, and it
has given rise to a good deal of scholarly discussion - but Paul was
almost certainly not inventing a 'sexist' rule just to complicate the
lives of his converts, rather seeking a symbolic explanation of the
contemporary custom of the church, which seems to have been rather less
specific in this area than contemporary Jewish practice. Paul knew
Scripture well, as Moshe points out, and would naturally have used
scriptural metaphors to express his thought.
Hair (and the cutting of hair, the binding or unbinding of hair, the
covering of hair) almost always has some kind of symbolic, magical,
religious, sexual or even political significance in most cultures -
'hair' is one of the longer entries in the index to Frazer's Golden
Bough (three quarters of a page in two columns of small type).
I mentioned St Paul's teaching in 1 Corinthians in my first message only
because most varieties of Christianity have taken note of it in one form
or another (in fact the Catholic Church has only recently removed the
obligation for women to cover their heads in church) and in the context
of the original question about covering hair and the history of costume
in Russia, both Church teaching and the Russian ritual custom of cutting
hair at weddings are relevant to the design and use of women's head
coverings. And this does not only concern women - the enforced removal
of beards by Peter the Great, which was linked with the forced adoption
of western clothes, was significant at several levels, religious,
magical, political, and sartorial.
Will Ryan
Moshe Taube wrote:
> First point taken and appreciated. On the second point, I was actually
> trying to sound ironic. Apparently I failed.
>
> Moshe Taube
>
> On Oct 16, 2008, at 9:52 PM, A S wrote:
>
>> In an historical context, using the term 'sexism' is not necessarily
>> indicative of a value judgement, but could simply be descriptive,
>> although the qualifier 'thoroughly' smells of the former.
>> Additionally, I do not grasp how founding an organised religion
>> necessarily qualifies one as being 'progressive' and 'enlightened'.
>>
>> Andrew Swearingen
>>
>> On 16.10.2008, at 20:04, Moshe Taube wrote:
>>
>>> Paul a sexist? As opposed to whom? You must be joking. We're talking
>>> about a Jew who 2000 years ago founded Christianity as an organized
>>> religion in the Eastern Mediterranean. Surely he was as progressive
>>> and enlightened as any other guy at that time and in that area.
>>> Just a small remark on "doksa andros". Let's not forget that if
>>> we're looking for sources of inspiration for Paul's phraseology, we
>>> have to look at his Scripture, i.e. the Old Testament, and there I
>>> would say the closest expression is in Proverbs 12.4, which Paul
>>> surely knew in the original (for our evangelical friends: I do not
>>> mean KJV) אֵשֶׁת־חַיִל עֲטֶרֶת בַּעְלָהּ - 'A virtuous woman is a crown to her
>>> husband.' , LXX: γυνὴ ἀνδρεία στέφανος τῷ ἀνδρὶ αὐτῆς. Now 'atereth
>>> lit. 'crown', but figuratively also 'ornament, honour, glory'
>>> appears several times in the OT in conjunction with and sometimes as
>>> synonym of תִּפְאָרֶת tif'ereth, which is glossed as 'ornamentum, decus,
>>> gloria', and is very readily rendered by doksa. Cf, Exodus 28:2
>>> לְכָבֹוד וּלְתִפְאָרֶת εἰς τιμὴν καὶ δόξαν. Could this have been the source
>>> of inspiration?
>>>
>>> Moshe Taube
>>>
>>> On Oct 16, 2008, at 8:26 AM, Daniel Rancour-Laferriere wrote:
>>>
>>>> Dear colleagues,
>>>> Slavianskie drevnosti is indeed an important and rich source, and
>>>> does have the limitations mentioned by Will Ryan. The reference to
>>>> Corinthians is quite interesting, and adds some historical and
>>>> cross-cultural perspective. Paul is thoroughly sexist: a man is
>>>> but the image and glory of God ("obraz i slava Bozhiia" in the
>>>> Synodal trans of texts going back to "eikon kai doksa Theou"),
>>>> while a woman is but the glory of a man ("slava muzha" rendering
>>>> "doksa andros"). Probably "doksa" is better rendered "reflection"
>>>> (Oxford NRSV). So a woman is but the reflection of a reflection.
>>>> What a woman has, however, in addition to her "glory"/"reflection"
>>>> is her "authority on her head" ("znak vlasti nad neiu," rendering
>>>> the "eksousian" she should have on her head) - i.e., her hair.
>>>> NRSV gives "a woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her
>>>> head" (I Cor. 11:10), meaning roughly, she ought to have the
>>>> freedom of choice regarding her head. So Paul seems to want to
>>>> have it both ways: women should be subordinate to men, but they are
>>>> equal too. The passage is obscure, and fascinating. The OXFORD
>>>> BIBLE COMMENTARY (2001, pp. 1125-1126) provides some insights, as
>>>> well as the relevant historical literature on head-covering in the
>>>> Graeco-Roman world. Apparently worship in Corinth was, shall we
>>>> say, pretty free and easy, and this provoked Paul. Later
>>>> Tertullian chimed in with a piece on the veiling of virgins.
>>>>
>>>> The reason for going into this is that the biblical text has (for
>>>> me) the same ambivalent feel about the hair on a woman's head which
>>>> is expressed in those sad Russian peasant prenuptial bath songs.
>>>> In the "bania" the bride-to-be laments the loss of her "krasota"
>>>> (stress on first syllable) and her "volia." These are not merely
>>>> "beauty" and "freedom," but items of headgear which will be lost
>>>> when the girl effectively enters into a relationship of "nevolia"
>>>> with the husband who will have the right to abuse her for the rest
>>>> of her life. See my SLAVE SOUL OF RUSSIA (1995, 193-201).
>>>>
>>>> Regards to the list,
>>>>
>>>> Daniel Rancour-Laferriere
>>>> UC Davis
>>>>
>>>> http://Rancour-Laferriere.com
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Oct 15, 2008, at 1:02 PM, William Ryan wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I have only just seen this, but since I have been cited I would
>>>>> recommend looking first at the 4-page entry 'volosy' in
>>>>> Slavianskie drevnosti, vol. 1, Moscow, 1995. The only problem with
>>>>> it is that it is anthropological and not historical in emphasis -
>>>>> but there is a great deal about hair and magic, and short sections
>>>>> on unbound and uncovered hair. You will find some references to
>>>>> hair and magic in my own history of Russian magic, The Bathhouse
>>>>> at Midnight, PSUP, 1999, see index under 'hair' (or the rather
>>>>> better index in the Russian version: Bania v polnoch', NLO,
>>>>> Moscow, 2006). The trouble with folk beliefs is that most are
>>>>> recorded in the nineteenth century and later and it is usually
>>>>> difficult to say much about their history. Even so, many beliefs
>>>>> and practices recorded in the nineteenth century are likely to
>>>>> have been prevalent in the eighteenth century also, or even earlier.
>>>>> The Pauline injunctions (1 Corinthians 11:4-16) on covering hair,
>>>>> and the Russian custom of cutting off the long hair of brides at
>>>>> their wedding, would have been significant, and indeed affect the
>>>>> kind of head covering which women wore.
>>>>> Will Ryan
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Allison Leigh-Perlman wrote:
>>>>>> Can anyone recommend some good source material regarding the
>>>>>> covering of female hair and its 'magical' qualities in
>>>>>> 18th-century Russia or earlier? I'm also interested in histories
>>>>>> of costume/dress of the same time period. Any recommendations
>>>>>> would be greatly appreciated.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Allison Leigh-Perlman
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Graduate Assistant Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum
>>>>>> Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
>>>>>>
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