The Dowerless Bride on Russia’s Marriage Market

Abstract

This chapter turns to the image of the dowerless bride. Here, the dowerless bride operated as proof that the country faced a marriage crisis. A woman's dowry (or lack thereof) came to signify the mercantile self-interest that threatened the sanctity of marriage. Lacking the right to marital choice, impoverished women found themselves bartered by parents on the bridal market or coerced into brothel service by madams. Comparing genre paintings by artists like Nikolai Shilder with contemporary literary works by Aleksandr Ostrovsky and Avdotia Panaeva, the chapter contends that artistic production likened unequal marital unions to a new kind of social prostitution driven by market capitalism.