Mythos and Eros in Fin de Siecle Russia : Zinaida Gippius’ Sexual Revolution

Abstract

At the turn of the twentieth century, Russian writer Zinaida Gippius postulated a radical repudiation of the notions of biologically determined gender and sexuality. An active participant in the Russian religious renaissance of the period, she combined this repudiation with a critique of Orthodox asceticism, formulating in the process a doctrine of ‘holy flesh’. After 1905, she transformed her philosophies into a utopian project for religious revolution, based on the twin principles of sexual freedom and gender equality. This thesis examines the ways in which Gippius used these ideas to resist patriarchal norms, problematising traditional narratives of Russian history, which confine such resistance to bourgeois and socialist feminism, both of which Gippius eschewed