The Impact of History on the Lives of Women

Last year I read Robert K. Massie's Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman. Massie specializes in writing about the Russian royals. He has a son with hemophilia and that inspired him to write Nicholas and Alexandra (1967). (The Russian tsar and his German-born wife also had a son stricken with the disease.) Massie went on to write Peter the Great (1980), The Romanovs (2011) and Catherine the Great (2012) for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. As I was reading Catherine the Great I kept thinking, this is an historical account, but her life reads like a novel; someone should write it as a novel." 

Shortly after I read Massie's book, I came across Eva Stachniak's The Winter Palace: A Novel of Catherine the Great (2012). I could not put it down.

Reading the historical account and the novel almost simultaneously was an interesting experience. However, there were certain things neither the historical version nor the novel fully explored for me. I really wanted to know more about how Catherine herself personally felt when her first husband rejected her and they went to bed night after night with no intimacy. Finally, after ten barren years, Catherine took a lover. Again, I wanted Stachniak to flesh out this relationship, and how it affected the empress. There were several more liaisons, one of which resulted in the murder of her first husband and Catherine's ascension to the Russian throne.

I don't know what prompted Stachniak to write another novel about Catherine the Great, Empress of the Night, but this second novel fleshed out all the missing aspects of the first one for me. One almost gets the impression that Stachniak felt she needed to rewrite the story from a different angle. It is written from Catherine's perspective instead of from the point of view of her personal servant Varvara, as is The Winter Palace. A review by Cheryl Girard in the Winnipeg Free Press calls this "the weakness of the novel." She writes, "Far too much time is spent dwelling on moonlight trysts and not enough on the historical accomplishments, politics and intelligence of the empress who was one of Russia's most influential female leaders." Perhaps the reviewer didn't read The Winter Palace, where Stachniak emphasizes all of that but neglects the emotional aspects.

Catherine the Great voraciously read the works of the French philosophers of her time and was idealistic enough at the beginning of her reign to try to emulate them and liberate the Russian serfs who suffered greatly and were treated like slaves. However, she was completely discouraged by her advisers from implementing these reforms and eventually gave up trying to do so. One wonders how history might be different had she persisted and insisted on these endeavors.

While I was still immersed in Russian history, someone alerted me to a fascinating memoir, Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang (1991). The person who recommended this book was reminded of it after viewing a painting Ray Dirks did on his Road to Freedom exhibit of The Three Katharinas (pictured below -- my great-grandmother, my grandmother and my mother, all of whom were born in Ukraine and eventually found their way to Canada).

A blurb on the back cover of this book reads, "Wild Swans is a riveting account of the impact of history on the lives of women. This is a powerful, moving, at times shocking story of three generations of Chinese women ... ." -- Mary Morris

Wild Swans portrays a different aspect of Communism than the one with which I'm familiar. The author's parents saw the Communists as liberators from the oppressive Japanese, instead of as enemies as my parents did. However, even though Jung Chang's parents are completely dedicated to Communism, their view gradually changes as the novel progresses. The corruption rampant within the party offends their purist and idealistic version of Communism, which they have embraced with every fibre of their being. Because they are courageous enough to object to Mao Zedong's narcissistic style of government which is destroying their country once again, they are severely punished and the family experiences incredible suffering, as does the whole population of China. The courage and amazing resilience displayed by the author's mother and grandmother in the face of personal tragedy and great loss is almost unbelievable and a testimony to the strength of the human spirit.

Reading Massie's historical accounts of the Russian nobility, Stachniak's historical novels, and Jung Chang's memoir caused me to ponder my family's own personal saga. I was again struck by the two opposing forces so evident in history: the power to corrupt and the strength and stamina to withstand corruption. The main characters are these strong bigger-than-life women of endurance and great courage. They just never give up, no matter how terrible the circumstances.of their lives.