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Breaking the Ties That Bound: The Politics of Marital Strife in Late Imperial Russia. By Ba r Ba r a a lP e r n e n G el . Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011. Pp. 296. $52.96 (cloth); $26.95 (paper).
Barbara Engel's inspiringly researched book on marriage, family, and shifting gender ideologies in late imperial Russia begins with the premise that both the increased educational opportunities for women and the broader post-Reform political and social environment ultimately led to a shifting of the gender order. This transformed sense of the roles and duties of men and women in Russian society ultimately weighed upon the long-standing patriarchal system and resulted in new ideas about marriage and the family. Moreover, there emerged a collective sense that the judiciary or courts should have an increased role in the adjudication of family disputes and that such problems should not be left up to the Orthodox Church and its hierarchies. These changes manifested in a multitude of ways, including in new norms of masculinity that emphasized self-control and restraint and also, perhaps most poignantly, in the slow yet palpable emergence of women's autonomous subjectivity. By studying these processes, Engel highlights how the imperial chanceller y-in all of its conser vative and paternalistic glory-acted in a surprisingly flexible manner in...