Piano music, fantasy, and Elizaveta Ivanova’s ambivalent feminism

In this article, I investigate the ambivalent feminism of four otherwise unknown, provincial women in late imperial Russia. Through a close examination feminist piano music that they played, and private writings E.A. Ivanova—the dedicatee music—I show these expressed an intense ambivalence: while raising ideal sisterhood, their was also ironic, support patriarchy, loyal to traditional ideals about women's allegedly light-hearted art. writings, grappled with larger question how understand self. These results are relevant because allow us move beyond scholarly analyses activists which historians have interpreted relation Revolution 1917.