This is very much not a book rec.
So. In Gentlemen's Blood: A History of Dueling, Barbara Holland discusses Pushkin. At length. And reports some of his (not particularly emotionally stable) mother's racist language about his appearance. Which. All right, that tells us a lot about her internalized racism and self hatred which tells us a lot about the (emotionally abusive) childhood that produced the adult man. So far, so - deeply tragic and fucked up, but historically relevant.
Except that Holland calls him "a throwback to Hannibal" (his great grandfather, who was originally from somewhere in North Africa probably before he was kidnapped and made part of a diplomatic settlement between Constantinople and Peter the Great). "Throwback" is, of course, a racist codeword, and not a very subtle one. It's been in use for centuries, it's heavily loaded, it has no place in this narrative. It’s part of a racist discourse around biracial marriages, the children born from those marriages, and, in this case, their children’s children.
Also their children’s children’s children. …This bit is uglier than I’d remembered, I’d managed to forget the second sentence. Holland is discussing Pushkin’s marriage to Natalya Goncharov:
Their first child, a daughter, was born, but unfortunately looked more like him than like her. Hannibal’s genes were potent stuff. The second child was a boy.
So. We have. A lot of really disturbing stuff here, tossed off extremely casually. First off, the idea that Pushkin’s daughter (Maria, though she goes un-named in the book) would be somehow disadvantaged by taking after her father, physically. Why? Alexander Pushkin was an extremely attractive man, and in most of his facial features took after his mother, who was a beauty. There’s nothing about his looks to suggest they wouldn’t suit a girl. But, ah, yes, you could tell his great grandfather was from Africa. Having features marked as African is bluntly asserted by Holland to be a misfortune. Ick.
And then, of course, you have the “potent stuff” comment, which is just. So classically racist an argument, so constantly brought in up the ugliest of discussions about black people marrying white people, and how they shouldn't be allowed to I just. Holland isn’t even trying. She holds racist attitudes about inter-racial marriage and the undesirability of children taking after their non-white ancestors (it doesn’t come up, but I doubt she’s any more sanguine about white people marrying Asian people, or people from Polynesia, or - anyone. Who aren’t other white people) and ugh ugh ugh.
So, yes. For the sake of your sanity I’d suggest skipping this book. Her treatment of gender is strange - it’s hard to tell if she’s being misogynist or just reporting historical misogyny, although having read the whole thing I suspect the former, at least in places - and she makes nasty tossed off homophobic comments, some of which were so idly vicious I couldn’t believe I’d just read that (the reader is, I suspect, spared her transphobic comments solely because trans people are so completely under her radar). And her deployment of national stereotypes is also often just. Disturbing and wrong. In less serious issues, she spends several chapters demonstrating that dueling and pressure to duel caused and escalated a lot of quarrels that likely otherwise would not have happened, or would have gone further, and then argues that the impulse to duel is somehow innate to men. Having to do with their testosterone, of course. She expends a lot of verbal energy talking about how bizarre and unbelievable it is that people in all walks of life in nineteenth century Russia were interested in poetry, which she treats as if it were a cultural difference less easily comprehended than the dueling.
I can’t believe I read the thing through. Why didn't I bail? What possessed me?
Except that Holland calls him "a throwback to Hannibal" (his great grandfather, who was originally from somewhere in North Africa probably before he was kidnapped and made part of a diplomatic settlement between Constantinople and Peter the Great). "Throwback" is, of course, a racist codeword, and not a very subtle one. It's been in use for centuries, it's heavily loaded, it has no place in this narrative. It’s part of a racist discourse around biracial marriages, the children born from those marriages, and, in this case, their children’s children.
Also their children’s children’s children. …This bit is uglier than I’d remembered, I’d managed to forget the second sentence. Holland is discussing Pushkin’s marriage to Natalya Goncharov:
Their first child, a daughter, was born, but unfortunately looked more like him than like her. Hannibal’s genes were potent stuff. The second child was a boy.
So. We have. A lot of really disturbing stuff here, tossed off extremely casually. First off, the idea that Pushkin’s daughter (Maria, though she goes un-named in the book) would be somehow disadvantaged by taking after her father, physically. Why? Alexander Pushkin was an extremely attractive man, and in most of his facial features took after his mother, who was a beauty. There’s nothing about his looks to suggest they wouldn’t suit a girl. But, ah, yes, you could tell his great grandfather was from Africa. Having features marked as African is bluntly asserted by Holland to be a misfortune. Ick.
And then, of course, you have the “potent stuff” comment, which is just. So classically racist an argument, so constantly brought in up the ugliest of discussions about black people marrying white people, and how they shouldn't be allowed to I just. Holland isn’t even trying. She holds racist attitudes about inter-racial marriage and the undesirability of children taking after their non-white ancestors (it doesn’t come up, but I doubt she’s any more sanguine about white people marrying Asian people, or people from Polynesia, or - anyone. Who aren’t other white people) and ugh ugh ugh.
So, yes. For the sake of your sanity I’d suggest skipping this book. Her treatment of gender is strange - it’s hard to tell if she’s being misogynist or just reporting historical misogyny, although having read the whole thing I suspect the former, at least in places - and she makes nasty tossed off homophobic comments, some of which were so idly vicious I couldn’t believe I’d just read that (the reader is, I suspect, spared her transphobic comments solely because trans people are so completely under her radar). And her deployment of national stereotypes is also often just. Disturbing and wrong. In less serious issues, she spends several chapters demonstrating that dueling and pressure to duel caused and escalated a lot of quarrels that likely otherwise would not have happened, or would have gone further, and then argues that the impulse to duel is somehow innate to men. Having to do with their testosterone, of course. She expends a lot of verbal energy talking about how bizarre and unbelievable it is that people in all walks of life in nineteenth century Russia were interested in poetry, which she treats as if it were a cultural difference less easily comprehended than the dueling.
I can’t believe I read the thing through. Why didn't I bail? What possessed me?