Purity And Danger: The Case Of Anna Akulicheva

A major factor in the culture of peasant Russia revolved around the idea of conformity to and respect of the rules of one’s commune. This led to many peasants leading similar lives and being expected to meet certain expectations within their society and the commonality between the peasants caused the occurrence of anomaly among them to be something requiring attention. The cases of Anna Akulicheva and the adopted son-in-law exhibit how these communities approached anomalous behavior in ways that are representative of certain ways of dealing with anomaly outlined by Mary Douglas’ Purity and Danger.

Anna Akulicheva was a defiant woman in a peasant Russian society who stole from her neighbor and defied the community’s attempts to correct her

actions, which eventually lead to her being exiled form the village. In her case, she acted as an anomaly in her society because she went outside of the norms of her community by stealing, attempting to defy the community’s methods of correcting her behavior, and sought outside aid in the matter, which reflected on the community poorly (Worobec 5).

In this case, Anna and her behavior represent what Douglas interprets as an anomaly as her actions qualify as something that “…does not fit a given set or series...” (Douglas 47), where the set in this instance is her village. Anna’s behavior was supremely defiant of what was required of women in peasant society, which had a strong patriarchy where women were expected to obey “…the entire male community” (Farnsworth and Viola 55). Her behavior was considered insubordination in the patriarchal society she lived in and through resisting authority, such as that of her husband and community elders, she became an outcast that no longer fit within her society (Worobec 8). Her community dealt with her actions through the method of physical control or elimination considering that she was publicly shamed as punishment in an attempt to eliminate her anomalous actions and then cast out of the village as a whole after her actions continued, removing the anomaly at the source. The

community also labeled her behavior as dangerous to some extent and enforced conformity through her public shaming to show that behaving in such an abnormal way would be dangerous for an individual’s wellbeing in their society by making an example of her in front of the entire village. The community didn’t deal with her by placing her into a particular category, as they didn’t reassign or adjust where she belonged within the society. The village also elected not to use avoidance in response to Anna as they actively attempted to deal with her behavior and publicly reprimanded her for behaving the way she did. The village also didn’t use this case in ritual to enrich meaning or call attention to other levels of existence because this case involved a simple instance of disobedience and abnormal behavior that wasn’t considered by the community outside of its superficial meaning.
The case of the son-in-law whose wife had died while in contract with his father-in-law can also be seen as an anomaly in peasant Russian society.

This is anomalous in one aspect because the son-in-law was accused of being disrespectful to the father-in-law in a society where the son-in-law was dependent on the father-in-law as he had given up his rights to his previous home and was contracted to fulfill responsibilities of a natural son, who wouldn’t be allowed to disrespect his father (Worobec 58). His position was also anomalous because he no longer fit well into the position of son-in-law and the category of married versus unmarried considering his wife had passed away. This is significant as the contract between a father and son-in-law gave the son-in-law certain property rights due to his marriage to a daughter if he fulfilled certain obligations (Worobec 58), and without this connection to the family, it was uncertain if he would still have some right to property. In this case, the court ruling reflected the method of selecting a category to reduce ambiguity as the nullification of the contract reflected an idea that the son-in-law fit better into a category of unmarried, rather than married considering his rights to property, that he would have maintained if his wife was still alive, were taken away by the ruling. This case also reflects the method of eliminating the anomaly as it clearly takes the issue of the son-in-law and father-in-law’s contract and resolves it

so that the terms of the contract are no longer ambiguous under the circumstances. In this case, the anomaly wasn’t avoided in an attempt to strengthen definitions since it was dealt with clearly by the court and resolved for a specific case. This instance also wasn’t labeled as dangerous since it reflected a situation that wasn’t necessarily deliberate and actions didn’t need to be used to enforce conformity of others in the community. This case also wasn’t used in ritual to enrich meaning or call attention to other levels of existence because it wasn’t referred to in other ways that led to ritual importance for the community.
In conclusion, the cases of Anna Akulicheva and the adopted son-in-law proved to be examples of what can be considered anomalies in their Russian peasant societies. These behaviors and situations led to the community attempting to reconcile the abnormal issue with what the community recognized as normal and led to their societies shaping these situations into things that could be reconciled in their rigid communities.