"A ministering angel with the heart of a woman and the manners of a lady": images and wartime daily life of women in the memoirs of female participants in the Crimean War (1853–1856)

Abstract

Purpose. The study aims to reconstruct female images in wartime conditions. The authors do not intend to analyse the course of military operations or the state of military medicine of that time. The scientific interest is focused on the socio-cultural reactions of society to the participation of women in the conflict, their subjective perception of the war, and psychological reactions to stressful situations. Methodology. The methodological framework is built at the intersection of historical anthropology, gender studies, and new cultural history. This approach allows for a departure from the traditional description of war as a sequence of battles and focuses on the subjective experience of the individual. Scientific novelty. Based on the analysis of ego-documents (memoirs, letters, diaries), the socio-cultural images and the specifics of the wartime everyday life of women participating in the Crimean War (1853–1856) are explored. Through the lens of new cultural history and historical anthropology, the experiences of representatives of various national and social groups are reconstructed: from the British aristocrat Florence Nightingale and the Jamaican entrepreneur Mary Seacole to Irish nuns and Russian Sisters of Mercy of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross Community. Conclusions. The study identifies and classifies three fundamental models of female participation in the conflict: state-reformist, professional-religious, and private-entrepreneurial. Special attention is paid to the process of destigmatisation of women's medical work and the role of the contemporary press (in particular, The Times newspaper) in the formation of a new "heroic myth" of the woman-saviour. A comparative analysis of the participants' motivations revealed an ideological dichotomy between the principles of universal Christian humanism on the side of the coalition and the concept of imperial patriotism on the side of the Russian Empire. It is proven that the Crimean War became a turning point in the destruction of patriarchal stereotypes regarding the exclusively masculine nature of war and laid the foundation for the professionalisation of nursing and further gender emancipation.