E-mail: mistro@rambler.ru
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Full Professor (Philology), professor, department of General and Slavic Art, Moscow State University
of Design and Technology
In verbal art the costume of a character is not just a matter of description, but a subject with symbolic functions. Therefore, this paper is not about costume as an object of ethnography, it investigates song-performers’ and characters’ reasons for mentioning female headwear in the cruel romance. The headwear is understood here as the main characterizing element of women’s traditional costume. The genesis of cruel romance lies in the decay of the traditional peasant family, so the genre doesn’t represent any forms of everyday traditional family living. Although the heroines of the cruel romance don’t wear traditional folk dress, the traditional functions of clothes apply to them. There in traditional culture the change of headwear occurs when a woman gets married. The cruel romance makes different reasons. Andriushka offers Katya, a shepherdess, to leave the countryside for “luxurious” life in the city, and the distinctive mark of such life-style is a “large hat”, which symbolizes the abandonment of regular behavioral norms. A similar motif is outlined in the feature film “Svinarka i Pastukh” (“A Pig-Girl and a Shepherd”, 1941). A woman wearing a hat is socially defective and even could be dangerous, as in the romance “Alimentiki” (“Alimony”). The outward distinction between a woman and a girl is represented by covered and uncovered head respectively. Therefore, a headscarf represents the marital condition of a female. The heroine of the song Kirpichiky (“Little Bricks”) can’t work uncovered for technological and hygienic reasons. So when the hero of the song decides to buy a headscarf for his “proletarochka” (a factory girl), that means he wants to get married to her. A headscarf or a shawl represents marital relations, is mentioned as an amulet in the romances.
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