Old maids
Including, parents experienced they unbecoming so you can marry from other youngest daughter just before new earliest and, given that earliest wanted a bridegroom and you can going to functions and you will gatherings, new youngest wasn’t allowed to and you can, therefore, remained “inside maidenhood”. Needless to say, there had been and girls exactly who only could not see two it enjoyed. Peasant society addressed all of them thus harshly it is unpleasantly shocking now.
People who was remaining as girls were called a variety of insulting nicknames: vekovukha (‘century-dated one’), odnokosok (‘one-braided girl’, since unmarried girls used one braid inside adulthood), ‘gray-haired’, perespelok (‘the very ready one’). Such as for example an effective girl can also be drawn within village by the their moms and dads into a good sledge, shouting: “Nadolba, nadolba! (A word meaning around “thick because a stone”) Who wants a great nadolba?” If a family group decided, they may already “strike a great deal” and also have partnered 24 hours later.
To stay a beneficial vekovukha is noticed in the community a beneficial disgrace – it absolutely was thought that such a woman had not understood her virility prospective. Actually lameness, lop-sidedness or being hunchbacked weren’t believed an obstacle to wedding.
If a good girl didn’t age more than 25 years dated, children would end inviting their particular to their gatherings and you will she would become taboo to put on girls’ clothes. Today, their gowns had to be away from ebony shade, such as those of widows and you can dated feminine. The vekovukhas usually existed ilies in yet another building, in which it leftover her very own household.
Widows and you can vekovukhas, even after their quite disadvantaged reputation, had been thought about on town because bearers regarding actual and you may spiritual purity. As such, they came across many essential ceremonial properties – mainly related to the fresh new change to another industry. While the symbols of condition and non-parity, widows and centenarians didn’t sit-in wedding receptions, births, christenings – even so they took part in brand new rites and you will laundry of your own dry, saw along side muscles up until the funeral service, overall was able and you will remaining brand new funeral lifestyle.
Another important “work” was the fresh new “plowing” of arable house by vekovukhas and you will widows, which had been prevalent a number of provinces, with expecting mothers (which represented fertility) utilized towards the plow. This extremely important routine were to be done merely symbolically by “barren” feamales in new darkness away from nights, to ensure that, on the other hand, the brand new land would be rich whenever day emerged.
Of several vekovukhas and you may widows, immediately following expenses many years in this position, first started se detta practicing visitors drug and witchcraft inside their retirement. But, there are plus women in the latest Russian country side, exactly who decided which they do live by yourself from their more youthful ages.
Nuns
The latest girls whom failed to follow the relatives highway of lifestyle, but chose the path regarding servitude in order to Jesus, was in fact named chernichkas. The phrase chernichka was good feminitive kind of the word chernets (‘usually the one during the black robes’) – a beneficial monk which belonged into the “black” (celibate) clergy. In order to become a chernichka, good girl was required to state their own desire to following reaching the chronilogical age of wedding – this is where the girl do start to end up being acceptance to help you gatherings and you can people because of the town young people. This could happen from the girl’s variety of private piety – otherwise on account of a promise created by their particular moms and dads.
Up on claiming their own desire, the fresh girl needed to give away all their own colorful maidenly attire and you may don dark clothes, for example an effective vekovukha otherwise good widow. The new braid has also been symbolically clipped whenever you are uttering the words: “As the my personal tresses cannot go back to each other, I won’t go back to my personal maidenhood.”