"Marrying off a girl almost amounts to a criminal casein France": documents on I. S. Turgenev’s troubles related to his daughter Pelageia’s marriage
The paper presents archival material discovered by the author in the French National Archives, Paris, France, and related to the 1865 marriage of I. S. Turgenev’s daughter Pelageia (Pauline, Paulinette). Never before published in Russia, these documents convincingly disprove the opinion, widespread in modern-day publications, that Turgenev had legitimized oradoptedhis natural daughter. Legitimization or adoption, i.e. transferring the father’s surname, social status and inheritance rights toan out-of-wedlock child, was impossible by law not onlyin Russia, but in France as well. In order to start the marriage procedures in France, Turgenev had formally recognizedPelageia as his natural daughter, which fact only gave her the right to use his surname, but no noble status, as specifically outlined in the documents.Her status as illegitimate child determined the conditions of her marriageand all of her future life. Turgenev, nonetheless, did his best to extract his daughter from her «false position» and arrange for her as comfortable a life as he possibly could, knowingonly too well what tragic outcome might await her - he described it soon after his daughter’s marriage in his story «An Unhappy Girl».