ABSTRACT
Statistical data on the practice of religion, meager though it is, confirms that throughout the western world nineteenth-century women were more devout than men, and suggests that the dichotomy was particularly significant in France. Generally the dichotomy was framed in terms of intuitive or experiential knowledge as opposed to rational analysis, and, as confidence in reason eroded over the course of the century, respect for feminine wisdom increased. American feminist Margaret Fuller described ‘the especial genius of woman’ as ‘electrical in movement, intuitive in function, spiritual in tendency’, and her friend Ralph Waldo Emerson concurred, crediting woman with ‘an oracular nature’ and ‘a certain power of divination’. Tolstoy also acknowledges female insight in a moving passage of Anna Karenina. The depiction of pious women, then, not only documents the actual state of religious practice in the nineteenth century. It also conveys both the intellectual vulnerability of traditional Christian faith but also its emotional – and demographic – resilience.
